Elephant In The Dark

As our world continues to shrink, we are being brought headlong into often explosive contact with other cultures and religions. Islam continues to be for many a mysterious and misunderstood force, alien to our own cultural values.

Yet, in more ways than expected, Christianity and Islam share common ground. For centuries, spiritual thinkers have been linked to both religions in certain important ideas.

But, like The Elephant in the Dark in Jalalludin Rumi's classic fable contained in his Mathnawi, these ideas are not grasped in full by seizing parts of the whole and arguing for or against their supposed Christian or Islamic derivation.

Herein is the story as told in the Mathnawi:

"Some Hindus had brought an elephant for exhibition and placed it in a dark house. Crowds of people were going into that dark place to see the beat. Finding that ocular inspection was impossible, each visitor felt it with his palm in the darkness.

The palm of one fell on the trunk.

‘This creature is like a water-spout,’ he said.

The hand of another lighted on the elephant’s ear. To him the beat was evidently like a fan.

Another rubbed against its leg.

‘I found the elephant’s shape is like a pillar,’ he said.

Another laid his hand on its back.

‘Certainly this elephant was like a throne,’ he said.

The sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the beast.

The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another. Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and night foam-flecks are flung from the sea: of amazing! You behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water."

In the Jain's version, a wise man then explains to them: "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned."

In the Buddhist's version, the raja says:
"O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing."

And yet, in a famous 19th century version poem by John Godfrey Saxe, the conflict never gets resolved:
"It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!"