Chapter Ten: On that to which the people of felicity ultimately come.

Chapter Ten: On that to which the people of felicity ultimately come. So we say: Those who are perfected in this felicity are of two kinds — for you have already come to know that these sciences and dispositions terminate either in a nature or in a habit.

And although habit (custom), viewed from another angle, likewise terminates in natural disposition—and in any case natural disposition has some point of entry into all these sciences: the one of hot temperament is fiercer and more prone to anger, the one deficient in blood is more prone to cowardice, and so forth. It is therefore possible that there should occur, among the temperaments, a temperament that is balanced to its utmost degree, or close to that. In that case the activity of its non-rational faculties, and whatever hindrance they pose to the perfection of the rational faculty, is limited to the measure necessarily entailed in the perfection of the rational faculty itself by its attachment to the world of nature and matter and its being tainted by their concomitants. So the dominion, in that case, within all the faculties—and over them—belongs to the rational faculty, since they are not impeding it from its perfection, that is, not diverting it toward their own side; hence it holds absolute dominion. And when it is thus, then, when it turns its attention to the bodily faculties, it attends to them as [does] any one of [ordinary] people, without excess, but rather in the measure that is fitting.

And when it returns to its imaginal perfections — that is, its apprehended perfections — in accordance with the stable imaginal forms it apprehends, and this [return] is available to it, it returns without any impediment from the body, and so it witnesses the imaginal forms of the objects of desire and the pleasures, free of material pain, and [likewise] the existents and known objects that are in the imaginal world; for the connections and concomitants that obtain in the world of sense are [also] present in the imaginal world without impediment — except that there is there [a difference of] intensity and weakness according to the soul's firmness or the lack thereof. This [holds] when it returns to the world of intellect — I mean the world in which there is no impediment, no multiplicity, and no veils, which is the world of light, of pure splendor, and of the immaterial [beings] — [when] this is available to it: then it apprehends and attains all the pleasures and felicities without any one of them distracting [it] from another, and [it apprehends] all the connections and the sciences [belonging to] the world of sense and imagination — in accordance with what has been established concerning the states of these three worlds by demonstration in metaphysics and by experience and unveiling (kashf).

However, this noble human being, whenever he descends to a [lower] world, is not heedless of what is above him in a summary (undifferentiated) way — such that, were he to turn his attention [to it], he would apprehend [it] — because the higher is the inner reality of the lower, and there is no obstruction; And whenever he ascends to a higher world, he is not heedless of the lower, because the lower exists within the higher in a nobler and more luminous mode.

The worthiest of the objects of apprehension is the apprehension of the First One, exalted be He, and [the apprehension] that He is the Existent in reality — that is, through Himself and for Himself — and that what is other than Him exists through Him and is, in itself, nothing; and this means that no existent has any subsistence before Him. For this reason he apprehends nothing other than the First Real, exalted be He; and so he apprehends everything — even his own self — through Him, exalted, and he performs all his acts through Him, exalted: not that he wills an act for His sake, exalted, but rather he wills Him, exalted, so that the act issues from him. Between the two meanings there is a great difference, which complete reflection yields.

It has thus become evident that this human being apprehends and witnesses nothing other than Him (exalted), while through Him he apprehends every object of apprehension and every object of knowledge. It has likewise become evident that in none of his acts does he will anything other than Him (exalted) — except that the act simply comes to occur; and that is because the object of will is the object of knowledge, and since he has no object of knowledge except Him (exalted), he has no object of will except Him (exalted). It has likewise become evident that he is never pained by anything whatever, since it is posited that he neither sees nor faces anything but Him; and that he takes delight in nothing but Him (exalted), rejoicing and being gladdened as intensely as can be — rather, the more the affliction upon him intensifies, the more his ecstasy and jubilation intensify; and he is serene in Him, submitting to Him, content with Him, reliant upon Him. And it has become evident that thereby he attains all the virtues and loses all the vices, so that he becomes courageous, temperate, wise, and just, and there is found in him nothing of the opposites of these nor of the ramifications of their opposites. Rather, all the attributes of the Real (Blessed and Exalted) appear and are brought to completion in him, since everything in him other than the lordly aspect is consumed; and this notion is a further matter, posterior to the initial perfecting of his virtues by reason of the equilibrium of the temperament — for this is, in truth, a burning-away and a severing of the matter of natural vice and its turbidities.

This is the summary account concerning the condition of the human being of balanced temperament and innately strong constitution; a further portion of his condition will become apparent hereafter, God willing.

As for the human being who brings his faculties into balance by art and habit, his condition comes close to resembling the [former's] condition — except that the difference is the difference between innate nature (fiṭra) and discursive thought. For the balancing and the work of thought, inasmuch as it is the ordering of premises by choice and by deliberation to the extent of one's capacity, may sometimes err through the occurrence of a hidden mistake within its interstices and by degrees. For the first [type] too, although in traversing the road of perfection it is not free of some gradation, still the gradation there is without impediment except at the extremity of weakness — unlike what obtains in this class that relies on art and on theoretical investigation along the road of acquiring the perfections.

In sum, this group, in their journeying along the path of perfection, have other conditions in respect of which they differ from the people of innate equilibrium. For the soul, at the very first instant, if the side of the natural faculties — appetite and anger — comes to prevail within it, that [prevailing] turns it toward their side, and dominion belongs to them; and when it is so, it yields to whatever appetite or anger requires, and their settled dispositions take shape. And since the rational faculty is [thereby] made subservient beneath that, it turns its apprehensions toward what accords with the acts of those two [appetite and anger] — by reason of the likening to subjugation mentioned earlier — so it assents to the posited matters congruent with the soul's caprice: the nobility of leadership, rank and prestige, good repute and its perpetuation, and the rest of the exalted matters in the world of positing.

Nonetheless, within these degrees people differ greatly: the one of fallen aspiration and base innate nature (fiṭra) yields to appetite, the intermediate one to anger, and the lofty one to estimative matters; and it seldom happens that all three coincide in a single person. This is because the estimative acts occur through the operation of the rational faculty, which constitutes man's species (speciates man) — as has passed — and although that faculty is made subservient under another, still the acts are its own acts, which hold fast to its innate nature, so that it is the more intensely in contact with, and adherent to, man. The acts of anger, likewise, are as it were an isthmus between the acts of appetite and the acts of estimation, for their matter is in the end appetitive, while that which brings them about and gives them form is the soul. Thus it stands below the purely estimative things and above the purely appetitive things in respect of adherence to man. And if you survey the states of people in their appetites, their dominations, and their purely estimative opinions, and reflect upon that with a full and truthful reflection, and compare them one with another, you will find many witnesses to the truth of what we have stated. For every person base of nature and abased among people sees for himself a rank and appurtenances drawn from the estimative things, in whose pursuit he ransoms all his appetites and dominations and prefers nothing over that rank — even if the divergence among such people in these matters runs along many courses.

And so, when the state of the soul in itself is this [as just described], then the first step that the perfect ones, who [further] seek their own completion, take upon this path is the wresting of the soul away from love of the world — I mean [detachment from] the settled dispositions of appetite, irascibility, and estimative fancies, in the order already mentioned, since you have come to know that this [love of the world] is the head of every sin. And that is because preparedness precedes the effluence. So when the soul is purified with purity, the human being returns to the height and to the imaginal world; and the more it is purified the more effluence it receives; and whenever it returns to its own world it sees lights and forms of a desired shape, resembling worldly forms in one respect — gardens and springs and a noble station, and houris and immortal youths, with cups and ewers and a goblet from a flowing spring. And perhaps, in this state, it gains a glimpse of one of the events — future, past, or hidden — owing to its inclination toward the interior of the corporeal world and its apprehension of the connections and the concomitants, an apprehension.

And these notions increase from weakness to intensity in proportion as the soul's withdrawal and its turning toward the side of the Real — blessed be He — grow stronger, until that becomes a settled disposition, one with which the return to that place is attained by the slightest act of attention and regard.

And there are many details beyond the compass of exposition, which those who attain — from among its people — reach. The pivot of all of it is that the soul, when it touches something of the world of light and immateriality (tajarrud), renders (ḥakat) that by means of a corresponding form drawn from the forms in the world of sense. And perhaps, in the earliest phases of the state, awe-inspiring forms or dreadful things appear — a rendering of what the soul encounters of notions that it deems strange and by which it feels estranged, owing to its unfamiliarity at the outset in this world — or [else] the things are sensed as delightful, surpassing ⟨those⟩ of the world of sense.

From here it becomes evident … that this rank is not permanent but is, after firm establishment (rusūkh), inevitably exchanged for one better than it. This being so, the abstracting-away from the residues of the world of nature and its traces — namely, these particular apprehensions — does not cease: [it proceeds] by inclining toward their inner reality, and the spirit coursing through them and directed toward the Absolute Real, blessed and exalted, until the particular apprehensions and the forms that represent them come to be. These are the last of these forms, just as the first of them are forms that represent the world of sense most strongly in [their] lack of regulation; and the cause of that is manifest. After that there comes about the apprehension of the immaterial entities, the lower [first], then the higher, so that therein one beholds their secrets — the two worlds of sense and of image (the imaginal) — and resplendent existents free of pains, darknesses, and veils; and yearning, ecstasy, and love intensify.

The higher he ascends, the more deeply he penetrates into the inward. And the ascent proceeds from a [transient] state (ḥāl) to a [settled] disposition (malaka), until these worlds are brought to completion — worlds wherein is 'that which no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor has it occurred to the heart of any mortal.'

And up to this station the Real (exalted) is witnessed only through something other than Him, and that is not the true [mode of] witnessing (al-mushāhada) — and that is evident. His being witnessed (exalted) therefore depends upon forgetting the other, and then upon forgetting the self and passing away (fanāʾ) in the witnessing of Him.

When that forgetting and this forgetting have come to pass, the light of the One Real—blessed and exalted—dawns upon the grades of His names, His attributes, and His essence; thereupon all evils, deficiencies, and pains are effaced, and there remains only sheer existence—the pure reality of every perfection, without multiplicity. And everything that is in the lower worlds is attained in the noblest manner that can be; and this is a station lying beyond the compass of exposition.

After this rank comes the rank of witnessing pure unity, with no aspect of multiplicity at all — even if it be within the very locus of unity. Then, once rootedness has been attained and intimacy has been firmly confirmed, turning toward what is other than it does him no harm, since there is no 'other'; so that everything he finds, sees, and encounters, he finds only the One Real (God), blessed and exalted. And likewise in his acts: this perfect human being sees the Real through the Real and creation through the Real, and nothing distracts him from anything, nor one concern from another. So the attributes of the Real become manifest in him, and His — the Exalted's — acts issue from him, so that there is with him neither free choice nor compulsion. This, then, is the summary account of the states that await the perfected ones — except that the one perfect by innate disposition (fiṭra) has, in all of this, a more abundant share than his counterpart who attains perfection through art.

And let it be known that pure purity [al-ṣafāʾ al-maḥḍ] belongs only to the last rank; as for what is before it, it is possible for an affliction to arise that entails deviation — for so long as the soul persists it remains capable of both extremes, of felicity and of wretchedness, owing to the presence of the causes of both together with it.

As for the final rank, in it there is neither cause, nor multiplicity, nor independence.

Among people there is one who halts partway along the road; and among them one who turns back in retrograde regress; and among them one who sweeps past like the sweeping of a shooting star. The determining pivot in this rests upon [the soul's] attentive concern: were it not for external causes, a halting would occur at it [i.e., at the object attended to], on account of an independence accruing to the object of concern, so that the manifestation of the effects of that station is brought to completion — and this is evident. The likeness of this is only the likeness of one who beholds a thing from behind many panes of glass: whenever his sight fastens intently upon one of them, he does not see what lies beyond it, and [instead] his vision of that [pane] is brought to completion. This is contrary to the case of the possessor of the last rank, who witnesses the Real (al-Ḥaqq) and [who witnesses] creation through the Real; and there is no nobility like this loftiness of aspiration.

And with respect to the remainder of what has not been mentioned of the character traits, states, and acts, the condition of this human being who is felicitous through acquisition resembles the condition of the human being who is felicitous by innate nature.

Then know that here there are ranks according to the partitioning of the innate disposition (fiṭra), as you have already come to know in [the case of] acquisition; so the number varies, and it may be that it becomes composite in some people.

These, then, are the summary accounts of the states of the perfected people of felicity in their journey toward their perfection. Most of them — especially the latter ones — are, in the view of some people, of the same kind as the illusion produced by a conjurer, while for others they belong to the [category of] the charismatic grace (karāma) reserved for those worthy of it; there is no [use in] disputing with them. So let us now embark upon the summary accounts of the states of the people of wretchedness.