Om-gnosis Episode 2: Interview with Dr. Muhammad Faruque, part 1

Keith E. Cantú: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second episode of Om-gnosis, the Occult South Asia podcast. Today, I have the privilege of being joined by Muhammad Faruque. Muhammad is the Inayat Malik Associate Professor and Taft Center Fellow at the University of Cincinnati, and a former visiting scholar at Harvard University.

His award-winning book, ‘Sculpting the Self,’ published by University of Michigan Press in 2021, addresses what it means to be human “In a secular, post-enlightenment world” by exploring notions of selfhood and subjectivity in Islamic and non-Islamic philosophical literatures, including modern philosophy and neuroscience.

He’s the author of three books and over 50 academic articles, which is a huge amount, which have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous leading peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He’s also the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the prestigious Templeton Foundation Global Philosophy of Religion Grant and the Title IV grant from the US Department of Education.

So, Muhammad, it was really wonderful to get to meet you over the summer while you were a resident fellow here at the Center for the Study of World Religions, and get to learn about your work a little bit. And it’s great to have you on the podcast.

Muhammad Faruque: Hi Keith. Thank you so much for that very kind introduction. And yes, I’m so happy to reconnect and thank you so much for doing this really interesting interview series. Really excited to be here.

Keith E. Cantú: Of course. And so what I really want to do is give people a window into the work and research that you’ve been doing, and so I thought that I would start by just asking, tell me a little bit about your personal background and journey. How did you get interested in Sufism? And I know you had mentioned spending time in Iran as well, and how had that influenced your perspective? And just in general, what inspired you to take an academic approach to these topics?

Muhammad Faruque: Sure. So there were some interesting events, I must say, but on the whole, I should say, there are some people who are always going to be bothered by the so-called big questions of life, like about their identity, about their metaphysical identity, who they are, where they came from and where are they going—those kind of questions of origin and ultimate destiny.

Anyway, those questions are always in the back of my mind. But as things happen, you think about it more sort of practical, you know, a career. You think about a life where you can have a job and then maybe those things. But I was really not like that. I was really trying to answer the question of, “What is the meaning and purpose of my life? ” And also, “Is there any ultimate meaning to human existence?” Those questions. 

But nonetheless, I did have a definite career plan. So that’s the reason after my O-levels and A-levels in the British system, I went to University of London in Greater London and started studying economics with a particular focus on financial markets and stock markets. At some point I realized that even when it comes to something as quantitative as economics—as a science like economics—you cannot really understand, make sense of, or predict human behavior without answering, without having some kind of notion of what constitutes human subjectivity, or at a deeper level, without having some knowledge of the deep metaphysical questions of what is real, for example, what is possible, what is good. We kind of take those notions ... we think that we already know those answer. You have answers to those questions, or we feel like as if the utilitarian approach, which is very much a kind of dominant worldview in economics, that’s the kind of only game in town.

So I was thinking about those questions, and I realized that I cannot really answer those questions through economics—not just through economics, but also even through, other scientific disciplines. So that was really ... that really pushed me into philosophy, spirituality, and mysticism, mystical philosophy. And I became aware of the kind of the living tradition of Islamic philosophical and mystical traditions.

So after my undergraduate degree, I decided to leave London and I decided to, you know, go to Iran. And it opened up for me the vast world of Islamic philosophy, Sufism, mystical philosophy, or ibn Arabi and the transcendental philosophy of Mulla Sadra and, you know, lots of different schools. So I, I ended up spending three years there. I studied with some of the most famous philosophers in Iran who are also versed in mysticism, and also learned in Arabic and Persian so that I could read Arabic directly or, you know, classical texts directly in Arabic and Persian, not just through their secondary sources.

So I actually never thought of coming back to the West very soon. I thought I was going to stay there for a while, but then a friend of mine who is also a very well-known academic now, he really motivated me to take up, you know, to apply for the PhD, to apply for a PhD at various US—American universities.

And that’s how I ended up doing a PhD at UC Berkeley and also spent my last year at Harvard University. So yeah, the linguistic, the academic approach—you know, to answer your the last part of your question—I feel is very helpful because it allows you to kind of know the languages and be versed in the methods of philology and also philosophy.

And so those trainings are really crucial if we’re really trying to make sense of the deepest end of Sufism or mysticism in general, because oftentimes people kind of rely on secondary sources or they met various spiritual figures. I’m not discounting those approaches. In fact, my approach combines those approaches as well. I travel around the world all the way from Malaysia and Pakistan and Morocco, and then of course, other, Turkey, and other countries, and met with many spiritual authorities as well, just to get a more anthropo ... you know, ethnographic, exposure to these things.

So, yeah, I would say my approach is not purely academic, at the end of the day. It highly values the academic approach, which is, I think, very important. But at the same time, one has to also know things from a more ... like from a presential perspective. It’s one thing to read a text. Yeah. Yeah, I think we’ll talk about more, but it’s quite another when you meet a spiritual person and you get a better perspective about certain things.

Keith E. Cantú: You know, you didn’t mention Bangladesh or, you know, West Bengal, India yet. And I know it’s such a vast topic that we could probably spend five episodes just talking about this single topic, but I’m curious, you mentioned to me when we met that you have a connection to Bengal by birth. Correct, of Bangladesh? And so I’m wondering if you could provide some context for how Sufism spread into South Asia. I think a lot of people who are watching this will unfortunately sort of just see South Asia as kind of a monolithic religious entity that, you know, it’s only Hindus or possibly Hindus and some Christians and, you know, Buddhists and so on. And I think that overlooks the rich tapestry of Sufism in South Asia as well. And I’m wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more and what unique forms Sufism took in South Asia.

Muhammad Faruque: Sure. So I was actually born in Bangladesh, so I moved to London after my A-levels. So in Bangladesh, you can still go to an English school, so complete O-levels an A-levels. But I grew up in Bangladesh. I think it was in my late teenage that I migrated to the UK. So I have a kind of deep connection to Bangladesh, and my ancestors, they come from the Middle East and also they lived in India for generations.

So I personally, you know, I would say there are deep ties when it comes to my social and cultural identities, you know, India or idea of Hindustan, the idea of Bharatbarsha, you know, it’s deeply connected to my identity. But I’m also Bengali or Bangladeshi, today’s perspective. Yeah, but what is, you know, the topic of how Sufism spread to India and Bangladesh in particular, it’s a vast topic. So I can only perhaps provide some notable outline, not even able to cover the outlines. 

So, as we know, Islam first came to India through Muhammad ibn Qasm, who in the early eighth century conquered Sindh—the region of Sindh. And since then, there were kind of contacts between the Arabs and traders and possibly Sufi figures and people of India. But then some of the major figures of Sufism that we know appear, much later. Like Data Ganj Bakhsh and al-Hujwiri in Lahore, 11th century, is a famous, author of the famous book, “Kashf al-Mahjub,” if I’m not mistaken. And then later on we know about the Delhi Sultanate. We know the Mughals. But prior to those, the political context prior to the Mughals, for example, you have the Chistiyya, you have various Sufi orders, Qadiriyya and Suhrawardiyya. Those orders, you know, from the Central Asian and Middle Eastern lands, came to, India. 

So there are some of the figures, like Moinuddin Chishti, and his disciples, Nizamuddin Auliya and then Amir Khusrau. These are, you know, just so popular. They’re kind of universal figures. I mean, Khusrau especially for his contributions to Qawwali and yeah, and Nizamuddin Auliya, in India, everybody goes to, Ajmer Sharif. Yeah. So, yeah, this is all kind of like everybody. It’s part and parcel of Indian identity, even beyond Muslims. And, and Sufis and, because a lot of Hindus also go to, come to some these, you know, the shrines when it comes to Bengal, so it was again around that time, 13 or 12, 13, 14th century. We have so Bengal is known as the land of, 12 Sufi saints. 12 Auliyas you know, among them, Shah Jalal of Sylhet is extremely famous.

And then Khan Jahan Ali, and then so many others. But there are two Shah Jalals. So one of them was Shah Jalal Tabrizi, from a region of Tabriz in Iran. The one in Sylhet is probably, from Yemen. A lot of people from Yemen, especially place called Hadhramaut, didn’t not not perhaps this Shah Jalal, but many others came from that region and settled in India, Bangladesh today’s Bangladesh.

The collective period of, the Bengal Sultanate and Mughal period, that was kind of the kind of golden age of Bengali, Bengal, you know, Bangla, today’s Bangladesh from an economic, cultural, and, and Sufi perspectives because, you know, you it’s A) you know, Mughal Empire at the time was, if not one of the richest, the richest, if not one of the richest empires.

And Mughals were highly, patronizing in Sufism, as you know, Akbar was very much into Sufism, Emperor Akbar. And they were translating, Hindu texts, Mahabharata as Razmnama and other texts into Persian. And there were intermarriages and there was a lot of interest about about Hinduism, especially about the Hindu saints. From different Hindu denomination sects and yogis especially, so we know of Dara Shikoh, for example, and his effort to translate, Upanishads actually into Persian, which he called Sirr-i-Akbar “The Greatest Secret.”

So he actually went so far as to claim that Upanishads actually represent the secret teachings of, of the Qur’an. Because in the Qur’an there is mention of a hidden book and Upanishad is the hidden book. He also translated, you know, things from Vedanta, “Majma-ul-Bahrain” for example is very famous. So this is really, really unique.

You know, you don’t know in the vast world and vast history of Sufism, all the way from Indonesia to, to Central Asia to, to now in the West, you don’t have that kind of, pluralistic attitudes to it. Other religions. Yes. You can mention even, you know, figures like Rumi, Hafez, you know, all these mention of other religions or ibn Arabi, but not to that point where they are not only translating, other spiritual texts, but also commenting on them in a very favorable light while remaining as Muslims practicing Sharia.

So there are a lot of controversies about Dara Shikoh. But you know, we know it’s not known that he left the Sharia or he, you know, the daily practices of, Islam. He has you never left those, but he still felt, felt like it’s possible to be, Sufi and Muslim while still, while still incorporating, perspectives from other religions, not in terms of practice, but in terms of the metaphysical teachings.

This is quite significant because especially if you think about what’s going on today, I think about the current situation both in India and Bangladesh and, you know, the Hindu-Muslim relationships that everybody is talking about and the kind of effort to even erase the kind of memories of Muslims and achievements, I mean, just crazy. So crazy because you have to then also forsake it in a good deal of your, you know, Hindu or so-called Indian achievements, culturally and spiritually.

Keith E. Cantú: So to kind of shift gears a little bit, you know, from sort of the history of the spread of the ideas to more what is ideas and practices and, you know, framings of the self really were, you know, which I know you’ve written quite a bit on. Sufi teachers often talk about this sort of experiential gnosis, right, as opposed to ordinary knowledge, you know, what is this gnosis? What does it mean? And what’s the difference between it and kind of just knowledge in general? If there is one?

Muhammad Faruque: Yeah, sure. So this is really at the heart of Sufism. Almost every major Sufi figure talks about and makes a distinction between ordinary knowledge and ma’rifa or real knowledge or cognition itself. You know, people translate, use different terms. I would say just knowledge or gnosis, and then I try to explain how that is different from just ordinary knowledge.

So, I mean, it’s kind of difficult for people, especially in to, in today’s world, to understand some of these subtleties because we tend to, first of all, confuse, the words, information with knowledge to begin with, you know, because it’s supposed to be an information age, because of the internet. So, you know, information is simply data.

Maybe some numbers, you know, you can have data about the, let’s say, the history of the stock market. I don’t know why that crossed my mind! You have a lot of data, but in order to have something meaningful, you have to kind of come up with a theoretical framework or a methodology. Just kind of telling us some numbers does not mean anything.

Right. So that’s that’s very fairly kind of clear, the distinction between information and knowledge. But when it comes to Sufism there’s a further distinction between just ordinary knowledge like we can if we ask what is the capital of Bangladesh? We can say, you know, Dhaka, that’s a kind of very basic knowledge, but when Sufis are talking about knowledge, they’re talking about a completely different kind of knowledge, something, as you mentioned, experiential.

So what is the difference? So imagine, let me give some examples. Imagine, knowing a person. So what happens when you get to know a person? We know about their, physical characteristics, their appearance. We know about their, you know, other kind of character traits, we know about, a lot of other information about them.

Right? But that’s, all of this information can be gleaned thanks to the internet today, even through Facebook or, and other internet, whatever social media, however, when you actually meet the person, the experience of meeting another person, this the factor being in the presence, just that experience of being in the presence of another person is definitely different from just collecting, you know, various facts about that person.

And then think about other examples like, honey, so we can again talk about, think about the kind of chemical properties of honey. We can kind of talk about it at length, but then the actual act of eating or drinking honey is very different. Tasting honey. Sorry, tasting honey is very different from just knowing its, you know, chemical properties. And Sufis like Ghazali, they even give more, pointed examples like the example of, having a physical relationship with, you know, with your spouse. Ghazali says that, you know, it’s one thing to kind of hear about this, but it’s quite another to kind of have that experience. And he’s giving that example intentionally because to bring out the kind of, the subtle difference between the experience itself and kind of just knowing about it through another, channel.

And they use different terms like dhawq, which literally means taste. It’s somewhat like rasa, in Indian aesthetic theory. I mean, there is a kind of definitely overlap and not exactly the same, but this idea of tasting things as opposed to just knowing, collecting facts, it’s at the heart of Sufi, Sufi epistemology. Why? Because, Sufis are ultimately about self-realization, self-actualization. So they would say that we all have a given identity, given cultural identity, a social identity, or even a religious identity. But that does not tell us who we deeply, who we really are and who we really are is foundational to also answer who the ultimate reality is. What is the nature of ultimate reality? There is a profound connection, and they often repeat this Arabic phrase, Arabic saying attributed to the prophet, which says “man ‘arafa nafsahu faqad ‘arafa rabbahu.”

“Whoever, knows himself, knows his lord.” So knowing at the level of ma’rifa that through Sufi practices is very different from just knowing, oh, I’m good. I had this set of skills, I have this kind of I have this set of characteristics. I’m good at this. I’m good at that. I get angry at this. Sometimes I, you know, I know myself, about this and that. Those are all kind of secondary effects in relation to our kind of true self-knowledge. Yeah. So that’s how I think I would initially explain ma’rifa.

Keith E. Cantú: Yeah, it’s a wonderful explanation here. And I’m really happy that you brought up the is the pronunciation dhawq? Okay. So dhawq, yeah, I had read that in your book that you, you referred to it as a suprarational mode of cognition. And I’m wondering, is that suprarational in terms of the quality of taste, and the quality of experience that it, that it gives is sort of beyond what we can conceive of in, in our ordinary rational states? Or, you know, I, I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about how this is, you know, framed and perceived. Yeah.

Muhammad Faruque: Yeah. So I just mentioned that phrase, whoever knows himself knows his Lord. And when it comes to certain, other late Sufis like Shah Waliullah from Delhi, early 18th century, he kind of adds an additional clause to it by saying, whoever knows himself through presence knows his Lord through the same knowledge. So I’m just translating from Arabic in my mind. So when it comes to, let’s say, knowing a country, knowing a culture, knowing a concept, let’s say the concept of, the internet, Google, the medium that we are using, you know, you can give a kind of definition of Zencastr, sorry, what if it is Zencastr?

Keith E. Cantú: Yes.

Muhammad Faruque: Zencastr. Yeah, yeah. So we use concepts, representations in our mind, right? To make sense of the world through knowing it. But when it comes to self-knowledge, there’s a fundamental difference. Yes, it’s true that we can also have a conceptual or representational knowledge of ourselves. Like because we have thinking ability, we can kind of tell ourselves, I’m a human being.

And human being is defined in different ways. One of the definition is called it. One of the definitions says, a rational animal, a human being is a rational animal. So you have the concept of rationality, you have the consider animality and two different concepts. And that’s how you. Oh, yeah, that’s what human is. Obviously there are many other different definitions.

And this is a kind of very Aristotelian and again, very limited. But knowing yourself just through this kind of concept is very different from having a direct awareness of yourself as yourself, without any intermediary, even if that intermediary is a concept. So to have a kind of concrete taste of that, you can perhaps, you can, do this thought, perform this thought experiment.

You can, I don’t want to do it. Maybe when it’s over, you can think about, you know, just closing your eyes and then breathing deeply and then trying to dispel all your thoughts. And stay quiet, silent, even in your mind, for at least 1 or 2 minutes. And then, you know, you know, let that experience be over and then reflect what was that. Everybody would admit that they had an experience of themselves most of the time, thoughts and others imaginations can interfere.

But if you can have an experience, you so without any of those, you would know what I’m talking about. Being a self does not need any concepts. So Sufis are trying to kind of, say to the world and say to any seeker that you, you know what, you really come to see who you truly are or see that nature or even ultimate reality through yourself, you have to get rid of, all of this kind of conceptual, representational knowledge that kind of build up through our education through various environmental, environmental factors or genetic factors.

Sometimes, you know, they’re all intertwined. So self-knowledge is principally without any of these concepts, and it comes in degrees. So what I, the example that I cited, that experience of themselves, you know, like oneself to oneself or that experience of self to self is available, accessible to anybody. Anybody can do this experiment that I just mentioned. But to really go to the deepest end of the what I call the ego tunnel, at the end of which is some kind of light, there are kind of self-cultivation practices, spiritual exercises that one need to also perform to undo all the misgivings, all the kind of ignorant conceptions of oneself.

Keith E. Cantú: I want to tune in to sort of the last thing that you said about was it psycho-physical practices? And, you know, some of our listeners are probably more familiar with chakras, given their popularization, right, and yoga. But I remember that when we had met and you also mentioned this in your book, this, this notion of laṭā’if? Yeah. And so I’m wondering if you could explain what these are and kind of how they’re connected to this notion of, of selfhood in general. And, and also you mentioned in your book the idea of prāṇa but it’s in conversation with, pneuma, I believe. Yes. Yes. This airy soul or vital breath.

Muhammad Faruque: Yeah, yeah. So, so this is again a vast topic, the idea of the subtle body. So let’s begin with the kind of, the, the everyday meaning of the word laṭā’if. So laṭā’if is a plural of laṭīf in Arabic. Laṭīf simply means, subtle. laṭā’if, you know, it’s plural. But when it is used in a technical sense in Sufi texts, it means, different scholars have translated different.

You know, scholars always disagree about these things. So I explain why I prefer my own humble, translation of subtle centers of consciousness rather than just, subtle this, subtle that. Anyway, if laṭā’if are the subtle centers of consciousness within the body, it’s like subtle, also, you can think about them in terms of subtle points of energy, first of all, within the body, but also macrocosmically in the, in the, in the, in the universe, they are kind of corresponding reference points.

So it’s, it’s a fascinating topic in Sufism and also in worldly spirituality because similar ideas can be found in Kabbalah, in, in, even in Christian spirituality and also Chinese alchemy. And also, you know, of course, in various traditions of Indian philosophy and spirituality, all the way from Vedanta to or the other modes of Indian philosophy. So, in the Indian context, because, we also know that there are a lot of interactions between Sufis and yogis, and Sufis also had very positive, many, many Sufis, like some of the famous ones like Abdul Latif Sindhi, were who actually sought out, sought to kind of meet the yogis and, and and heafter meeting with yogis, spending time with them, he thought they were one of them wahidun or monotheist, he even thought, again, you can see that pluralistic vision, and you can see this in the in the writings of Lalon, where you have a confluence of Hindu spirituality and Buddhist and especially Vaishnavism. And then and then Tantrism, Sahajiya Buddhist tradition and, and Sufism.

So just like the chakras with which most of these are familiar and the prāṇas, the laṭā’if are kind of both. So with respect to prāṇa like life, I mean, can be translated different ways, but, you know, prāṇ or prāṇa, Sanskrit, Bengali, the same word. Maybe life energy, something like that. Vital life principle. Breath principle.

Princ... Yeah, something like that. So. So we know prāṇa is not simply just the breath, you know, the chemical composition, nitrogen, oxygen, those things, it’s much more than that. It’s connected to different subtle bodies. Right. You know, sūkṣma śarīra, and then kāraṇa śarīra, and then, of course, the gross body. So you have something similar going on.

There are subtle points. And Sufis sometime identify those points, just like the chakras are points, have definite points within the body. And imagining that it’s not just one body, the most, gross body, but also kind of other layers of body chakras which correspond to different points within the body. But because there’s consc... points of consciousness rather than something completely physical, you cannot completely localize them in physical terms.

Just like prāṇa involves nāḍīs you know, various channels. So it’s a complicated subject, but basically they play a very important role when it comes to spiritual realization, because they’re kind of, they’re like a, in a bridge. They, they provide a kind of spiritual roadmap, on about our own subjectivity and how our own subjectivity is also connected to the universe and the universe itself is a, it’s kind of manifestation of the divine. So macrocosm, metacosm and microcosm are kind of intertwined. There is a kind of overlapping relations. So, prāṇa from one point of view, yes, it relates to the individual, but from another point of view, you can also think about it in terms of cosmic breath, you know.

So, you know, this is very important: laṭā’if can be understood both microcosmically like sub... different points within the body. I’m not just using Arabic and Persian terms, but imagining, you know, like chakras. There are names, you know, like rūḥ, ‘aql. These terms like rūḥ means spirit, ‘aql means intelligence. But in as laṭā’if they mean something different.

Okay. So, you know, I just don’t want to, you know, get into the complicated, you know, complications of these because, yeah, it’ll take quite a bit of time. But thankfully we have some material and my humble articles as well. But basically they provide a roadmap about into the realiz... about when it comes to the realization of the ultimate self, the divine self.

And Sufis use that term like the divine self. And so it’s a question of gradual progression, a question of realizing a specific laṭā’if, and then ultimately progressing and finally integrating in, you know, the world even God within the self. But this self is no longer the individual’s. So things get very dialectical and complicated.

Keith E. Cantú: Dialectical indeed, yes, I can see that, and the I and I vs. no longer I, as you write about in your book.