227 years of Mirza Ghalib: How the mystic poet rethought the concept of ‘man’ in his couplets

The fluidity of “Mysticism” makes it difficult to classify it as a category and the term can always be defined/redefined in ways that bring as many people as one wishes into its field. Mysticism encompasses a wide range of intellectual and existential experiences – spanning from self-inflicted suffering to the use of psychedelics, and from self-realization to its complete denial. Arriving at a single, unified definition of mysticism that fully captures its essence is nearly impossible. However, by examining the etymology of the word “mysticism”, we can gain some insight into this phenomenon.

The word is closely related to “mystery” and “myst”, suggesting a connection with hiddenness, ineffability, and that, which is beyond the capacity of human understanding. Mysticism involves an acknowledgment and surrender of the mystery at the core of life and the universe. A mystic is someone who recognises that, at its deepest level, life and existence are a mystery, and that spiritual enlightenment lies in embracing and participating in this mystery. While experiences, interpretations, and explanations follow, the starting point of all mystical endeavours is the realization and appreciation of the mysterious nature of creation. With this foundation, consider a few of Ghalib’s couplets:

“Keh sakhe kaun ki yeh jalwa garri kis ki hai
Parda chhoda hai woh usne ki uthaye na banay”

or

“Jab ki tujh bin koi nahi maujood
Phir yeh hangama ae Khuda kya hai”

A sense of wonder

The ancient Greeks believed that wonder is the beginning of wisdom, and if this is true, then the sense of wonder, awe, and a kind of “Sufiyana Tahhayur” (mystical bewilderment) evoked by the above verses of Ghalib is clear to any conscious reader. Considering that mysticism is about recognizing and participating in the mystery of existence, it’s impossible not to contemplate the mystical dimensions of Ghalib’s work through these and countless other verses. Let’s take a look at another ghazal of Ghalib which represents the epitome of the interplay between the mundane and the metaphysical.

“May se garz nashaat hai kis roo-siyaah ko
Ik-goona be-khudi mujhe din raat chahiye”

“Nashv-o-numa hai asl se ghalib furoo ko
Khaamoshi hi se nikle hai jo baat chahiye”

“Ha rang-e-laala-o-gul-o-nasreen juda juda
Har rang mein bahaar ka isbaat chahiye”

“Sar paa-e-khum pe chahiye hangaam-e-be-khudi
Roo-soo-e-qibla waqt-e-munaajat chahiye”

“Ya’ni b-hasb-e-gardish-e-paimaan-e-sifaat
Aarif hamesha mast-e-may-e-zaat chahiye”

Ghalib’s poetic corpse is strewn with verses that are hermeneutically polyvalent and the mystical import pulsates across these verses. In a series of self-closed couplets, Ghalib ventures into the depths of Islamic Tassawuf – or more appropriately Indo-Persian mysticism and metaphysics and seems to disentangle the mysteries and depths that have puzzled the practitioners and the theoreticians of mysticism for ages. It is not implied that Ghalib solves any of the perennial mysteries of existence, but the poetic and philosophical mastery with which he rephrases them, and at times adds provocative suggestions, does indeed open for any serious reader the hitherto closed and unknown vistas of meaning, interpretation and re-examination of existing phenomenon.

A theme of such perennial importance has been the relationship between the form and meaning, the appearance and the reality, the ephemeral and the eternal, the phenomenon and the noumena, the one and many. For centuries, mystics, sages, seers, philosophers and men of wisdom have attempted to solve this duality and to pierce the veil of manifestations to reach the heart of reality. The philosophical schools of realism and idealism, rationalism and empiricism, solipsism and objectivism have all tried to address the question within their available epistemological dispensations. Immanuel Kant’s contribution sealed this debate in Western Philosophy by claiming that the human mind may, by its categories of organisation like time and causality get to know the Phenomenon – the appearance, multiplicity, ephemeral; but the reality, the noumena, the one shall ever escape one’s intellectual faculties and gymnasium of ratiocination.

In Eastern tradition, even in Ghalib’s era, an esotericism of sorts was seen as a means of reaching the meaning behind the things. A supra-intellectual intuitive kind of knowledge was supposed to bring with it an illumination that guided one from the illusory world of senses and multiplicity to the realm of unity and a kind of Platonic world of forms. Look at these illustrative couplets from Ghalib, which not only restate the existence but add new dimensions of mystery and meaning to this age-old phenomenon:

“asl-e-shuhūd-o-shāhid-o-mash.hūd ek hai
hairāñ huuñ phir mushāhida hai kis hisāb meñ
hai mushtamil numūd-e-suvar par vajūd-e-bahar
yaañ kyā dharā hai qatra o mauj-o-habāb meñ
sharm ik adā-e-nāz hai apne hī se sahī
haiñ kitne be-hijāb ki haiñ yuuñ hijāb meñ
ārā.ish-e-jamāl se fāriġh nahīñ hunūz
pesh-e-nazar hai aa.ina daa.im naqāb meñ
hai ġhaib-e-ġhaib jis ko samajhte haiñ ham shuhūd
haiñ ḳhvāb meñ hunūz jo jaage haiñ ḳhvāb meñ”

Islamic spirituality

No amount of commentary and exegesis can exhaust these couplets of their meaning. The relationship between the appearance and the reality can’t be better described. Wahdatul Wajood or the Unity of Being, which Ghalib was an ardent follower and exponent of shimmers through these couplets and a whole repository of “Indo-Persian Islamic Mystico-Philosophical tradition” – the tradition of Irfan in the line of Rumi, Ibn Arabi, Mulla Sadra, Mir Damad – is kneaded in the composition of these meaning and wisdom laden couplets. The philosophy of Wahdatul Wajood (Unity of Being) of Ibn Arabi and that of Wahdatul Shahood (Unity of experience) of Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi is so interweaved across these couplets that one travels through cosmos of meaning and gnostic wisdom while transitioning from one couplet to the next.

If there is an issue of importance to human thought as tantalising as that of the ultimate reality – it is his own essence, his own being – in its corporeal and spiritual dimensions. Man has always contemplated his own nature and place in the scheme of creation and hierarchy of being. When the axis of Greek Philosophy shifted from Eleatics to Ionians and Socrates “brought down philosophy from skies to the Earth”, the focus of philosophy changed from metaphysics to morality and to paraphrase Protagoras, man became the measure of everything. Richard Tarnas aptly notes “This Socratic dictum ‘Know Thyself’ was seen not as the creed of an introspective subjectivist, but a directive to universal understanding”. The later schools of philosophy like Stoicism, Epicureanism, Neo-Platonism and many other breeds of Hellenistic philosophy, all rested on the primacy of man and commitment to man’s socio-spiritual ideals.

When Islamic Mysticism or Tassawuf came to be systematised and theorised, the elements of Greek Philosophy and Indian Wisdom traditions (Particularly its strain of Advaita Vedanta and the Buddhist concept of self) also contributed their share to this synthesis. It is no wonder that under the influence of these diverse streams of thought the entire science of soul and spirit – the schools of spirituality flourished in the Muslim lands. Muslim creative thought dedicated the best of its minds to esoteric tradition and works like “Fusoos” by Ibn Arabi, or Al Insanul Kamil by Jilli, exploring spiritual geography came to be written – not to mention the works of Qushairi, Abu Siraj, Hujweri, Al-Ghazali and others treating the various aspects of Islamic spirituality in detail.

The entire “Balkans to Bengal Belt” of Muslim civilisation breathed in a spiritual space where spirituality came to be mediated not only by texts and living individuals, but all the sciences and arts – singing, painting, poetry etc came to revolve around the spiritual axis. This was the context in which Ghalib had the occasion to add his insights on the human subject to the already pre-existing corpus of poetic and prosaic treasures dealing with the spiritual aspect of human existence.

Let it be mentioned in passing that Ghalib had the deepest influences from the Persian poet of Mughal India – Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil and Bedil’s poetry in all its breadth is a homage to the spiritual exaltedness and metaphysical essence of man. No wonder Ghalib reconceptualised the concept of man in his short bursting couplets that simultaneously captured man in his spiritual and existential dimensions. It is a matter of contestation among scholars if Ghalib had pledged his allegiance to any spiritual master. It is also not known if he was a practising Sufi (there are claims that he was a Malamati Sufi and had Bai’yyah) or had just picked up things from books or his acquaintances, but the manner in which he has described the states of man – social, spiritual and existential do not fail to surprise any serious reader. Even those who practise spirituality and are aware of its philosophical connotations are also baffled at the prescience and peculiarity of Ghalib’s discourse.

In one of his Persian Ghazals, Ghalib awakens man to his essence – the essence which is atemporal and transcends the limits of the physical universe. As if referring to man’s archetype in the Platonic sense, Ghalib writes,

“Chu aksi pull ba sael ba zouq e bala ba-raqs
Jaa ra nigah daaram o hum az khud juda ba-raqs”

The transcendental self

Ghalib’s assertion is that human existence is not self-originating but borrowed from a transcendental source of being, one that lies beyond thought and the grasp of time. This belief has been a cornerstone of mysticism across the ages, echoing from Mansoor’s declaration of “Annal Haq” to Hafiz’s expression of “Mie Goyam.” The individual self dissolves, and what remains is the transcendental reality speaking through the human form, effectively displacing and nullifying all traces of the subjective ego in the all-encompassing and enveloping presence of “Huwa” and “Al-Haq”. Ghalib writes:

“Qatra apna bhi haqeeqat mai hai darya lekin
Humko manzoor tunuk zarfi e mansoor nahi”

The grounding of human subjectivity in the universal objective is a recurring theme across mystical traditions, transcending both space and time. From St Teresa of Ávila to Sankara, Mansoor, Abdul Latif Bhitai, Bullay Shah, and Soch Kral, this central idea has been expressed in countless ways, each offering a unique variation on this theme of objective displacement of subjectivity.

The thematic treatment of mysticism is both problematic and inadequate as it tends to transform mysticism into a category – and the mystic resistance to categorisation was earlier discussed in some detail. With that caveat, we may proceed to the next theme of recurrence in mysticism and the theme to whose explication, Ghalib made subtle yet profound contributions. That is the problem of evil – the problem defined as the cornerstone of atheism and the hard problem in religion. Infants dying of cancer, innocents suffering for no reason, the ubiquitous presence of natural and moral evil not only creates serious problems for any theological system but casts doubts on the very existence of a benevolent, all-powerful and merciful God. The attitudes of ameliorism, Manichiism, or any such philosophy prove nothing more than an ortho-walker – and they can’t carry any sustained and serious discourse on God any further.

Mystics have time and again maintained that the problem of evil exists only in the plane of the physical universe or “in the realm of existents”. The evil doesn’t possess a being of its own – it’s a privation, a negativity, an absence and nothing of true existence in itself. That said, let’s also recall the famous argument of Leibniz who said this is the “best of all possible universes” and a local evil tends to fulfil a positive function in the global context – the context we have no knowledge about. But Ghalib, by virtue of his poetic genius and piercing insight into the mysteries of life and the universe added new meaning to the problem of evil and turned the problem into a solution. Ghalib writes:

“latāfat be-kasāfat jalva paidā kar nahīñ saktī
chaman zañgār hai ā.īna-e-bād-e-bahārī kā”

Ghalib turns evil into an inevitable element in the making of reality itself. He doesn’t postulate any theory of theodicy, but turns the existence of evil into an ontological necessity, in the absence of which the drama of creation will annihilate itself. Thus, evil is not just an ephemeral phenomenon – but emerges as a cosmic background – a dark background though, against which arises the possibility of existence itself. Ghalib says that for the principle (Dhat, Being, Essence) to manifest itself, a canvas of sorts (Sifat, Tajjaliyat) is needed. When the transcendent principle encounters the physical universe, it causes a scaffolding, all movement takes place within the limits of this scaffolding, and the scaffolding is itself what manifests to the common sight as evil. Let’s reiterate our initial remark that Ghalib doesn’t solve the problem of evil and for that matter doesn’t intend to solve the metaphysical/mystical problems he chooses to touch upon, but the variance of perspective and the novel approach to the existing problem surely strikes any serious reader.

It is recorded in the sayings of Ghalib that often recited the phrases “There is no deity, but Allah; There is no desire, but Allah; There is no existent, but Allah” and this last bit surely lends a mystical dimension to his life and poetry. While it is true that Ghalib always held the Goblet in his hand, it is true of him that like Hafiz of Sheeraz he “beheld the eternal trance” in the fleeting sips of worldly wine.

“Ma Dar Pyala Aks E Rukhay Yaar Deeda Aem
Aye bekhabar zi lazzati shurbay madaami ma”

I behold the face of the eternal beloved on the surface of my cup
Oh you unaware of the ecstasy of my ever-inebriating glass

Amir Suhail Wani is a comparative studies scholar working on the intersection of literature, religion and philosophy.