On 22nd August 2021, I came across the
following quote in a book written in French about Sufism:
Vaincre
l’illusion — Réaliser le Réel
«
Cette vie est un rêve dans un rêve. »
« Les hommes sont endormis, et ce n’est que lorsqu’ils meurent qu'ils
se réveillent. »
Paroles attribuées au prophète Muhammad
That is, on page 123 of Eric Geoffroy’s Le soufisme: Histoire, fondements et pratiques de l’islam spirituel. ‘This life is a dream within a dream. Men are asleep and only when they die do they wake up. Words attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.’
I tried to find the source for this quote two days later, but to no avail. Then I simply forgot about it. After having opened a couple of hours ago a file named ‘temp_August 2021_Topics to blog about’ in which I had jotted down ideas for blog entries because I wanted to retrieve some references to truth in the New Testament (ἀληθείᾳ in Greek), in particular in the fifth section of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, I stumbled upon a quote about truth in the Quran (LXXV) I had typed in the same file as well as my eyes fell upon the above quote in French. This prompted me to try to find the original source once again. Well, this time I was successful. The first recorded mention seems to have been in Fusus al-Hikam (The seals of wisdom, 1229), a work by a man considered by many to have been one of the greatest mystics in Islam, Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240). The passage where this beautiful quote about life being a dream within a dream is at the beginning of Chapter 9 of Fusus al-Hikam:
This luminous wisdom spreads its light on the presence of the imagination (khayal), and it is the first of the beginnings of divine revelation in the people of divine concern. ‘A’isha, may Allah be pleased with her, said, “The first of what the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had of revelation was the true dream. Then he only saw dreams which came like the breaking of dawn, and there was nothing hidden in it,” (1) and her knowledge only extended to this. This lasted for six months, and then the angel came to him. She did not know that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had said, “People are asleep, and when they die, they waken up.” Everything seen in the state of wakefulness is of that sort, although states differ. She spoke of six months, but all his life in this world was like that, as a dream in a dream.
1. In al-Bukhari and elswhere.
Chapter 9: The seal of light in the word of Yusuf (Joseph), translated by Aisha Bewley (1980)
https://bewley.virtualave.net/fusus9.html
The Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu provides some interesting insights in his study called A Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism: IbnʻArabı̄ and Lao-tzŭ, Chuang-tzŭ, Tokyo, 1966, in particular on pages 9 and 10:
[with reference to the dream Joseph had, as related in the Quran, XII:4 and XII: 99; the green is my emphasis]
[…]
Thus, a prophet who lives his life in such an unusual spiritual state may be said to be in a dream within a dream all through his life. ‘The whole of his life is nothing but a dream within a dream’. 7 What Ibn ‘Arabi means by this proposition is this: since the phenomenal world itself is in truth a ‘dream’ 8 (although ordinary people are not aware of its being a ‘dream’), the prophet who perceives unusual symbols in the midst of that general ‘dream’ -context may be compared to a man who is dreaming in a dream.
[…]
The position of Muhammad goes deeper than this. Viewed from the standpoint of the prophet Muhammad, the following is the right interpretation of what happened to Joseph concerning his dream. One has to start from the recognition that life itself is a dream. In this big dream which is his life and of which Joseph himself is not conscious, he sees a particular dream (the eleven stars, etc.). From this particular dream he wakes up. That is to say, he dreams in his big dream that he wakes up. Then he interprets his own (particular) dream (the stars = his brothers, etc.). In truth, this is still a continuation of his big dream. He dreams himself interpreting his own dream. Then the event which he thus interprets comes true as a sensible fact. Thereupon Joseph thinks that his interpretation has materialized and that his dream has definitely come to an end. He thinks that he stands now completely outside of his dream, while, in reality, he is still dreaming. He is not aware of the fact that he is dreaming.
In fact, the quotations provided above simply do not do justice to exegesis offered by Toshihiko Izutsu and I would urge anybody interested in this topic to read pages 9 and 10 of Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism.
Finally, there is a short entry about the visions of Ibn al-Arabi and his ability to experience lucid dreaming on pages 111 and 112 of James R. Lewis’s The dream encyclopaedia.
Another, far more traditional interpretation of this hadith can be found here.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem by the same title.
Finally, some have claimed that our experience of life in this realm is akin to that of a computer-generated hologram (e.g. Brahma Kumari Pari, Holographic universe - an introduction, Rizwan Virk, The simulation hypothesis).
Other links
https://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=12&verse=4
https://al-quran.info/#12
https://archive.org/details/quranw/wq2/page/n17/mode/2up
http://www.quranpda.com/Quran_English/Pickthall_PDF/012Yousef.pdf
http://www.quranpda.com/Basit_Azhar/012_Yousef.mp3
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315736655/ibn-al-arabi-fusus-al-hikam-binyamin-abrahamov
[the hadith in Arabic calligraphy]
https://hadithanswers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/complete_signature_ml_suhail_updated.jpg
https://hadithanswers.com/hadith-people-are-asleep-when-they-die-they-will-wake-up/
« Les hommes sont endormis, et ce n’est que lorsqu’ils meurent qu'ils
se réveillent. »
Paroles attribuées au prophète Muhammad
That is, on page 123 of Eric Geoffroy’s Le soufisme: Histoire, fondements et pratiques de l’islam spirituel. ‘This life is a dream within a dream. Men are asleep and only when they die do they wake up. Words attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.’
I tried to find the source for this quote two days later, but to no avail. Then I simply forgot about it. After having opened a couple of hours ago a file named ‘temp_August 2021_Topics to blog about’ in which I had jotted down ideas for blog entries because I wanted to retrieve some references to truth in the New Testament (ἀληθείᾳ in Greek), in particular in the fifth section of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, I stumbled upon a quote about truth in the Quran (LXXV) I had typed in the same file as well as my eyes fell upon the above quote in French. This prompted me to try to find the original source once again. Well, this time I was successful. The first recorded mention seems to have been in Fusus al-Hikam (The seals of wisdom, 1229), a work by a man considered by many to have been one of the greatest mystics in Islam, Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240). The passage where this beautiful quote about life being a dream within a dream is at the beginning of Chapter 9 of Fusus al-Hikam:
This luminous wisdom spreads its light on the presence of the imagination (khayal), and it is the first of the beginnings of divine revelation in the people of divine concern. ‘A’isha, may Allah be pleased with her, said, “The first of what the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had of revelation was the true dream. Then he only saw dreams which came like the breaking of dawn, and there was nothing hidden in it,” (1) and her knowledge only extended to this. This lasted for six months, and then the angel came to him. She did not know that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had said, “People are asleep, and when they die, they waken up.” Everything seen in the state of wakefulness is of that sort, although states differ. She spoke of six months, but all his life in this world was like that, as a dream in a dream.
1. In al-Bukhari and elswhere.
Chapter 9: The seal of light in the word of Yusuf (Joseph), translated by Aisha Bewley (1980)
https://bewley.virtualave.net/fusus9.html
The Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu provides some interesting insights in his study called A Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism: IbnʻArabı̄ and Lao-tzŭ, Chuang-tzŭ, Tokyo, 1966, in particular on pages 9 and 10:
[with reference to the dream Joseph had, as related in the Quran, XII:4 and XII: 99; the green is my emphasis]
[…]
Thus, a prophet who lives his life in such an unusual spiritual state may be said to be in a dream within a dream all through his life. ‘The whole of his life is nothing but a dream within a dream’. 7 What Ibn ‘Arabi means by this proposition is this: since the phenomenal world itself is in truth a ‘dream’ 8 (although ordinary people are not aware of its being a ‘dream’), the prophet who perceives unusual symbols in the midst of that general ‘dream’ -context may be compared to a man who is dreaming in a dream.
[…]
The position of Muhammad goes deeper than this. Viewed from the standpoint of the prophet Muhammad, the following is the right interpretation of what happened to Joseph concerning his dream. One has to start from the recognition that life itself is a dream. In this big dream which is his life and of which Joseph himself is not conscious, he sees a particular dream (the eleven stars, etc.). From this particular dream he wakes up. That is to say, he dreams in his big dream that he wakes up. Then he interprets his own (particular) dream (the stars = his brothers, etc.). In truth, this is still a continuation of his big dream. He dreams himself interpreting his own dream. Then the event which he thus interprets comes true as a sensible fact. Thereupon Joseph thinks that his interpretation has materialized and that his dream has definitely come to an end. He thinks that he stands now completely outside of his dream, while, in reality, he is still dreaming. He is not aware of the fact that he is dreaming.
In fact, the quotations provided above simply do not do justice to exegesis offered by Toshihiko Izutsu and I would urge anybody interested in this topic to read pages 9 and 10 of Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism.
Finally, there is a short entry about the visions of Ibn al-Arabi and his ability to experience lucid dreaming on pages 111 and 112 of James R. Lewis’s The dream encyclopaedia.
Another, far more traditional interpretation of this hadith can be found here.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem by the same title.
Finally, some have claimed that our experience of life in this realm is akin to that of a computer-generated hologram (e.g. Brahma Kumari Pari, Holographic universe - an introduction, Rizwan Virk, The simulation hypothesis).
Other links
https://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=12&verse=4
https://al-quran.info/#12
https://archive.org/details/quranw/wq2/page/n17/mode/2up
http://www.quranpda.com/Quran_English/Pickthall_PDF/012Yousef.pdf
http://www.quranpda.com/Basit_Azhar/012_Yousef.mp3
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315736655/ibn-al-arabi-fusus-al-hikam-binyamin-abrahamov
[the hadith in Arabic calligraphy]
https://hadithanswers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/complete_signature_ml_suhail_updated.jpg
https://hadithanswers.com/hadith-people-are-asleep-when-they-die-they-will-wake-up/
Lausanne, the above was
published on the twenty-second day of the
eighth month of the year two thousand and
twenty-two.
