Hamzah Fanṣūrī’s poem, Asrāru’l-‘arifīn [The Secrets of the Gnostics].
Excerpt with theme: Ocean Oneness of Being. PCG 3b/4
A. Asrāru’l-‘arifīn
1) Tuhan kita itu seperti Baḥr al-‘Amīq
Ombaknya penuh pada sekalian ṭarīq
Laut dan ombak keduanya rafīq
’Ākhir kedalamanya jua omnaknya gharīq.
2) Lautnya ‘Ālim halunnya Ma‘lūm
Keadaannya Qāsim ombaknya Maqsūm
Ṭūfānnya Ḥākim shu’ ūnnya Maḥkūm
Pada sekalian ‘ālamīn rusūm.
3) Jikalau sini kamu tahu akan wujūd
Itulah tempat kamu shuhūd
Buangkan rupamu daripada sekalian quyūd
Supaya dapat kedalam Diri qu‘ūd.
4) [Pada wujūd Allāh] itulah yogya kau qā’im
Buangkan rupa dan namamu dā’im
Nafikan rasamu daripads makhdūm dan khādim
Supaya sampai kepada ‘Amal yang Khātim.
5) Jika engkau belum tetap seperti batu
Hukum dua [lagi] khādim dan ratu
Setelah lupa engkau daripada emas dan matu
Mangkanya dapar menjadi satu.
6) Jika belum fanā’ daripada ribu dan ratus
Tiada’ kan dapat adamu kau hapus
Nafikan rasamu itu daripads kasar dan halus
Supaya dapat barang katamu harus.
7) Ḥamzah Fansūrī sungguh pun ḍa‘īf
Ḥaqīqatnya hampir pada Dhāt al-Sharīf
Sungguh pun ḥabab rupanya kathīf
Wāṣilnya dā’im dengan Baḥr al-Laṭīf. [MHF 236-237]
B. Naquib al-Attas’ Translation of the stanzas [MHF 357], followed by Commentary and Critique from Classical Theism Perspective1The defining attributes of God according to “Classical theism” include Divine Simplicity (God essence has no divisions, or composition; God’s essence is identical to his existence), Aseity (God is completely self-existent, self-sufficient, and depends on nothing else for his existence), Immutability (unchangeable), Impassibility (God cannot be acted upon by an external force) and Eternal timelessness (God exists outside time) by Ng Kam Weng
1) Our Lord is like a Fathomless Ocean
Whose waves are rolling in every direction
Ocean and waves are both intimate,
At last to its depths the waves will sink.
Commentary 2It should come as no surprise that some of my comments and critiques employ technical terms and idioms drawn from Naquib al-Attas. I rely heavily on his study, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fanṣūrī, as a primary source for understanding the central ideas of wahdat al-wujūd
The central metaphor compares God to a boundless, fathomless Ocean and the phenomenal world to its waves. The ocean and its waves are not regarded as separate realities but as different aspects of a single underlying reality. The diverse forms and movements of the world are therefore understood as existential modes or self-disclosures (tajalliyāt) of Divine Being. The imagery suggests an ontological continuum between God and the world rather than an absolute distinction between Creator and creation.
Critique
Classical theism rejects the notion that the world is an extension, manifestation, or mode of the divine essence. God freely created the universe ex nihilo by his sovereign will. Consequently, the world possesses a real, though dependent, existence distinct from God. While creation reflects God’s wisdom and glory, it is not a modification, emanation, or expression of the divine substance itself.
2) The Ocean is Knower its currents the Known,
Its Condition is Qāsim its waves are Maqsūm.
Its tempest is ‘governing’ its dispositions are ‘governed’.
Upon the entire Universe it is these that are featured.
Commentary
Hamzah develops the Ocean metaphor by identifying the Ocean with the Divine Essence and its movements with the existential modes through which the universe appears. The Ocean is the Knower, while its currents represent the Known. The storm symbolizes the Divine Creative Command (“Be!”), and the waves symbolize the manifold forms of the universe. The entire cosmos is therefore understood as the unfolding of divine predispositions or existential modes within Divine Being itself.
Critique
Classical theism maintains a clear distinction between God’s eternal attributes and the created effects that result from his creative activity. To identify the world as a manifestation of God’s own existential modes risks collapsing the distinction between Creator and creature. God’s knowledge, will, and power belong eternally to his being, whereas the universe is a contingent reality brought into existence by those divine attributes rather than being a mode of them.
3) If you really know [the meaning of] existence,
It is where you effect true vision,
Cast off your form from all restrictions,
In order that you may abide in your Self.
Commentary
This stanza shifts from cosmology to Sufi epistemology and spiritual practice. True knowledge of existence requires transcending attachment to finite and individual forms. The seeker must cast aside external relationships and conceptual limitations in order to realize the deeper reality underlying all appearances. For Hamzah, genuine spiritual vision culminates in the recognition that one’s deepest reality is grounded in, and ultimately inseparable from, Divine Being.
Critique
Classical theism affirms that spiritual transformation involves conformity to God through grace, not the discovery of an ontological identity with God. Salvation perfects rather than abolishes creaturely existence. Union with God is a communion of love, knowledge, and fellowship while preserving the distinction between Creator and creature. The believer becomes more fully human through communion with God, not less.
4) Upon God’s Existence you must subsist,
Cast off your form and your name constantly,
Annihilate your consciousness from Lordship and slave-hood,
In order that you may achieve the Act that is Final.
Commentary
This stanza deepens the call to spiritual annihilation (fanā’), the abandonment of all attachment to personal identity, social status, and individual selfhood. To “cast off your form and your name” is to transcend the limitations imposed by finite existence and the illusion of separate and distinct individuality. The seeker must move beyond consciousness of both Lord (Rabb) and servant (ʿabd), since this distinction belongs to the realm of duality. The “Final Act” refers to the culmination of mystical realization, where all distinctions disappear and only the One Reality remains.
Critique
Classical theism rejects the premise that the creature can or should cease to be a creature. The Creator-creature distinction is not a provisional stage to be overcome but an ontological reality established by God’s free act of creation. The “duality” of Lord and servant is not a fallen condition to be transcended but the proper order of reality: God is God, and the creature is creature. The highest human vocation is not the dissolution of this distinction but its perfect fulfillment in love, obedience, and communion. To seek annihilation of creaturehood is to seek the impossible and the unfitting—to desire to be other than what God has made us to be.
5) If you are not yet firm as a stone
Duality is still your lot: slave and Lord,
When you are no longer conscious of gold and coin,
Then indeed you can become one.
Commentary
Hamzah explains why duality between Lord and servant must be transcended. The gold-and-coin analogy illustrates a central theme of waḥdat al-wujūd. Although gold and coin appear different, they are in reality one substance. Likewise, the distinction between God and the individual self belongs only to the level of appearances. Genuine spiritual realization occurs when one perceives beyond external forms and recognizes the underlying unity of all existence.
Critique
The analogy of gold and coin suggests that creatures are manifestations or modes of a single Divine Reality. Classical theism rejects this conclusion because it compromises the fundamental Creator-creature distinction. God is not the underlying substance of which creatures are modifications; rather, He is the transcendent Creator who freely brings creatures into existence ex nihilo. The distinction between Lord and servant is therefore not an illusion to be overcome but an ontological reality that remains eternally true.
6) If you are yet not extinct from hundreds and thousands,
You will never be able to annihilate your existence,
Make yourself extinct from the gross and the subtle,
In order that whatever you say becomes permissible.
Commentary
To attain fanā’, the seeker must die to the multiplicity of created existence (“hundreds and thousands”), whether gross and material (khasīf) or subtle and spiritual (laṭīf). Spiritual realization requires abandoning every attachment to finite forms until only the One Reality remains. At this stage, the seeker perceives all existence as grounded in the Divine.
Critique
No degree of spiritual discipline can eliminate a person’s creaturely status. Human beings remain finite creatures even in the highest state of sanctification. Classical theism therefore rejects any mystical ideal that seeks the dissolution of personal existence into Divine Being. Spiritual growth consists not in ontological annihilation but in deeper fellowship and conformity to God.
7) Hamzah Fanṣūrī’, though he is insignificant,
His Reality is close to the Noble Essence,
Though but a bubble whose form is gross
His union is constant in the Sea of the Subtle.
Commentary
Hamzah applies his metaphysical vision to himself. As a temporal human being, he is merely a fleeting bubble on the surface of the ocean. Yet in terms of his deepest reality (ḥaqīqah), he participates in the Sea of the Subtle—that is, Divine Being itself. Just as a bubble arises from the ocean and eventually returns to it, so individual existence is ultimately understood as a temporary manifestation of the One Reality.
Critique
The bubble metaphor suggests that individual creatures are transient formations of a single divine substance. This reflects the broader ontology of waḥdat al-wujūd, in which multiplicity is reduced to manifestations of one underlying Being. Classical theism rejects this conception. Human beings are not temporary modifications of the divine essence but distinct creatures brought into existence ex nihilo. Accordingly, union with God is relational and participatory—a communion of grace, love, and fellowship—rather than an ontological return of divine substance to itself.
C. Philosophical-Theological Assessment
Hamzah Fanṣūrī’s ocean-and-wave analogy is not merely a poetic expression of God’s omnipresence or sustaining power. The analogy is intended to convey a metaphysical vision in which the universe consists of the existential modes, manifestations, or self-disclosures of a single Divine Reality. The waves possess no reality independent of the ocean; likewise, creatures possess no independent reality apart from Divine Being.
The decisive difference between waḥdat al-wujūd and classical theism lies in how each understands the relation between God and the world. For Hamzah, only God possesses real, absolute existence. The universe, for all its multiplicity, has no independent reality; it reflects God’s Attributes (Ṣifāt) rather than his Essence (Dhāt).3Dhāt (Essence) refers to the absolute, singular, unconditioned, and unknowable core reality of God, which transcends all human conceptualization. Ṣifāt (Attributes) refers to the divine qualities eternally established in God’s Essence that are manifested in his relationship with the universe. In this reading, Hamzah escapes the historical charge of pantheism but comes closer to monism.4Scholars who have defended Hamzah against the charge of teaching pantheism include Naquib al-Attas (who deliberately avoids applying Western philosophical terms like monism, pantheism and panentheism to Hamzah’s thought as he seeks to conceptualize Hamzah’s worldview strictly within the framework of Islamic metaphysics though ironically, many classical Islamic metaphysics concepts were influenced—if not borrowed—from an amalgamation of Aristotle’s logic and Plotinus’s Neoplatonic emanation theory), A.H. Johns, G.W.J. Drewes and John Bousfield. Western philosophical monism maintains that there is only one fundamental reality or substance. Monism’s influential proponents include Parmenides, who asserted that Being is a single, unchanging, indivisible, and eternal reality, and that plurality, change, and becoming are ultimately illusory. Another key figure is Baruch Spinoza, who argued that there is only one infinite substance—which he called “God” or “Nature”—viewing the universe as a system of modes or modifications of that single substance. Not to be overlooked are the various schools of Eastern monism, such as Adi Shankara’s non-dualistic philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.
From a Christian perspective, the core issue is not simply whether the label “pantheism” applies to Hamzah’s views, but rather that his doctrine of tajallī (self-manifestation)—and the idea that the cosmos is a disclosure of Divine Being—significantly reduces the ontological gulf between Creator and creature that is fundamental to Christian theology. In classical theism, creation entails a radical transition from absolute non-existence to real existence as a result of God’s creative power. Creation reveals God’s will and depends wholly upon him, but it is never a mode, emanation, or manifestation of the Divine Being itself. The Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo safeguards both God’s absolute transcendence and the genuine, distinct reality of the created order.
The contrast between classical theism and waḥdat al-wujūd is accentuated when facing the problem of human agency and moral responsibility. Within the framework of waḥdat al-wujūd, the individual creature seems to lack intrinsic existence (esse – act of existence) and serves merely as a passive locus of divine manifestation. Consequently, human agency and moral responsibility are undermined, and the reality of moral evil risks being attributed to a necessary aspect of divine self-disclosure. In contrast, classical theism, by granting a real and distinct existence to individuals, establishes genuine creaturely moral agency and responsibility. Concomitantly, evil is framed as a privation (privatio boni) rather than a divine manifestation.
Finally, in Hamzah’s vision, the goal of spiritual life is the realization that the self is not ultimately other than the One Being—a return of the wave to the ocean. In classical theism, the goal is eternal communion with the triune God, in which the creature remains a creature, perfected in love, knowledge and fellowship rather than absorbed. Both traditions conceive of human fulfilment in fundamentally different terms: absorption into a single ontological reality versus communion between the triune Creator and his redeemed creatures.
D. Waḥdat al-Wujūd as Foundational to Malay Islamic intellectual Tradition
Naquib al-Attas sums up his estimation of Hamzah Fanṣūrī as an outstanding Malay poet-philosopher: “In the entire vista of Malay literature – including even the Indonesian literature – he was unique. None rivalled him in originality and poetic genius; in Malay Sufi literature none excelled the clarity and flowing simplicity of his prose which, nevertheless, reveals profound metaphysical insight in the Sufi doctrines; none exceeded him in poetry, whether it be in terms of literary output or in terms of intellectual content.” [Naguib al-Attas, The Origin of the Malay Sha‘ir (DBP, 1968), p. 63].
Naquib adds that Hamzah was “the first man to set down in Malay the Sufi doctrines” and “the first man to produce systematic speculative writing in Malay.” [Naquib al-Attas MHF, x]. Since the seventeenth century, the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd articulated by Hamzah Fansuri and developed by his followers, has constituted one of the most influential and enduring doctrines in Malay-Islamic intellectual history. It may be argued, therefore, that waḥdat al-wujūd is foundational to Malay Islamic intellectual tradition.
E. Appendix: Hamzah Fanṣūrī’s Commentary in His Own Words
(35) Fa‘lam—Our Lord is like a Fathomless Ocean,
That is to say, God’s Essence is likened to a Deep Ocean, for the Innermost Essence cannot enter into conception. It is only Its Predispositions that are likened to this Fathomless Ocean, Hence the Prophet (may God bless him and give him peace!) says:
Subḥānaka mā‘arafnāka ḥaqqa ma‘rifatika.”
that is:
Glory be to Thee, we do not know Thee
with true knowledge of Thee.!
(that is, the Innermost Essence cannot be known)
For this reason [the Innermost Essence] is likened to an Ocean that is Boundless and Fathomless. If It has limits and has depth, or has a beginning and an end, then it is something created; but with respect to God, Glorious and Most Exalted, such things are not among His Attributes.
(36) Fa‘lam—Whose waves are rolling in every direction.
That is to say, [its waves are rolling] in every direction. That which we perceive, whether outwardly or inwardly, all disappear—they are as waves. The Ocean is not ‘separate’ from its waves, and the waves too are not ‘separate’ from the ocean. In like manner God, Glorious and Most Exalted is not ‘separate’ from the World. But [He] is neither ‘in’ the World nor ‘outside’ it; neither ‘above’ nor ‘below it; neither to the ‘right’ nor to the ‘left’ of it; neither in ‘front’ of nor ‘behind’ it; neither ‘separate from nor ‘joined’ to it; neither ‘near’ to nor ‘far’ from it…The sea is always the same, when it heaves, then it becomes waves. People call it ‘waves’ but in reality it is the sea…for sea and waves are not ‘separate.’ [p. 390]
(39) Fa‘lam—The Ocean is Knower its currents the Known,
That is to say, the ocean already mentioned above is allegorically likened to the Knower in order that the analogy of the Knower and the Known nay he grasped by the seeker…The Ocean is Knower, its currents the ‘Known’.
Its Condition is Qāsim its waves are Maqsūm.
(40) Fa‘lam—Its condition is Qasim, its waves are Maqsūm.
That is to say, [the meaning] of Qāsim is One Who Divides; Maqsūm are the ones divided. Since God Most Exalted bestows existence upon the Universe together with all its parts, [He] is called One Who Apportions. The World in its entirety is like the waves; its name is the Apportioned, for the waves
[appear] out of the existential modes of the ocean. The Existential Modes of God Glorious and Most Exalted are called that of One Who Apportions, the existential modes of the entire Universe [are called] that of the Apportioned. The ocean is likened to the Divine Essence; the existential modes of the ocean are like the Existential Modes of the Divine Essence; the currents are like the existential modes of the World; the waves are like the forms of the World. According to this analogy, the ocean, the water, the waves, the forms of the waves, the colours of the waves, the names of the waves arc all one. This is the meaning of ‘Its condition is Qāsim, its waves are Maqsūm.’
(42) Fa‘lam—Upon the entire Universe it is these that are featured.
That is to say, upon the entire Universe His Predispositions are featured. From its beginning to its end, from its inner concealment to its external manifestation – [all these] are but His Predispositions. His Predispositions are governed by His Tempest [i.e. His Creative Command,] for the entire World is His Predispositions. The meaning of His ‘Predisposition’ is His ‘Existential Modes’. Everything is forever His Predispositions, dynamic… [pp394-395]
Excerpted from Hamzah Fanṣūrī, “The Secrets of the Gnostics,” The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri (Uni. of Malaya Press, 1970). [MHF 390-395]
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