Say hello to Errol Abu al-Mughith Husayn Mansur al-Hallaj Alphonso
Mansur al-Hallaj Alphonso |
Abu al-Mughith Husayn Mansur al-Hallaj, a Persian mystic,
revolutionary writer and teacher of Sufism was condemned to death for
heresy at the orders of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir and was duly
executed on March 26, 922. His crime was the uttering of the blasphemy,
‘An-ul Haq, An-ul Haq’ (‘I am the Truth, I am the Truth’, interpretable
as ‘I am God, I am God’). Mansur was merely proclaiming a total
disavowal of self in the throes of his sublime spiritual ecstasy, some
say. He could also have been merely noting the simple truth that if God
is indeed omnipresent, then God must reside within him as well.
I am an atheist and convinced that ‘god’ and ‘devil’ are human and
social constructs that have fairly clear-cut functional purposes, and
are but metaphors that have got waylaid by the manipulative and
thereafter invested with powers and values beyond original intent. I
believe that the true and final residence of god and devil is self, that
the human being is in the final instance the refuge of both good and
evil, of right and wrong, teacher and student, hero and villain, lunacy
and lucidity, wise and moronic. Mansur was killed for saying this. We
live in happier times.
It is 5.26 am right now. Mansur came to my thoughts at this pre-dawn
ungodly hour because I had seen him the previous morning. I see Mansur
all the time and you can see him too in every person you meet on your
way to work, in your co-worker, your child, your employer, your
employee, your loved ones and your detractors, enemy and friend. The
Mansur I am speaking of comes to me as word and comment almost everyday
via the internet. He has another name. Errol Alphonso.
Abu al-Mughith Husayn Mansur al-Hallaj aka Errol Alphonso, aka Errol
Abu al-Mughith Husayn Mansur al-Hallaj Alphonso, is not on death row,
although he does claim that Death Row is the name of the home for the
elderly he has been living in since February 2001. He was 60 years young
then and is even younger now. He claims that a woman, according to him a
nymphomaniac, who has been harassing him in one way or another for years
and years, almost got him a quick ticket out of that living/dying hell
within six months of his entry.
His words: ‘This woman, together with the eighty something man who
was her drooler here, and continues to drool in his bed elsewhere now at
middle ninety, and several of the other supposedly sane women in
residence, worked up a good enough head of steam to give me a whumping
big cardiac blow within six months of entry. My insanity brought me out
of it with 60 percent of my heart left in San Francisco. I haven’t had
any cardiac check since then, and take the drugs prescribed at that
time, which were meant until death do us part.’
See, Errol knows words. He doesn’t know mincing. I got to know Mansur
Errol about a year ago. He commented on something I wrote. Since then
we’ve met several times and have had wonderful conversations. In the
main, though, it’s been mostly an edifying e-mail communication
experience for me. Mansur Errol comments. Corrects. Points me gently and
without appearing to be teaching towards things I am ignorant about. I
read him carefully. I learn and learn and learn.
He is 69 now. He’s had a wide expanse of experience in mass
communications and marketing. He has been rated ‘the best’ by Sri
Lanka’s Dean of Broadcasters, the late Livy Wijemanne. He has done his
hours in advertising, ground up. He’s a ground-up person in all things,
I might add. A voracious reader and a veritable super-sucker of what the
internet offers and at rates that one would usually not associate with
someone of his age. Errol has seen the world. He’s been to Singapore,
Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Hamamatsu, Kofu, Honolulu,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York,
London, Paris, Rome, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Amsterdam, Frankfurt,
Dusseldorf, Idar-Oberstein, Beirut, Kuwait and Tehran. He’s come home,
like all prophets, to find the truth (of his heaven and hell).
One of these days, Mansur Errol will die. Like all of us. He is
conscious of his mortality. He is a rationalist (on his door is pasted a
copy of the ultimate Charter on Free Inquiry, the Kalama Sutra). He will
pass on and no one will know. His story will die with him.
He is alive now and I wish him a long and healthy rest-of-your-life
full of engagement, resolve, colour and the soft ways that have made him
the hero that he is, the divine entity whose knowledge and lucidity
astound me all the time.
Errol Mansur Alphonso has an Aristotelian hope; that someday the best
flutes will finally go to the best flute players, and that he’ll end up,
consequently, with a swank shop laptop. You might never have seen him,
but he might have touched you through Fanfare for the Common Man, The
Unimportance of being Blind, Shakespeare was a Scriptwriter,
Contemplations on a Cardinal Sin, Making Love in Many Languages and
Geneva Ticks!
There’s an Errol you are going to be passing a few minutes after
reading this. Nod your head in acknowledgment. You are going to be
him/her a few years from now. Well, perhaps not a fraction as worthy and
(hopefully) not having to suffer the agonies of residency in an
institution run by the vindictive, insensitive and petty, but hey, who
can tell in these things, these times, there where and why of our being
and dying!
Go well, Errol. Carry your immortality light on your shoulders.
[email protected] |