“Will you not use your intellect?”
—The Koran (28:60)
“God did not create anything
more valuable than the intellect.”
—The Prophet (Ghazali, Ihya, 1/217)
Lewis
Mumford (1895-1990) was a cultural historian whose interests ranged
from the evolution of cities to the adverse effects of technology on
society, to the human condition. Although Mumford was not a religious
person (he once described his views as “organic humanism”), neither was
he anti-religious, and he captured some essential insights into the
nature of prophethood and its social impact in The Conduct of Life.
I propose to do a review article, to analyze the account he gives
there, supplementing it with additional information where necessary. Unless otherwise indicated, Mumford quotes are from that source. While
Mumford came from a Judeo-Christian background, much of what he says is
also applicable to Mohammed, the Prophet. I will try to indicate these
instances as we come across them.
How Does a Prophet Arise?
Let
us begin with the prelude to the arrival of a prophet. Elsewhere,
Mumford calls this process “Etherealization” and deals with it in
summary fashion, providing only the main headings: 1. Disembodiment, 2.
Alienation, 3. Detachment, 4. Illumination. Let me attempt to flesh
these out.
1. Disembodiment:
This is the stage where human beings cease to abide by God’s law.
Society embarks on a long-drawn-out process of decline and decay.
According to Mumford (writing in The Condition of Man), Jewish
civilization had reached its high point toward the end of the sixth
century BC; it was at a low ebb by the time Jesus arrived.
At
such a point, people break their covenant with God and start believing
in other things. Superstition rules the day. Even the elites indulge in
fortune-telling, magic, conjuring spirits. In old times, people used to
make graven idols and worship them. Today, this takes the form of “‘shipping”
money, power, sex, rock stars, famous actors/actresses, or football
players. Whatever you are preoccupied with, that is your idol. Products
of man’s own hand, such as computers, artificial intelligence (AI), or
the internet, may also become objects of worship. 
(In the TV series Person of Interest, a character keeps referring to the resident AI as God.)
Concomitantly,
the physical plant of society begins to exhibit the products of this
secular and/or superstitious frame of mind. To paraphrase Nietzsche,
poppies grow where churches used to be. Art, music, and sculpture cease
to produce God-inspired items and begin to churn out secular or
superstitious works. The whole culture and with it, our minds, are
flooded with an overabundance of the latter.
In
the Prophet’s time, too, idolatry and sexual license were rampant.
Thus, the Prophet arrived into the darkest darkness as a light.
2. Alienation: Elsewhere, Mumford calls this “disenchantment.”
People become estranged from a society they see as increasingly
misdirected and misruled; they are disillusioned with where it is
heading. “Going
to hell in a handbasket” becomes a slogan on everyone’s lips. Some
people begin to seek alternative ways of enlightenment.
In
his youth, the Prophet joined an alliance called “the League of the
Virtuous” with other young people to improve the conditions of society.
After life’s burdens overtook him, he only had a chance to return to
these concerns in later life. But by then, he also knew that reforming
society was no easy task, that an inner transformation was also
required.
3. Detachment: Elsewhere, Mumford calls this “disengagement” and “withdrawal.”
This is the stage where people retire to a secluded corner, if not a
cave, to practise meditation. Like Moses on the mountaintop, like Jesus
in the desert, the Prophet withdrew to the cave at Mount Hira and
engaged in ascetic practices.
4. Illumination:
The Lord makes Himself known to one who is worthy, showing His signs
and bestowing visions upon him. This is also an assignment of social
duty. One who has been granted illumination also has the task of
informing others of what needs to be done. Likewise, the Prophet was
visited by the archangel Gabriel in the cave, given the duty of
prophethood, and his Ascension to God (miraj) occurred some years later. His inward journey thus reached its culmination. As Joseph Campbell put it in The Hero With a Thousand Faces
(1949): “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a
region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and
a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious
adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” (Campbell’s
description of the Hero’s Journey as Departure-Initiation-Return
parallels that of Mumford.) The Prophet came back from his Ascension
with a boon to all humanity: the gift of Formal Prayer.
The Light of Prophethood moved from the forehead of one prophet to the next,
until it shone, full-bloom, on the face of the Last Prophet (not shown).
(Afterwards, it continued as the Light of Sainthood or the Saintlight.)
The Primacy of the Prophets
Let
me now try to summarize Mumford’s sociological treatment of prophets,
interspersed with my occasional comments. Points of special interest are
highlighted in yellow:
Situated
as they are in nature, human beings have their work cut out for them.
The basic necessities of food, drink, breathing and reproduction
constrain them just as they do the rest of the animal kingdom. Moreover,
human beings are conditioned by the society they are born into or live
in, whether this be a tribe, a city, or a nation. Local customs, local
mores define their existence.
But
at a certain moment in history, a transformation takes place: one that
is as important as the invention of language. Man seeks a new self, he
becomes part of a more universal society.
One
can call this the birth of the true human being, the emergence of a
transcendent self not bound by the customs and strictures of the society
one is born into. This, in fact, has been the aim of the classic
religions for three thousand years. This change is a profound one, and
given to humans neither by nature nor by culture: “the glimpse of higher pinnacles of development, in and through and ultimately beyond the person.”
In
order to understand the change in question, the process that gave rise
to the universal religions needs to be examined. At a crucial moment in
history, (when, as we have seen, society and civilization hit rock
bottom), a person detaches himself from his local society, experiences
rebirth, and becomes part of a universal community. This person has a
vocation: he is a tent-maker, a tailor, or (like the Prophet) a
businessman, but he now takes up a new vocation: that of being truly and
fully human. He steps beyond the animal needs that constrain most of
us, and though he still fulfills the necessary biological functions, he
realizes human potentials that are only latent in others.
This
creator of a universally human mode of feeling and thinking and
behaving first announces himself by stripping off the symbols of his
local culture: in his very nakedness he seems [to his detractors] a
monster, and in his innocence a cheat.
This is exactly how the Meccan oligarchy viewed Mohammed. They felt threatened by his mission.
But on a few open minds he leaves an impression so singular they never forget it: they have at last seen a Man. With this avatar of Universal Man, this second birth, a new stage of development opens for humanity at large.
The term Mumford uses, “Universal Man,” is an alternate translation for “Perfect Human” (insan al-kâmil) in Sufism. (He does not give any indication of having been acquainted with Sufism, so he obviously meant it in a more general sense.)
Death-Rebirth
According
to Sufis, the self progresses through seven stages of selfhood and is
reborn in a different condition at the end (“Die before you die”—the
Prophet). The Grand Saint Abdelqader Geylani says that birds too are
twice-born: “In its first birth, the bird consists of an egg. If it is
not reborn, leaving its shell behind, it can never fly.” Elsewhere,
Mumford defines the divine as “that which further[s] the processes of [spiritual] growth and ma[kes] it possible for man to slough off his dead selves, as the snake sloughs off its skin” (The Condition of Man (1944), p. 55). He might almost be talking about the seven stages of the self. He also says that a radical change of attitude is needed: “an assertion of the primacy of the person, and a shift from outer circumstances to inner values.” (Ibid.)
What
attracts men to this new type of person?—he who urges them to leave
their familiar paths in the fertile valleys of life, and climb, with
constant effort, with hazard-tempting skill, often facing mortal danger,
up to the rocky pinnacles and the ice-clad summits, where finally the
climber himself is the only representative of life? Why do men dream,
even for a moment, that his way is a better way than their way, and that
the lonely climb, with no promise of a safe return, will yield a higher
reward than three solid meals, a soft bed, and a warm fire in the
ancestral village below?
The reason should be evident, for the greatest of all human rewards is
surely not animal satiety: therefore not health, not wealth, not
luxury: not a multiplicity of sexual partners or an endless procession
of feasts, all followed by drowsy oblivion. The greatest reward is a sense of possibilities above this lowland existence:
the inner strength that spurns security; the vision one achieves only
from the heights, after the hard effort of the climb. Because the new
prophet represents, in excess, the highest but weakest side of man’s
nature, he exercises a peculiar fascination over his fellows. ... Even
to believe in its existence, too often requires a special act of faith:
[a] faith in all that gives life the sense of some more ultimate goal than the endless cycle of animal necessities.
Or, as Master Ahmet Kayhan observed: “Let’s eat, drink, have children, suffer their worries and get out of here. Is this all we came here for?” (The Teachings of a Perfect Master (TPM), p. 50.)
The new person embodies that faith and confirms it: he speaks from
cosmic as well as human perspectives: on behalf of the timeless [the
Eternal], the unconditioned [the Essence], the universal. He
gives forth new laws that defy those of the tribe, and outlines new
duties that supplant the familiar old ones: his message flows, like a
stream of fresh water from the mountain top, to remove the barnacles of
superstition that cling to the tribal hulk and hamper even its daily
sailings. With the cleansing of law and custom, the new self emerges:
a self capable of leading a life not included in the tribal pattern,
capable of moving outside the circle of the tribe or the city and
embracing men molded by other earth-forces and social pressures: a self
capable finally of detaching itself, in some degree, from even the most
urgent biological needs: renouncing life, yet guarding it and fostering
it more watchfully than it had been fostered and guarded before.
This
transformation often takes place in complete isolation. The odds are
stacked against the prophet and the new way of life, for initially he is
exactly in the minority of one. Hence, the society he lives in must
also be prepared to accept the message, to rebel against the accepted
way of life. (If his own community does not accept him, he may, like the
Prophet, have to migrate to one that does.) Once a proper venue is
found, however, many changes will take place with remarkable swiftness.
Changes that might otherwise take a millennium, under the impact of the
new personality, occur almost overnight: “every
element in the community re-aligns itself as a group of iron filings
re-arrange themselves in a definite pattern once they are brought
within the range of a magnet.”
Can Any Prophet Be Regarded as God?
The short answer, according to Mumford, is “No.”
Does
this mean that we must accept the enlargement of the new personality,
through the agency of a cult, a priesthood, and a church, into a cosmic
myth and a veritable all-embracing God? Not in the least... this trick
of enlargement is perhaps but a special case of the general tendency
to over-value an object of love. The god that Buddha in time became
was expressly denied by the fundamental beliefs of Buddha himself. As
for Jesus… he said: “Why call ye me good? Only God is good.” [Mark
10:18] ls that not a simple profession of his purely human dimensions?
Those words, left as it were by inadvertence in the New Testament,
are so strikingly in contradiction to the usual claims of Jesus’s
divinity that they have an exceptional ring of authenticity, though
they demolish the assumptions upon which most of the New Testament and
the Pauline Epistles rest.
And again:
The
new leader need not exercise, or pretend to exercise, omnipotent or
even super-normal powers: certainly, in their own lifetimes, neither...
Confucius nor Buddha nor Moses nor Mahomet made any claim to being a
God.
However...
This does not mean that a prophet can be regarded as a run-of-the-mill human being, as any other Tom, Dick or Harry:
But
the real miracle is in fact far more astounding than the healing of the
sick, the raising of the dead, or the moving of mountains: for the
birth of a universal personality is the equivalent, if not more than
the equivalent, of the sudden appearance of a new species in nature.
Through the creation and incarnation of a universal [personality], a
whole civilization may not merely alter its composite face but deeply
change many other dynamic constituents of its character. By strenuous
discipline and devout imitation, each follower of the new prophet
assumes [that identity] for himself, and in time his own very bones and flesh begin, as it were, to fill in these ideal outlines: by a second birth he achieves a nature no less distinctive than that given by his first birth.
From the Local to the Universal
How
a person becomes what he pretends to be is a problem that has still not
been satisfactorily explained. (In Sufism, this is called Imitation
versus Realization.) Unless this is achieved, however, that is, unless
the experience can be more or less replicated, the total transformation
of other human beings will not be possible: “it is only by a repetition
of the original experience, by incarnation and conversion, that the
original change can keep from lapsing into a social stereotype, given
to vain repetitions and empty rituals, incapable of producing the
freedom, the autonomy, the creativity of the original person.” Although
even the smallest effort has its reward, the path of least action is
the way of the ordinary householder; the path of exertion, of striving
for higher attainment, is the way of the saints.
Every
great religious prophet has been the harbinger of a more universal way
of life, which unites his fellows into a wider community that ideally
encompasses all mankind. In that sense, the new leader is the
individual embodiment of a whole society; and from his personality, his
new attitude, his fresh aims, his daily practices, not least from
little hints he drops by the way without developing them, the complex
activities of a higher society will take form. In time a discipline and
a common system of education will be perfected in an attempt to carry
forward the original miracle of his detachment and transcendence. Yet
the pressures of a closed society will limit the full scope of this
movement: neither Buddhism nor Christianity nor Islam, the most
extensive attempts at unification, has actually encompassed more than a
small portion of mankind. But the original effort, even when it stops
short of its ideal goal, profoundly alters every institution; and
transfigures every possibility.
Although modern man scoffs at the concept of prophethood, he is
clueless when it comes to understanding its reality. (To paraphrase The Upanishads:
if you think you know the truth about God and His prophets, know that
you know little indeed.) Even modern scholars are helpless in dealing
with this truth, unable to overcome their preconceptions and hiding
their ignorance behind a pile of verbiage:
This
transformation, as I have hinted, has never been satisfactorily
described in all its details... How could conventional modern scholars
describe a change that takes place, in the first instance, in a single
individual, not in a mass: above all an interior change not verified by
substantial contemporary documents, a change whose very existence can
only be deduced from its remote consequences?
Materialization
Mumford
calls the actualization of a prophet’s path in society
“Materialization.” Like etherealization, this too occurs in stages: “In The Condition of Man I sought to summarize the stages of this whole transformation from personality to community under the heads of Formulation, Incarnation, Incorporation, and Embodiment.”
1. Formulation:
The first step in the integration of a more universal person [into society], the step of formulation,
involves a change of ideas and, more deeply, an alteration of feeling,
attitude, and expectancy... Often in the early stages, the new
attitude hardly even achieves the status of a full-blown philosophy: it
is still too fluid and unformed, too much the product of solitary
illumination… there is something esoteric in these early
manifestations. At their deepest levels, they are a wordless sense of
fresh potentialities for life.
In
the case of the Prophet, I’m reminded here of the early Meccan chapters
of the Koran. Brief, poetic, sublime, they speak to us of horizons not
yet fathomed. Probably, after the first chapter of the Koran (the
Opening), it might be best for a newcomer to read the Koran in reverse.
These final chapters are certainly the ones memorized most for
recitation during Formal Prayer. In fact, in the renowned Sufi Ibn
Arabi’s great work, “Meccan Revelations” (Futûhât al-Makkiya),
Chapters 270 through 383, 114 in all, correspond to the 114 suras of the
Koran in reverse order, beginning with the last (114th) sura and ending
with the first (as Michel Chodkiewicz has pointed out). One thus “ascends” to the Opening Chapter.
2. Incarnation:
All
these early formulations [take] place centuries before the ideas [are]
clarified, deepened, and given a dynamic impetus through the act of incarnation [emulation]: for
men become susceptible to ideas, not by discussion and argument, but by
seeing them personified and by loving the person who so embodies them.
The prophet must live the life so that others may know the doctrine: he hands down the idea in a form deeper than words to his followers and successors; and they, in turn, must dramatically install themselves in his role.
3. Incorporation:
Now
we come to the third stage [consolidation]. The direct effect of the
prophet upon his community is fitful and limited during his lifetime:
He reaches only a handful of disciples; and these, as often as not, are
the weaklings, the rejected ones, the outcasts, who have nothing to
lose. Before he can touch even such people, no small part of his life
has been spent in the process of defining his mission, fitting himself
for it.
This
corresponds to the Prophet’s time in Mecca. Such was the opposition to
him that, as historian Arnold Toynbee put it, “Muhammad himself was in
daily danger of meeting Jesus’s fate.” Once he emigrated to Medina he
proved to be, again according to Toynbee, “not only a prophet but also a
political genius.”
This
self-transformation, incidentally, is so little understood... Even
among those who come directly under the prophet’s influence, the
faithful handful, the process of rebirth and renewal
takes place slowly, haltingly: the disciples are at first witnesses
rather than active participants: if they are fascinated by this new
species of man, they are also full of doubts and resistances...
Moreover, those who are most desirous of being re-born are not always
thoroughly transformed: even while the master is living they fall away
from him, and though their conversion be ardent, they may not in the
end succeed in changing their ways as fully as they had, in their first
generous espousal, believed possible... For
one who stands on the bank and looks at a swimmer, swimming looks
easy; but once the novice takes to the water himself, he can scarcely
make half a dozen strokes before he sinks: it takes practice as well as
faith to be able to keep one’s head above water. So with this greater change.
To give substance to this new personality, one must do more than repeat
the master’s precepts, capture his gestures, imitate his voice: the
whole routine and discipline of life must in time be altered.
4. Embodiment:
Finally,
the prophet’s doctrine and example permeate society, informing and
building a civilization, like a seed that grows into a tree:
Once
the new person appears... The rites of sex and marriage, the conduct of
economic life and the administration of government, in the end every
social institution, must be altered so as to support the new person and
make possible his social existence and his participation in all the
activities from which, in the first instance, he had withdrawn and had
apparently left behind him.
In short, if the rebirth begins as an inner private change, it must be confirmed by an outer public one, before the new self
can achieve a universal nature, superimposed on the more limited
secular culture. Until these processes of incorporation and embodiment
have taken place, the new personality will remain unformed, inoperative,
insecure, subject to early extinction. ln the end, the very environment
must be made over: everything, from costume to architecture, will be
re-modeled and will in some degree record and express further the inner
change that has taken place.
Deviations...
By the time the final stage is reached, in which a whole society has
been re-shaped by the new doctrine and cult, a further transformation
has taken place: this curtails the great leap that the originating
personality, departing from existing practices without yet being
hampered by the new ones his own doctrine in turn brings into existence,
has actually made. For the original intuitions of the new religion, and
the image of the new person as partly incarnated in the prophet
himself, must pass through many minds before they take hold in society.
On the way, they will encounter the inertia and resistance, yes, the
downright hostility, of many venerable institutions…
In
the act of adapting... to the existing order and its favored “way of
life” [the adherents of] the new religion will, often without any
conscious guile, alter the original intentions of the prophet and even
contradict his demands... At many points, then, the need for
adaptability, as a condition for survival, may lead to wholesale
perversions and betrayals…
"A word of truth, used in the service of falsehood." —Ali (the Fourth Caliph)
The
more extensive the claims of the new personality, the greater are the
chances for this perversion... Every radical transformation takes place
within a society that is, by sheer force of habit if nothing more,
deeply alien to the new impulses and the new forms; for what is any
established institution but a Society for the Prevention of Change? … Left to themselves many would be content to accept their animal lot: the
common tribal self suffices and one birth in a lifetime is enough for
them. So in every culture, during the period of its reintegration and
renewal, there is a constant tug between the old self and the new self... the final results are often deplorable and in time they cast undue discredit upon the original doctrine...
The
death of a Man of Knowledge is the death of the world. In the case of
the Prophet, many deviations from his Path have occurred through the
centuries, from the Kharijites down to the less savory present-day
manifestations. These, however...
... Do Not Invalidate the Truth
As Mumford succinctly puts it:
But
not by such lapses can one account for the new religion’s widespread
influence and for the amazing persistence of a new vision of man’s
potentialities: a vision sometimes transmitted through tens of millions
of people for two or three thousand years. What actually survives of
the new person is what counts: the image of a human being of the largest
spiritual capacities: the mutant of a new social species. Since it is the total personality that becomes operative in this great conversion... as Walt Whitman put it, “I and mine do not convince by arguments: we convince by our presence.”
So they communicate, even at many removes, through a living chain of
believers, the true apostolic succession [chain of transmission], and by
the echoes that still reverberate on the air, the after-image that
still lingers on the retina, many centuries after they have gone.
If words alone conveyed the message of the new person, the influence of
the great prophets would be hard to understand; for their affirmations
and acts differ in no special way from those of many other men of
genius. [N]o mere examination of the new doctrine can fully account for
their impact... If scattered intuitions and insights [alone] were
capable of transforming life, they are indeed present in every great
literature in quantities copious enough to produce a change. But
the impress of a new personality is of a different order: through him
many diffused and scattered ideas unite to produce, not other new
ideas, but a man. [In the sense of human being, inclusive of both genders.]
It is as if a phase transition, a crystallization occurs, first within one person, then in all society.
Divine
or human, heavenly or mundane, the fact is that, at certain intervals
of history, the potentialities for a more universal culture, a more
co-operative life, and a richly dramatic development of the human theme become
visible in the image and example of a single human being. At that
moment a universal man appears and under his direction a universal
society becomes possible... The imitation of that example
provides a new destination for society, and a new set of values and
purposes, which start it moving on a new path. Centuries and millennia
may pass before that impulse ceases to enrich civilization…
By loving and imitating the parental, life-nurturing image of the new
person, by bowing to his wisdom, by following in his footsteps, by
accepting his ideal figure as a true and central image of man, toward
which all smaller figures should approximate, peoples of the most
diverse backgrounds and histories achieve a common bond and pursue a
common goal.
* * *
I
have dwelt on Mumford’s treatment at length because, with rare insight
and eloquence, he outlines a different, sympathetic picture and a better
map concerning what prophethood is all about. Using an unbiased
intellect and acute powers of observation, he is able to discern truths
that few others have remarked upon. This means that, using the same
tool, anyone can reach the same conclusions, provided s/he is as
well-informed as Mumford evidently was.
Why is reason important? Because it can, like Mumford has done, discern the truth—if
it can act without bias. That is why children, those who are not fully
awake, and the mentally unstable are not held accountable, for they
lack powers of reasoning. Those who are deprived of free will are also
not responsible, for while they may be in possession of their mental
faculties, they have no freedom of choice.
So
here’s what I think: don’t base your judgment of a religion on the
failings of its all-too-human believers. Study, investigate. If, in the
end, you find the precepts of a religion to your liking, that’s fine.
If you don’t, that’s OK, too.
The Most Important Thing
Finally, we may ask ourselves: what has Mumford missed?
All through his extraordinary analysis, Mumford has not posed one crucial question: why
does a prophet (and after the Last Prophet, a Sufi saint) go through
that transformation? In other words, what is it that makes one worthy of
receiving such a stupendous gift?
The
enlightenment of the West is the enlightenment of the mind, of
reason. The enlightenment of the East is spiritual illumination. We
need both, for the spirit and the mind are not the same thing.
Moreover, the mind has its limitations, for “the
heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of” (Pascal). The
ideal thing is to combine the mind and the heart, to speak from a place
where both have their say. That is wisdom, it is what the prophets
have done. And what they all emphasize is ethics (though this is not
always apparent from the Bible). Visions prove to be temporary, even
when they are authentic and not delusional. (Acid (LSD) users felt
transported to the highest reaches of consciousness, yet they would
fall out with each other when it came to performing the simplest
chores, like who was going to do the dishes.)
What is most important is that spiritual growth is predicated on morality. The Prophet makes this plain: “Do
you know who is bankrupt? ‘Bankrupt’ is one who [has] Prayer, Charity,
and Fasting to their credit. However, s/he has insulted this person, slandered that one, wrongfully taken another’s wealth, shed someone else’s blood, beaten up somebody else...” (Muslim 2581, Tirmidhi.)
In other words, morality is the bedrock on which everything else rests,
and without which none of one’s observances count for much. And conversely—if you are serious about your religion and diligently try to fulfill its precepts, a little will go a long way: “Be sincere in your religion. Then, (relatively) few works will be enough for you.” (Hâkim, Mustadrak, 8.4.306.)
The
Sufis have compared spiritual development to a greased pole: no matter
how high you climb, and no matter how adept you are, if you’re morally
deficient, you will not be able to hold onto your achievements, but
will inevitably slip to the bottom sooner or later. All one’s efforts
could come to naught. For spiritual growth, the Sufis have identified a higher stage of morality. They call it “courtesy” or noble conduct (adab),
which is an even more refined state of thinking and acting—with
compassion, with consideration, with lovingkindness. The Prophet said:
“I have come to perfect your ethics.”
And that’s the important thing: it’s ethics, it’s morality.*
“Materialization and etherealization are the inhalation and exhalation of the same breath...” (The Condition of Man, p. 73.) (This is what Ibn Arabi called “the breath of the Compassionate.”)
*Note:
Those who criticize the Prophet for his multiple marriages, thereby
imputing to him a deficiency in morality, confuse polygamy with
fornication and casual sex—whereas these were the very things the
Prophet himself was dead set against. Anyone who has been married knows
that marriage is not exactly a walk in the park. A person married to
two or three spouses finds that the complications and responsibilities
are more than two or three times those of
being married to a single woman. That the Prophet accepted these
additional burdens for the sake of an alliance, or to save a woman
widowed in combat by bringing her under the legal protection of
marriage, should not be held against him, especially when one considers
that Solomon had hundreds of wives and even Abraham had two. As
Mumford observes above, “the greatest of all human rewards is surely
not... a multiplicity of sexual partners.”
(Summarized and excerpted from Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life (1951), pp. 92-107.)
(DISCLAIMER:
The excerpt above is reproduced in the spirit of fair use, for
educational and illustrative purposes only, and in an effort to rescue
some of Mumford’s astute observations from oblivion. I’m sure Mumford
himself would have approved.)
Another Sufi, Hujwiri
The way to get rid of animal attributes is to become endowed with Human attributes. 
The self fears three things: hunger, Prayer [the Islamic Formal Prayer (salat, namaz)], death. It fears nothing else.
Never
give the self any room, never tolerate it. Do not obey its demands.
Only then will you find salvation and liberation. Never condescend to
smile at it. If it tells you a thousand things, answer only one, until
you are sure that its behavior is rectified and it is quiescent. If it
requests anything belonging to its pleasures and capricious desires,
always postpone it, saying: “Wait until Paradise.”
he
greatest [striving] is to mingle with friends who have turned their
faces to God [Friends of God: saints] and turned their backs on this
world. For there is no more difficult striving than this, so sit with
righteous friends; for the very sight of them dissolves and naughts that
[Base Self]. It is for this reason that they say that when a snake has
not seen a man [a Perfect Human] for forty years it becomes a dragon;
that is, because it sees no one 