The Sufis' theory of prophethood and messengership

to itself, by a self-disclosure in which it calls its own self to itself in the manner the self-disclosure requires. Nor is this far-fetched; it is rather like what is observed in us, of our souls’ rebuking of themselves and their urging of themselves. And the overflow of this self-disclosure comes by turning toward its true principle; so when he is wholly absorbed in the summoning of the self-disclosures, there comes to him the turning away from the world of the immaterial beings, and he reflects and takes counsel. And when the morning of the Reality breathed forth, while the people of the human realm lay in a slumber of their ignorance, He sent a herald: come to success, for the morning has risen! Men differ in their response according to their degrees in the slumber of heedlessness; and whoever awoke from his heedlessness and was illumined by the sun of his own reality stood in for the summoner in his summons. By this the knot was made fast through his messengership. This is the language of Sufism (taṣawwuf).

An Influx (wāridah)

Perhaps in what preceded you took note that the immaterial is no native seat of change and alteration, of generation and corruption, since it is free of the sensory motion that requires these; so the human rational souls endure with the endurance of Being. And since Being in all its degrees is active, the rational soul has acts according to its rank — and this, while it is in its body, is nothing but governance (tadbīr). As for what comes after its parting from the human body, the schools have divided over its verdict. (One party says) that the soul has no state in which it is not governing a human body, so that it does not sink from it to the animal and the plant, nor does it slacken from governance; and whenever a garment wears out it puts on another of this same species. That, then, is the locus of manifestation of its good and its evil, its torment and its bliss.

(Another party says) that when the body is disabled, its habitus (malakāt) and its apprehensions become manifest to it, and it has thereby either grief and regret or joy and exultation; so it does not attach itself to a body so long as those habitus remain within it. But when they pass away and it becomes bare, it returns to the governing of the plant and ascends to humanity, and so on, out of its longing for its own degree of governance over this world.

(Another party — and these are the philosophers) say that the soul may part from this body unto endlessness; and since the Real in all its degrees is active, as has preceded, and the soul thereby has the rank of act, its full manifestation is in the world of intellection and of the acquisition of character — like a sultan’s son who yearns for his father’s rank but, by reason of his own deficiency, withdraws into some quarter and displays his sovereignty there, consoling himself with it and taking pleasure and delight, deposing and appointing, exalting and abasing. Such too is the soul in the world of intellection and the acquisition of character: if it has set that right and ordered it as it ought to be, then after parting from the body it is an existence within its own causes, taking pleasure in its degree and exulting in its sovereignty; and in the measure of deficiency in that are the torment and the pain.

(Another party — and these are the Sufis) say that when the Real summoned His modes, upon His prophetic tongue, to enter into His Presence, He commanded them that they should thereupon clothe themselves in garments befitting that Presence, and should divest themselves of all else. So whoever understood the symbol and undid the riddle, passed away in absolute annihilation (fanāʼ), joined himself to the Presence of Liberality, and saw nothing but Being itself — his pleasure is the light of Being, and that is (that) which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it occurred to the heart of anyone. And whoever looked to the outward of the state and acted upon what he understood of the utterance’s sense — for him were planted, in the soil of his own soul, the trees of bliss; so that every deed he did came forth to him, at the body’s ruin, as pleasures according to what he had been accustomed to and had taken pleasure in; and he had thereby the enclosures (al-ḥawz) and the youths, the bracelets and the crowns. And whoever set out toward the Path, but was heedless of what the company seeks, and lagged behind in the journey, and put on the garments of harm (al-ḍayr) — those deficiencies appeared to him as serpents and scorpions, chains and fetters; and he remains so until he is sanctified and becomes one of the foremost. And whoever turned away from the Path altogether and was occupied with other things than God, away from that return