Transcendence Through Death of Ego in Sufism and Eliot (Masroor Ahmad, 4133)

 T. S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) proposed a theory of poetic composition based on the Sufi concepts of "fana" (annihilation) and "baqa" (the presence of God). . Eliot's insistence on the "annihilation of the self" as a prerequisite for great poetry is similar to the Sufi path of self-abnegation, providing a literary framework that reveals the mysterious process of transcendence. personal. The essence of Eliot's argument is that "the progress of the artist is the surrender of himself, the self-destruction of man." This idea finds its soulmate in the Sufi concept of "fana", in which the individual lies systematically in the presence of God. Just as the Sufi seeker must "die before death" in order to be one with his beloved, so Eliot's great poet must work through self-destruction to express the voice of tradition. Eliot's chemical metaphor of the poet's mind as a catalyst further explains this process: "The poet's mind is a vessel for catching and holding many emotions, the phrases, images, images persist until all the particles are able to combine to form a new compound that coexists and gives rise to the Sufi view that the mind is a mirror that needs to be activated by spiritual work to reflect divine reality. Poets, like Sufis, become vessels for personal experiences. This text emphasizes tradition as a life force and force, similar to the Sufi concept of "silsila" or spiritual lineage. Eliot believed that "no poet, no artist of art, can be true." general method. Eliot's "historicism" - the idea that "all European literature since Homer and including all the literature of his own country existed at the same time and formed a synchronic series" - e. reflects the Sufi experience of transcending time. Eliot's comment that "the best artist is the separation of human suffering from the creative mind" finds resonance in the Sufi form of "baqa," or in life of God after self-destruction. In this way the mystic becomes the perfect instrument of divine will, just as the great poet Eliot became the pure voice of tradition. The difference between the suffering mind and the creative mind is like the Sufi distinction between the lower self ("nafs") and the higher self ("ruh").