Ibn Al Arabi Quotes

‏"كل حب يكون معه طلب ، لايعول عليه ... كل شوقٍ يسكن باللقاء ، لايعول عليه...

‏"لاراحــــــةَ لك من الخلـــــق ، فارجع إلى الحـــــــق ، فهو أولــــــى بك !

It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature. al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya

Ibn al-Arabi gave this advice: Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for he says, 'Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah' (Koran 2:109). Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently, he blames the disbelief of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance.

In this I conformed to my usual manner of thinking in symbols; this because the things of the invisible world attract me more than those of actual life

That is why the theopathic maxim of the disciples of Ibn Arabi was not Ana'l Haqq "I am God " (Hallaj) , but Ana sirr al-l Haqq, "I am the secret of God," that is to say, the secret of love that makes His divinity dependent on me, because the hidden Treasure "yearned to be known" and it was necessary that beings exist in order that He might be known and know Himself.

La raison qui m’a conduit à proférer de la poésie (shi‘r) est que j’ai vu en songe un ange qui m’apportait un morceau de lumière blanche ; on eût dit qu’il provenait du soleil. « Qu’est-ce que cela ? », Demandai-je. « C’est la sourate al-shu‘arâ (Les Poètes) » me fut-il répondu. Je l’avalai et je sentis un cheveu (sha‘ra) qui remontait de ma poitrine à ma gorge, puis à ma bouche. C’était un animal avec une tête, une langue, des yeux et des lèvres. Il s’étendit jusqu’à ce que sa tête atteigne les deux horizons, celui d’Orient et celui d’Occident. Puis il se contracta et revint dans ma poitrine ; je sus alors que ma parole atteindrait l’Orient et l’Occident. Quand je revins à moi, je déclamai des vers qui ne procédaient d’aucune réflexion ni d’aucune intellection. Depuis lors cette inspiration n’a jamais cessé.

be summarized in this statement by the Andalusi judge, Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 543/1148): “The verses of the Qur’an are joined together in such manner that they are like a single word, harmoniously associated, structurally even.”3

Where Ibn al-Arabi had written for the intellectual, Rumi was summoning all human beings to live beyond themselves, and to transcend the routines of daily life. The Mathnawi celebrated the Sufi lifestyle which can make everyone an indomitable hero of a battle waged perpetually in the cosmos and within the soul. The Mongol invasions had led to a mystical movement, which helped people come to terms with the catastrophe they had experienced at the deeper levels of the psyche, and Rumi was its greatest luminary and exemplar.

I am a wandering speculative border intellectual, surviving by my wits, roaming the land. Not unlike Ibn al-Arabi, Bashō, Omar Khayyám, and Badi’ al-Zaman, those solitary walkers, extemporaneous philosophers, literary tricksters, the wise and wicked ancestors of Cervantes, Rousseau, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Acker.

Sufism (tasawwuf) is not wearing clothes that you patched; it is not weeping when the singers sing their songs; and it is not dancing, shouting, experiencing ecstatic states, or passing out as if you’ve gone mad. Rather, Sufism is to become whole without any impurities; to follow the truth, the Qur’an, and this religion; and to be seen in a state of awe, broken and remorseful about all of your sins.

Ibn al-Arabi imagined the solitary God sighing with longing, but this sigh (nafas rahmani) was not an expression of maudlin self-pity. It had an active, creative force which brought the whole of our cosmos into existence; it also exhaled human beings, who became logoi, words that express God to himself. It follows that each human being is a unique epiphany of the Hidden God, manifesting him in a particular and unrepeatable manner.

« De son regard dolent, mon mal d’amour procède. À mon cœur, l’évoquant, portez un doux remède ! Ce ramier ânonnant sa plaintive élégie Depuis l’ouche, ravive en moi la nostalgie ! Je donnerais mon sang pour cette jouvencelle, Qui fuyant des douars la jalouse tutelle, Et qui se soustrayant aux courtisanes prudes, Paradait, adoptant une snobe attitude ! De son astre, le fard comblait l’azur une heure, Embrasant, au déclin, l’horizon de mon cœur. »

By giving objective body to intentions of the heart (himma, W6V1.111a1S), this creativity fulfils the first aspect of its function. This aspect comprises a large number of phenomena designated today as extrasensory perception, telepathy, visions of syn- chronicity, etc. Here Ibn Arabi contributes his personal testi- mony. In his autobiography ( Risiilat al-Quds), he tells how he was able to evoke the spirit of his shaikh, Yusuf al-Kumi, when- ever he needed his help, and how Yusuf regularly appeared to him, to help him and answer his questions. Sadruddin Qunyawi, the disciple whom Ibn Arabi instructed in Qunya, also speaks of his gift: "Our shaikh Ibn Arabi had the power to meet the spirit of any Prophet or Saint departed from this world, either by making him descend to the level of this world and contem- plating him in an apparitional body ( surat mithaliya ) similar to the sensible form of his person, or by making him appear in his dreams, or by unbinding himself from his material body to rise to meet the spirit.

For Ibn ’Arabi, whose most beloved teacher Abu Madyan was identified as being the stone, the continual revelation of God’s word is a living, breathing creation. Those highest saints, who are known as the malamatiyya, the blameworthy of this world, the ‘hidden’ or kafirun of God are the embodiment of all the systems of concealment and disclosure, jafr, ta’wil, taqqiyah, et al. The Qur’an is not just a book, it is a person. The texts of al-Kimia are not simple words which when put together produce magical formulas, they are alive.

Instead of such idolatry, Ibn al-Arabi gave this advice: Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for, he says, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of al-Lah” (Koran 2:109). Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance.

The theosophy of Light suggests the metaphor of the mirror and the shadow. But "shadow" must not be taken to imply a dimension of Satanic darkness, an Ahrimanian antagonist; this shadow is essentially a reflection, the projection of a silhouette or face in a mirror. Our authors even speak of a "luminous shadow" ( in the sense that color is shadow in the context of absolute Light: Zill al-nur as opposed to Zill al-zulma, dark shadow). And that is how we must take the following state- ment: "Everything we call other than God, everything we call the universe, is related to the Divine Being as the shadow ( or his reflection in the mirror) to the person. The world is God's shadow.

The possible or impossible for Allah Most High involves the divine attribute of qudra or omnipotence, “what He can do”. This attribute in turn relates exclusively to the intrinsically possible, not to what is intrinsically impossible, as Allah says, “Verily Allah has power over every thing” (Qur’an 20:29), “thing” being something that in principle can exist. For example, if one asks “Can Allah create square circle?” the answer is that His omnipotence does not relate to it, for a square circle does not refer to anything that in principle could exist: the speaker does not have a distinct idea of what he means, but is merely using a jumble of words. "On the validity of all religions in the thought of ibn Al-‘Arabi and Emir ‘Abd al-Qadir: a letter to `Abd al-Matin

Certainly, many people, especially Christians and those easily affected by popular culture, think that Aleister Crowley was 'the wickedest man in the world.' Surprisingly, among the Sufi dervishes there is a tradition called the Malamati. The Sheikh of Sheikhs (in other words the great Sufi teacher), Ibn al-Arabi, referred to a hierarchy among saints, at the pinnacle of which were the blameworthy (Malamiyya, or Malamatis). But rather than promoting a form of elitism, he and other classical Sufis claimed that Malamatis hid themselves among the common people. Turning to a current encyclopedia of Islam, we find that the Malamatiyya (Way of Blame) is described as 'the designation of a tendency, or of a psychological category, of people who attract blame to themselves despite their being innocent.' Crowley demonstrates in 'The Book of Lies' his gnosis that the teachers who are the very pinnacle of wisdom very often disguise their inner reality.

It is important to note that the meaning of the Arabic word nafs should not be limited here to the soul, for this word is found in the Arabic translation of the saying in question, while its Greek equivalent psyche does not appear in the original. Nafs should therefore not be taken in its usual sense, for it is certain that it has another much higher significance, which makes it similar to the word essence, and which refers to the Self or to the real being ; as proof of this, we can cite what has been said in a ḥadīth that is like a complement of the Greek saying" 'He who knows himself, knows his Lord'. When man knows himself in his deepest essence, that is, in the center of his being, then at the same time he knows his Lord. And Knowing his Lord, he at the same time Knows all things, which come from Him and return to Him. He knows all things in the supreme oneness of the Divine Principle, outside of which, according to the words of Muhyi 'd-Din Ibn Al-Arabi 'there is absolutely nothing which exists', for nothing can be outside of the Infinite.

What explanation does Ibn Arabi give for these phenomena ? A first explanation invokes the hierarchical planes of being, the Hadarat, or "Presences." There are five of these Presences, namely, the five Descents ( tanazzulat); these are determina- tions or conditions of the divine Ipseity in the forms of His Names; they act on the receptacles which undergo their influx and manifest them. The first Hadra is the theophany ( tajalli) of the Essence ( dhat) in the eternal latent hexeities which are objects, the correlata of the Divine Names. This is the world of Absolute Mystery ( alam al-ghayb al-mutlaq, Hadrat al-Dhat). The second and the third Hadarat are respectively the angelic world of determinations or individuations constituting the Spirits ( taayyunatt ruhiya ) and the world of individuations constituting the Souls ( taayyunaatt nafsiya). The fourth Hadra is the world of Idea-Images ( alam al-mithal), typical Forms, individuations having figure and body, but in the immaterial state of "subtile matter. " The fifth Hadra is the sensible and visible world (alam al-shahada ), of dense material bodies. By and large, with minor variations, this schema is constant in our authors.19

In this essential point Ibn rArabi declares concisely: "Those to whom God remains veiled pray the God who in their belief is their Lord to have compassion with them. But the intuitive mystics [Ahl al-Kashf] ask that divine Compassion be fulfilled [come into being, exist] through them."28 In other words, the Gnostic's prayer does not tend to provoke a change in a being outside him who would subsequently take pity on him. No, his prayer tends to actualize this divine Being as He aspires to be through and for him who is praying and who "in his very prayer" is the organ of His passion. The Gnostic's prayer means: Make of us, let us be, Compassionate ones, that is to say, "become through us what thou hast eternally desired to be. " For the mystic has come to know that the very substance of his being is a breath (spiritus) of that infinjte Compassion; he is himself the epiphanic form of a divine N arne. Accordingly his prayer does not consist in a request ( the �Ofis have always stood in horror of that kind of prayer )27 but in his actual mode of being ( like the prayer of the heliotrope turning toward its heavenly Lord); it has the value of clarifying the degree of spiritual aptitude he has attained, that is, the measure in which he has become "capable of God. " But this measure is itself determined by his own eternal condition, his archetypal in- dividuality. "As thou wert in pre-eternity, that is to say, in thine eternal virtuality, so wert thou manifested in thy present condition. Everything that is present in the manifest being is the form of what he was in his state of eternal virtuality. "28 It would be a mistake to find here the source of a causal deter- minism of the current variety; more appropriately we might liken this conception to Leibniz' "pre-established harmony.

The Blakean reading of the birth of Adam (order or really Jesus) is that He does not want to be immortalised by the death of God. For Blake it is only God (in ibn al arabi’s sense of the word god) that can truly die man is immortal thus he resists creation through (pain) and the devil understood that. Jesus for Blake is born on the cross. It’s in that moment where he utters “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?  Why are you so far away when I groan for help?” The reading that god for a moment through Jesus lost faith in hisself and consequently the humanity through the experience of unbearable suffering and pain is not the Jesus’s moment on cross but the opposite for Blake Jesus on the cross was about his moment of immortality, that he feels betrayed by his immortality as he was promised death it’s truly the death drive that speaks in Jesus because Jesus at that moment became the son of man rather than son of God in a truly abstract yet literal sense. Jesus was promised death but rather he received immortality which is why in Quran Jesus is not resurrected on the third day but taken above among immortals to come back later. He never dies on the cross and this repetition for Jesus is vulgar. This is the true jouissance Jesus really says on the cross that He wants to suffer more to self sacrifice for his desire of death for his pleasure but the reason he says that oh lord why have you abandoned me is when he finally sees his immortality.

First, he criticizes the sophists of the Hisbanite school. The Hisbanites maintain that nothing remains existent for two units of time, that everything in the world, whether it be substance or accident, is changing from moment to moment. From this they conclude that there is no Reality in the objective sense. Reality or Truth exists only subjectively, for it can be nothing other than the constant flux of things as you perceive it in a fixed form at this present moment. Though the Hisbanites are right in maintaining that the world as a whole and in its entirety is in perpetual transformation, they are mistaken in that they fail to see that the real oneness of the Substance which underlies all these (changing) forms. (They thereby overlook the fact that) the Substance could not exist (in the external world) if it were not for them (i.e. these changing forms) nor would the forms be conceivable if it were not for the Substance. If the Hisbanites could see this point too (in addition to the first point), their theory would be perfect with regard to this problem. Thus, for Ibn Arabi, the merit and demerit of the Hisbanite thesis are quite clear. They have hit upon a part of the truth in that they have seen the constant change of the world. But they overlook the most important part of the matter in that they do not know the true nature of the Reality which is the very substrate in which all these changes are happening, and consider it merely a subjective construct of each individual mind. Concerning the Ash'arites, Ibn Arabi says: As for the Ash'arites, they fail to see that the world in its entirety (including even the so-called 'substances') is a sum of 'accidents', and that, consequently, the whole world is changing from moment to moment since no 'accident' (as they themselves hold) remains for two units of time. And al-Qashani: The Ash'arites do not know the reality of the world; namely, that the world is nothing other than the whole of all these 'forms' which they call 'accidents'. Thus they only assert the existence of substances (i.e., atoms) which are in truth nothin, having no existence (in the real sense of the word). And they are not aware of the one Entity ('ayn) which manifests itself in these forms ('accidents' as they call them); nor do they know that this one Entity is the He-ness of the Absolute. This is why they assert (only) the (perpetual) change of the accidents. According to the basic thesis of the Ash'arite ontology, the world is reduced to an infinite number of 'indivisible parts', i.e., atoms. These atoms are, in themselves, unknowable. They are knowable only in terms of the 'accidents' that occur to them, one accident appearing in a locus at one moment and disappearing in the next to be replaced by another. The point Ibn Arabi makes against this thesis is that these 'accidents' that go on being born and annihilated in infinitely variegated forms are nothing but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute. And thus behind the kaleidoscopic scene of the perpetual changes and transformations there is always a Reality which is eternally 'one'. And it is this one Reality itself that goes on manifesting itself perpetually in ever new forms. The Ash'arites who overlook the existence of this one Reality underlies all 'accidents' are, according to Ibn Arabi, driven into the self-contradictory thesis that a collection of a number of transitory 'accidents' that appear and disappear and never remain for two moments constitute 'things' that subsist by themselves and continue to exist for a long time.

Ibn al-Arabi said we have a religious duty to create imaginative theophanies, revelations of God, for ourselves. His teaching was that every one of us is a unique incarnation of one of God’s hidden attributes; all of us are epiphanies. For that reason, we know only the God who has spoken in the depths of our own being. So my God will be different from yours, because God has entrusted a personal revelation to each of us.

What has just been said of the followers of different faiths is even more patent in their mystics. Despite the abrogation of their religions, we do not doubt the possibility of mystics of other faiths reaching a higher spiritual plane, for when the lower soul is negated and sublimated by spiritual disciplines, the powers of the higher soul seldom fail to appear, and it is not impossible that in such a condition it might behold Ultimate Reality, which is, after all, as real and objective as Detroit or anything else in the physical world. But what a difference between the few hundred Jewish, Christian, or even American Indian mystics of the Western tradition who left any record of their experiences-men and women such as Catherine of Siena, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Francis of Assisi, Moses Cordovero, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, John Tauler, Henry Suso, Jakob Böhme, Handsome Lake, Isaac Luria, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross-and the literally thousands of Sufi masters of the Islamic tradition who founded the great mystical orders, had immense influence for centuries at all levels of society, produced an unparalleled and monumental body of mystic literature in poetry and prose, and left countless adepts in the beatitude of the Divine Presence, a living tradition that continues to this day. What other religion has ever seen a Mathnawi like Rumi’s? There is a tremendous difference between a few outstanding spiritual personalities that appeared at times and places in the West, like occasional watering places scattered across a hinterland, and the throngs of mystics of the Islamic milieu, on a sea of the Divine whose tides flooded regularly. Not only in the numbers of contemplatives, but in the abidingness of their personal experiences, there is a great difference between the mystics of Islam, who proceeded from the light of true monotheism to a state of perpetual illumination, men such as Sahl al-Tustari, al-Ghawth Abu Madyan, Shams al-Tabrizi, Ibn ‘Arabi, Abul Hasan al-Shadhili, and others whose testimony is unambiguous, and those of other faiths, who through self-mortification caught momentary glimpses of the Godhead in “experiences” they then translated to others in spiritual depositions.

Nous devons à un chercheur marocain, M. Fawzi Skali, la transcription des enregistrements de conversations qu'il a eues, au cours de l'été 1986, avec divers notables religieux dans le cadre d'une enquête sur la « géographie spirituelle » de Fès. Parmi les personnes interrogées figure un ancien professeur à la Qarawiyyîn. Questionné sur le soufisme, il se déclare fort hostile aux « soufis extrémistes » (ghulât) parmi lesquels il compte Hallâj, Ibn Arabî, Ibn Sab`în... et Muhammad al-Kattânî, l’auteur déjà cité de la Salwat al-anfâs. Mais il affirme en même temps goûter les poèmes d’Ibn al-Fârid, de Shushtarî ou d’Al-Harrâq qu’on récite dans les séances : « Ils contiennent, dit-il, des sens si subtils, si spirituels ! » La cohabitation chez le même homme de ces deux attitudes logiquement contradictoires est un fait que l’on peut souvent observer chez des musulmans qui, touchés par les courants réformistes, se présentent comme hostiles au soufisme ou, à tout le moins, comme partisans d’un soufisme « modéré » dont Ibn Arabî est bien évidemment exclu.

Knowledge is perfected in the breasts of those who are given knowledge, "and none denies Our signs but the unbelievers," (29:47) for they cover up the signs when they recognise them through envy, meanness and injustice. We only see from Allah in respect of Himself disconnection (tanzih) or non-disconnection by definition in any ayat which He has sent down or in transmissions which have reached us from Him. Otherwise He has the Great Mist (al-'Ama') (13) which has no air above it and no air beneath it. Allah was in it before He created creation. Then He mentioned that He "established Himself firmly on the Throne." (57:4) This is also definition. Then He mentioned that "He descends to the nearest heaven." (14) This is also definition. Then He said that "He is in the heaven and in the earth," (15) and "He is with us whever we are." (16) and He tells us that He is our source. We are limited, so He only describes Himself by limitation.

All existent things are the words of Allah which are inexhaustible (18) because they are from "kun" and "kun" is the word of Allah. Is the word ascribed to Him according to what He really is? His what-ness is not known. Or is it that Allah descends to the form of the one who says, "kun", and so the word "kun" is the reality of that form to which he descended or in which He is manifest? Some of the gnostics take one side and some take the other side, and some of them are bewildered in the business and do not know. This is a question which can only be recognised by taste (dhawq), as was the case with Abu Yazid al-Bistami when he breathed into the ant which he had killed and it returned to life. He knew in that action by Whom he had breathed, and that was an 'Isawian witnessing. As for the revival of meaning by knowledge, that is the divine life, essential, eternal, sublime, and luminous, about which Allah said, "Is someone who was dead and whom We brought to life, supplying him with a light by which to walk among the people..." (6:123) Whoever gives life to a dead soul by the life of knowledge in a particular problem connected to knowledge of Allah, has brought him to life by it, and it is "a light for him by which he walks among the people, i.e. among his likes in form.

When Ibn al-Arabi and his followers speak of „Being,“ they do not mean the Being of God as opposed to that of the creatures, or vice versa. They mean Being as such, in all the forms it may take, without exception. For them the „science of Being“ is the science of all sciences, since nothing but Being is. If someone can understand this science, he has understood the principle of everything. To grasp the nature of Being Itself is to grasp the nature of all that exists. „Love“ is one of the primary attributes of Being, which means that whatever exists must participate in it, just as it must participate in Being. To understand the nature of Love and its myriad self-manifestations is to grasp the nature of Being Itself, for the two are in fact one. (p. 27)

I drank divine love cup by cup, neither the wine was finished nor my thirst quenched. Beyazid Al Bistami (Islamic Wise One)

The term for this concept is wahadat al-wujud, or the Unity of Being, first coined by one of the greatest philosophical minds in history, Muhyiddin ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240 C.E.). Seeking to provide a firm philosophical basis for the Sufi conception of the divine, Ibn al-Arabi began by addressing the fundamental flaw in the doctrine of tawhid: If, in the beginning, there was nothing but God, how could God have created anything, unless God created it from himself? And if God did make creation from himself, wouldn’t that violate the oneness and unity of God by dividing God between Creator and creation? Ibn al-Arabi’s solution to this problem was to confirm what Sufis like Shams and Bayazid had been saying all along: If God is indivisible, then nothing can come into existence that isn’t also God. At the very least, Creator and creation must share the exact same eternal, indistinguishable, inseparable essence, meaning everything that exists in the universe exists only insofar as it shares in the existence of God. Therefore, God must be, in essence, the sum total of all existence.10

Les Occidentaux de souche qui s'adonnent au soufisme font parfois preuve d'un manque d'humilité presque naïf. Ils fonctionnent comme si eux seuls étaient maintenant dépositaires de l'initiation, comme si eux seuls avaient accès à l'universalisme de la pensée soufie. Disons-le nettement : les prétentions de certains "akbariens" ou "guénoniens", tantôt implicites, tantôt explicites, sont affligeantes. Ils font presque de Ibn Arabi et de René Guénon des prophètes ou des fondateurs de religion, alors que ceux-ci se sont toujours référé aux sources de la "Religion immuable" (al din al qayyim). Ils ont toujours affirmé que leur rôle était de transmettre, ou au plus de formuler, un dépôt sacré dont ils avaient reçu l'héritage. [Le Soufisme D'occident Dans Le Miroir Du Soufisme D'orient]

Die klassische Sufi Tradition betont sehr stark die göttliche Einheit allen Lebens (tawhid genannt). In dieser Sichtweise, die von Rumi, Ibn Arabi und vielen anderen geteilt - und durch eine Interpretation des Korans selbst gerechtfertigt wird-, kam die ganze Schöpfung ins Sein, um die grenzenlosen, heiligen Eigenschaften durch alle Wesen zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Insbesondere erschuf Gott den Menschen als einen Spiegel, der die Gesamtheit des Göttlichen enthalten und spiegeln könne, einschließlich des ganzen Bewusstseins der Natur und des Universums. Das bedeutet nach Ansicht der Sufis, ein ganzer Mensch zu sein. (S. 20)

The aforementioned philosopher and Sûfî, ibn al-Arabî, saw a young girl in Makkah surround by light and realized that, for him, she was an incarnation of the divine Sophia.

Lubb: In Arabic there is no word for mind. However, in the Qur'an the word that designates a central locus of awareness in the human being is lubb, which means core. It is the heart viewed as an organ of gnosis and not merely as a valave which pumps blood to the head. Ibn al-'Arabi says that it is that part of knowledge which is protected from the hearts which are attached to phenomenal being.

The imagery of intoxication pervades the mystical poetry of Islam, from Attar to Hafiz to Rumi to Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn al-Farid, to Sidi Ahmed al-Alawi and Ibn al-Habib. „The Tavern“, „Wine“, „the Cup“, „Drunkenness“ are powerful mystical symbols that indicate the deep rapture and illumination experienced by the lovers of God. Those who deny the intoxication that comes from worship and remembrance are those who have never experienced it […] hearts overflowing with remembrance of God, filled with Light. Through worship and self-abnegation, they share a taste of the intoxication experienced by those who have entered the Tavern of the Presence and drunk the wine of Light. To deny the possibility of spiritual intoxication is to remove a powerful incentive for purification and worship: an intoxication that removes confusion, a drunkenness with no hangover. What a difference between effulgent rapture and the darkness of an alcoholic stupor! (p. 273)

For this reason each lower Presence is the image and correspondence ( mithal), the reflection and mirror of the next higher. Thus everything that exists in the sensible world is a reflection, a typification ( mithal), of what exists in the world of Spirits, and so on, up to the things which are the first reflections of the Divine Essence itself.Everything that is manifested to the senses is therefore the form of an ideal reality of the world of Mystery ( nana ghaybi), a face ( wajh ) among the faces of God, that is to say, of the divine Names. To know this is to have the intuitive vision of mystic meanings (kashf manawi); he to whom this knowledge is given has received an infinite grace, says 'Abd al-Razzaq Kashani, the commentator of the Fusus. Consequently, all the sciences of Nature are based on the meaning of the typifications of the world of Mystery. And this is one of the interpretations given to the Prophetic maxim: "Men are asleep; at their death they awaken.