Return (rijꜤat)

 

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(In answer to a question in email)

 

This is one of my favorite topics in the Bayān, and I can literally go on and on and on about it! What the Point means by Jasad-i-Dhātī (جسد ذاتى) is the essential somatic frame. This is to be contrasted with the Jasad-i-Ẓāhirī (جسد ظاهرى) which is another way of saying the elemental body (جسد عنصرى) that is subject to the natural forces of generation and corruption in time, i.e. coming into being and passing away, birth and death, etc. The Essential somatic frame (جسد ذاتى) is subject to higher forces on a higher plane and is directly connected to the World of the Archetypes (عالم مثال). It can be looked upon as the soul which is the nafs (نفس), strictly speaking. One way to look at it, is to think of it as the barzakhī body (جسد برزخى), hence why the Point references it in relation to 'return' by calling it the Jasad-i-Dhātī (جسد ذاتى) because there exists an innateness to its reality (in relation to the material) that is subject to higher principles governing it than simply the basic coming into being and passing away of physical, elemental nature. In one sense, it is what is meant by the Aristotelians when they speak of the entelechy or what Henri Bergson and his students mean by elan vital. But what the Bayān means by it is far more multi-faceted, complex, subtle and nuanced.

The Shaykhī school, where many of these ideas in the Bayān have correspondences, speaks of 4 bodies to each person. They are:

 

1. Jism A - The Primordial Body that is lahūtī which is related to Fuʾād and wujūd (existence)

2. Jism B - The Astral Body that is jabarūtī which is related to Rūḥ and mahīya (quiddity) or ʿayn

3. Jasad A - The somatic frame that is malakūtī which is related to Nafs and dhāt (essence)

4. Jasad B - The elemental body that is nasūtī which is the material, apparent (ẓāhirī) Jasad and related to jawhar (substance).

So what the Point is speaking of in relation to return is in fact Jasad A that is essential (ذاتى) because it is not subject to the forces of generation and corruption as the apparent (ظاهرى) body (Jasad B) is that makes its composition and reality accidental (عرضى) in relation to the essential (ذاتى). This essential body, because its locus is the barzakhī world of the archetypes, is then subject to what the Point is alluding to in terms of the metaphysical laws of return. But what has to be kept in mind is that with the Point these are not just occurring as abstract philosophical or metaphysical axioms suspended in another world. They are animate, and especially during the Resurrections, they are present and immediate right here and right now.

Now, because Jasad A occurs on a higher plane there is an impersonal (or abstract مجرّد) element to it, for lack of a better way of putting it, that is universal (جامع) in relation to a particular locus (محل) or a material individuation in this physical world. So indeed it can return (or project itself) into multiple loci at different material times.

That said, what is quite interesting is the sub-realm which the Bayānic writings continually allude to that occurs as a sort of sub-division of  malakūt. This is the world of the ʿaẓamūt (عظموت) whose subdivision is Paradise and hell, and it is from the locus of this bi-furcation wherein (on its basic level) the holy souls with all those who have believed in them as well as all those who have opposed them in each age, projects into the physical realm during the age of Resurrections and individuates in the respective somatic frames and elemental bodies of those personalities on each side of the divine dramaturgy: Light and fire, Affirmation and negation.

Another way of looking at it is as such, which goes directly to the quotations you cite from the Bayān. During every qiyāmat, there is a reiteration of the eternal divine question: Alastu bi-Rabbikum/Am I not your Lord? The correct answer to this question is the difference between the purification of the essential body and its opposite. So every Manifestation is the return of this same question to humanity and the opportunity for it to either purify itself and transform itself into the reality of Light and Affirmation or the opposite, fire and negation. So when the Point critiques the misled notions of purification held by the mujtahids and their followers (with all of the pendantic minutia around the rules and formulas of ṭahāra and the like), He is pointing this out, because Light and Affirmation is the only relevant purification in every Age of the Resurrection and everything else called by it is either irrelevant or completely opposite to what true purification means because the real purification happens on the level of the subtle (Jasad A) and not on the dense (Jasad B), which in the Bayān means on the level of the soul which then becomes the initiating level of the Resurrection body (as the Shaykhīs call it) which makes, on one level, the appearance of each Divine Manifestation a sort of alchemical process in the context of a universal initiation, as it were. This is why, in my opinion, the Point continually utilizes alchemical terminology in the Bayān, such as the Red Sulphur (كبريت احمر) to refer to the true believers which He says are even rarer than this kibrīt-i-aḥmar.

So in a sense those souls who missed the opportunity of answering the question correctly the last time are given the opportunity in every Resurrection to answer it correctly this time in order to resurrect into their ascension and so perfect their own alchemy and palingenesis, if you would, hence one of the cosmic and metaphysical necessities of return in relation to those souls (in their universal reality vis-a-vis their particularized or individuated instantiations at a given time) who have not answered it correctly in the past; and, additionally, confirmation or a test for those who have previously answered in the affirmative.

As such to get back to the Essential body (Jasad A) as per gate 12, Unity 5: it is the Throne (عرش) of the material, elemental body (Jasad B) because it is its subtle (and so unseen) animating center (مركز), i.e. its entelechy and elan vital, just as Jism B (the Astral Body) would be the Throne and animating center to this Jasad A and just as Jism A is the Throne and animating center of Jism B, with each of these bodies enthroning the one below from above, as it were, and with the Primal Will (مشيّت أوّليه) being the Throne of thrones (عرش الأعراش) over all, hence the meaning of the true initiatic death in its presence as the Tree of Reality per gate 8, Unity 2 which manifests (whether from the locus of the Primordial World of the First Existential Particles, i.e.  عالم ذرّات اُولى, all the way to the material world) as the sincere, affirmative response to the eternal question of ‘Alastu bi-Rabbikum/Am I not your Lord?’ that in every Resurrection transforms that subject who answers in the affirmative into the essence of Light.

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