39 pages • 1 hour read
Ibn TufaylHayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1177A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 90-156Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 90-122 Summary
In the fifth 7-year period of Hayy’s life, when he is 35 years old, he has gained an awareness of the Creator of the world, whom he often refers to as the Necessarily Existent. The sensory, material world becomes less important to him and he spends all his time contemplating the all-powerful Being who created the world.
Hayy first recognizes that while his physical body will be subject to the same decay as everything else, immaterial things must be immortal. Therefore, he wonders what will happen to the immortal soul once his body dies. He reasons that since he now has an awareness of the infinitely good Creator, he will either spend all his time seeking knowledge of Him or else he will turn away from Him and focus on material things. He decides that turning away from an infinitely good and splendid being that is the source of all beauty and knowledge in the universe would be a form of eternal torture, and therefore those who turn away from the Creator will face an eternity of suffering after the body dies.
Hayy begins to wonder what distinguishes him from other animals, who have no knowledge or awareness of the divine. He contemplates the stars and planets, realizing that their regular and constant physical state must mean that they are more perfect and less prone to degeneration. Therefore he thinks that he should seek to emulate the heavenly bodies, since he is more like them than other animals. Unfortunately, he struggles with the fact that his bodily needs like food and sleep distract him from contemplating God.
Hayy does three things to imitate the planets. First, he seeks to live in accordance with the Creator’s plan. He eats only fruit and a few vegetables that would not harm the plant much to lose and he eats only enough to have energy to stay alive. He seeks to help all living beings, helping plants to get enough sunlight and rescuing animals from predators.
Second, Hayy makes his body as pure as possible. He washes himself thoroughly and keeps his clothing clean and pleasant-smelling.
Third, Hayy practices spinning or walking in a circle, mimicking the orbits of the heavenly bodies. This induces a state of dizziness that allows him to transcend the limits of consciousness.
Finally, Hayy practices meditation and isolation, retreating as much as possible from the sensory world and focusing only on gaining knowledge of God. He is annoyed that his sense of identity gets in the way, but gradually he becomes able to leave behind his own subjectivity and truly connect with the Creator. In this ecstatic state, Hayy is able to gain true knowledge of God. However, the author points out that this experience cannot be described by words, which are insufficient to express the experience.
Chapters 123-156 Summary
Ibn Tufayl attempts to describe Hayy’s ecstatic experience wherein he comes to truly know God. After Hayy experiences the death of his sense of selfhood, he feels unity with the divine truth. This could deceptively convince him that he is God, but the text clearly explains that this is not the case. Likening Hayy’s connection to God as a light in the highest sphere of the heavens reflecting down through many layers of mirrors, the text conveys how Hayy’s identity is both plural and singular in that moment. Hayy sees many other identical souls turned toward the light, reflecting it in a state of joy and splendor. However, he is also aware of many souls that are darkened by material preoccupations and turn away from the light, experiencing endless suffering and torment as a result.
When the ecstatic experience ends, Hayy returns to himself. However, he is now entirely uninterested in the material world. He continues to live on the island but wishes that his life would end soon so that he can return to union with the divine. During this period, it becomes increasingly easy for him to enter the ecstatic state, only leaving it to attend to his basic needs.
However, Hayy’s isolation on the island comes to an end when he is 50 years old and another man called Absāl arrives. Absāl is from a nearby island that practices a religion worshipping the same God, but using many more symbols and sensory representations of the divine. Absāl has a brother named Salāmān who is also spiritual, but believes that living in a community and observing rituals is more important than contemplating abstract truths. Absāl wishes to retreat to live a contemplative life in isolation, so he sells his belongings and takes a ship to the island where Hayy lives.
The two encounter one another and Absāl is afraid of Hayy. Hayy does not know how to speak but eventually shows Absāl that he means no harm to him. After Absāl teaches him language, Hayy reveals what he knows of the divine to Absāl and is interested in learning of the ways that other humans do not fully understand the divine.
Hayy goes to the other island with Absāl and begins to teach the spiritual people about what he has learned of God. However, they condemn his teachings and view him as a heretic. Hayy is surprised, realizing that other men are not as naturally brilliant, resolute, and upstanding. Many of them are so corrupted by material possessions that they cannot ever rise to his level of understanding. After realizing this, Hayy goes to Salāmān and says that he was wrong and that the people of the island should return to their own ways. The best way for them to achieve salvation, he decides, is through sensory representations and rituals, rather than contemplating higher truths. Very few men have enough wisdom to achieve his level of understanding.
Hayy and Absāl return to their island alone and live out the rest of their mortal lives in contemplation of God. Ibn Tufayl concludes the text by restating his purpose to unveil the secrets of achieving this ecstatic union with God, although he believes that he has concealed enough that unwise readers will still be unable to truly understand.
Chapters 90-156 Analysis
The final stage of Hayy Ibn Yaqzān’s education relies on meditation, mystical practices, and intuition to gain direct knowledge of God, speaking to Observation Versus Intuitive Reasoning. This section more extensively focuses on Sufism rather than on the concept of the divine in general. Hayy’s discovery of Sufi meditative practices such as isolation, purification, and whirling lend credence to the text’s argument that these methods can help a person connect directly to God.
While meditation and spinning are associated with mysticism, Ibn Tufayl hints that these practices developed from rational deduction in the same way that Hayy arrived at his other spiritual knowledge. In particular, spinning is framed as a way to emulate the orbits of the planets, a reasonable goal in Hayy’s mind: “Seeing that what made him different from all other animals made him like the heavenly bodies, Hayy judged that this implied an obligation on his part to take them as his pattern, imitate their action and do all he could to be like them” (142). Since the superiority of the heavenly spheres means that they do not degrade or putrefy as other bodies do, Hayy seeks to imitate their motions. Spinning, alongside periods of intense meditation and concentration, allows Hayy to have an ecstatic experience.
When Hayy finally encounters other humans, the text concludes its premise of total isolation by showing how removal from human society has not made Hayy spiritually deficient, but spiritually superior. When Hayy initially encounters Absāl, a man from a neighboring island who has been educated in the Islamic faith, they are so different from one another that they cannot even communicate. When Hayy runs after Absāl in the woods,
Absāl was terrified and began to beg for mercy. Hayy could not understand a word he said. But he could make out the signs of fright and did his best to put the other at ease with a variety of animal cries he knew. Hayy also patted his head, rubbed his sides, and spoke soothingly to him, trying to show how delighted he was with him (159).
The fact that Hayy cannot understand any human language conveys how totally removed from human society he has been. However, once he learns to speak to Absāl, they discover that Hayy’s religious knowledge is entirely aligned with Absāl’s beliefs.
Furthermore, when Hayy attempts to teach his spiritual knowledge to other humans, he finds that he is their superior, rather than inferior, and that they cannot achieve the spiritual state that he has, reflecting the theme of The Inexpressible Nature of Ecstasy. Despite being raised without formal education, Hayy possesses a brighter mind and a stronger will that allows him to better understand the truth. Ibn Tufayl recounts how
Hayy Ibn Yaqzān began to teach this group and explain some of his profound wisdom to them. But the moment that he rose the slightest bit above the literal or began to portray things against which they were prejudiced, they recoiled in horror from his ideas and closed their minds (163).
The minds of men brought up in Islamic society are unable to escape from the constraints of literal interpretation, while Hayy’s reasoning process has allowed him to gain a far greater understanding of God.
This fact reflects the greater purpose of the whole text: Ibn Tufayl’s belief that spiritual ecstasy can only be accessed by a select few who are particularly wise and who have learned how to reason. If the reader of Hayy’s story can understand this truth without being lost in literal interpretation, they may be able to understand how to achieve ecstatic enlightenment as well.
