I have, from time to time, been attempting to research John G. Bennett’s use of Islam. In particular, his adoption of a scheme of four worlds. I am yet to find anything which matches it precisely; although I suspect that this is because he took it from Hasan L. Shushud, and that he introduced some innovations. I say this because one feature, namely, what Bennett says about “dreams” strikes me as very close to something Shushud said in an unpublished lecture, and quite different from what Gurdjieff said. I shall return to this later, but for now I will report some interesting material in the late Annemarie Schimmel’s magisterial Mystical Dimensions of Islam (University of North Carolina Press, 1975).

She has been saying that miracles were considered by the masters to be “snares on the way toward God.” (212) Miracles are easier to perform, they said, than spiritual training, and the painstaking struggle with “the subtlest ruses of the lower self.” (212) There is even a purported Hadith, or saying of Muhammad, that “miracles are the menstruation of men,” i.e. they cause impurity, and as a man does not go to his wife when she is menstruating, so too with God and the man concerned. (212) This is quite interesting given how Bennett was impressed by the working of wonders by Subuh. Then, states Schimmel:

There is no doubt that many of the miracles wrought by Sufi saints were true and real. These mystics had the power to bring down into the world of events phenomena that were still in the ‘ālam al-mithāl and could, by virtue of their spiritual purity, help their disciples on the difficult path. But the danger of using certain extraordinary gifts for impure, or at least less worthy spiritual purposes was always present. (213)

I have written elsewhere that the presence of preternatural phenomena is a sign that we should be very careful: they can indeed coexist with a lack of consciousness and conscience, and those who can produce them (whether regularly or not) are sorely tempted to imagine that they are omniscient if not omnipotent: https://www.josephazize.com/2023/02/14/i-teach-how-to-cook-review-pt-i-naivety-and-clairvoyance/

But what Schimmel writes later is even more remarkable:

(The) creation can be seen in various cosmic orders, which are veiled from each other. The divine essence itself is called hāhût (derived from h, the letter of the essence), and Ibn Arabi’ is said to have experienced the vision of the highest divine essence in the shape of the word hû, “He” … The divine nature revealing itself is called lāhût; the spiritual existence, beyond form, is called jabarūt, where the divine decrees and spiritual powers are located. This plane is followed by the malakūt, the angelic world, whereas the place of humanity and creation is nāsūt. Ibn Arabi and his followers insert between jabarūt and malakūt a sphere called ālam al-mithāl, where the existentialization takes place; this is the sphere into which the high ambition (himma) and prayers of the saints reach in order to set spiritual possibilities free and bring the possibilities into actual being. (270)

Schimmel cites in support an article by Fazlur Rahman, “Dream, Imagination, and “Alam al-Mithal,” in the 1964 volume of Islamic Studies. Intrigued by a possible connection to the Four Ideals, and fired with questions (e.g. how exactly does one “set spiritual possibilities Free?) I read that piece. It was fascinating. Rahman wrote of the  ‘ālam al-mithāl:

Perhaps a better approach to understand the Realm of Figures would be to construe it as a sort of “unconscious of the Universe” where concrete symbols of love, hate, hope and fear are created. But in that case it would be the Unconscious of the World Soul. But this theory, with all its extravagance, would still bring the miraculous into the physical realm. Indeed, inasmuch as the Unconscious of the Universal Soul would, from time to time, make inroads into the quotation life, a systematic path will be opened for the miraculous. …The pure individual souls can also create new furniture in the alam al-Mithal and even project these figures into the realm of physical reality. This is supposed to guarantee the miracles worked by prophets and saints. This doctrine is affirmed both by al Suhrawardi and Ibn al-1 Arabi (1165-1240), the famous Sufi theosoph whose fecundity of imagination created an unprecedentedly rich content for the World of Figures. (171)

That “realm” is as large or small as the saint’s imagination, and it seems that whatever can be imagined becomes an image in that world and a reality in our own. (171-173) This is nothing like Gurdjieff’s Ray of Creation, where the worlds are governed by a number of laws. Further, the amal al-mithal seems to me to be a doctrine derived purely from intelelct. Hence he writes of how later Sufis played around with it:

The Alam al-Mithal increases in importance during the later centuries of the Muslim Middle Ages, and forms an integral part of Sufi spiritual culture. Without formally denying the reality of the physical world, the Muslim spiritualists, in a milieu of political uncertainty, socio-economic imbalance and general external deterioration, sought refuge in a Realm that was more satisfying and certainly more liquid and amenable to imaginative powers. (178)

There was nothing here remotely like the Four Ideals: that seems to have been a mirage caused by a purely surface likeness (not that Schimmel even refers to the Ideals). Even more significantly, the mystery of Bennett’s classification of worlds deepens. Sure enough, he may have had a rather unique source in Shushud, but if Ibn Arabi had spoken of the alam al-mithal, what did Bennett make of it? I mean, that seems to be the mainstream concept within the esoteric world of Sufism. Yes, the worlds of spirits and bodies are there in both Bennett and Ibn Arabi and many Sufis. But the intermediate world seems to me to be both excluded by Bennett’s analysis and yet included: perhaps it is truer to say that Bennett and his source (if he did indeed have one), identified the two worlds – of spirits and images.