For you do not love me,
so long as you are not annihilated in me.
And you are not annihilated,
so long as my form has not appeared in you.
—ibn al-Farid
The Mystic (al-wasil)
She said: Surely kings, when they enter a city, disorder it. —Qur'an 27:34
They said your brother has gone insane, he is in the mosque, and he has proclaimed himself a prophet. We had him hospitalized, and when asked, we ventured forth a diagnosis of schizophrenia. We came to check on him the next day.
Me: I'm here to check on my brother.
Doctor: Your brother took a turn for the worse in the night. We had a team of doctors working through the night to keep him alive.
Me: My brother is dying? Of what?
Doctor: Fear.
Me: Fear of what?
Doctor: He won't tell us.
Me: Does he have schizophrenia?
Doctor: No.
Me: Did he have a nervous breakdown?
Doctor: Like it, but no.
Me: Then what is wrong with him?
Doctor: We don't know.
They had him heavily sedated. Unable to find anything wrong with him, they released him after a week.
While it is true that calling yourself a prophet can be a sign of insanity, it can also be a sign of spiritual intoxication (sukr ilahiyya). The fact that he was in the hospital for only a week speaks to the latter rather than the former. That and the following:
On the way to the hospital, he said he saw light everywhere, despite the fact that it was a dark winter's night. Now doctors say that seeing light everywhere is evidence of a tumor pressing on the optic nerve, followed shortly by blindness. Given that our brother has not gone blind, and it is not in the nature of blind people to drive buses for a living, we need an alternative explanation.
The Hindus say the light of Brahman is the light of ten thousand suns. They say also, that if a thousand suns were to rise simultaneously, such is the light of your Supreme Lord. The Buddhists speak of the light of Buddha. The Christians speak of the light of Christ. And Muslims speak of the light of the prophet Muhammad. And the Sufis speak of the sun which rises in the West.
Also this:
His wife had visited him earlier in the day and said not to be shocked when I saw his feet. Apparently, he had been running around barefoot in a park and cut his feet up on tree branches. When I saw his feet covered with deep gashes, I questioned him as to how he could do this to himself. He answered that he was unaware he had injured himself because he did not feel anything.
Now the inability to feel pain is a recognized medical condition in some from birth. But in the case of my brother, it was transitory. We need to look elsewhere. From the Sufis, we have the following:
Verily, the Sufi, in the state of fana', were his face to be struck with a sword, he would
not feel it. —Sari al-Saqati
Because he has given the signs, we say of him that he is the mystic, the enlightened one. And as to above events we say: He was in a state of ecstasy (kana fi halat wajd), and it overwhelmed him (fa ghalabat 'alaihi). A spiritual absence (ghaiba) of the spiritual absences of the Sufis (min ghaibaat al-sufiyya).
There are some who will continue to say he had gone insane. They would have you believe that a man can go from sane to insane and back to sane, all in the space of a week.
And I am the Queen of Sheba.
Notes:
فلم تهوني ما لم تكن في فانيا و لم تفت ما لم تجتلي فيك صورتي —ابن الفارض
fana' - the death of the ego in the state of enlightenment.
baqa' - the post-enlightenment stage, literally, what remains after death.
إن الصوفي في حال الفناء لو ضرب وجهه بالسيف لمّا أحسنَ به —ساري السقطي
Enlightenment is a violent affair. In Evylyn Underhill's classic book Mysticism, the mystics speak of "the vehemence of this showing".
"This showing," says Gerlac Petersen of that experience, "is so vehement and so strong that the whole of the interior man, not only of his heart but of his body, is marvellously moved and shaken, and faints within itself, unable to endure it. And by this means, his interior aspect is made clear without any cloud, and conformable in its own measure to Him whom he seeks."