Fusus al-Hikam The Seals of Wisdom by Shaykh al ... - ImagoMundi

what they indicate from text, immediate or implicit. If he gives him something, that
thing is subject to interpretation, unless it is manifest in the senses as it is in the
imagination, and so does not require interpretation. It is based on this aspect that
Ibrahim, the intimate friend, relied, even as Taqi ibn Mukhallad did. The vision has
these two aspects. (6)
Allah taught us adab in what He did with Ibrahim and what He said to him when He
gave him the station of prophethood. We know that when we see Allah in a form which
logical reason rejects, we must interpret that form according to the Sharî'a, whether it is
in the state of the one who sees Him, or in the place in which He is seen, or the two
together. If logical reason does not refute it, then we take it as we saw it, just as when
we see Allah in the Next World.
So the One, the All-Merciful,
has forms in every place from what is hidden and what is manifest.
If you said, "This is the Real!" you spoke truly;
and if you said, "It is something else," you interpreted.
His principle is not in one place rather than another,
but it brings the Real to the creatures.
When He manifests Himself to the eyes,
the intellects deny him by insistent proofs.
He is accepted in the tajalli to the intellects,
and in that which is called the imagination (khayâl).
That which is sound is the seeing.
Abu Yazid, (7) may Allah be pleased with him, says of this station, (8) "Had the
Throne, and all it contains a hundred million times over, been in one of the corners of
the heart of the gnostic, he would not have felt it." This is the magnitude of Abu Yazid
in the world of bodies, but I say, "If the limitlessness of that which exists could be
conceived of as being limited, and had it been contained as an existent source in one of
the corners of the heart of the gnostic, he would not have been aware of it in his
knowledge." For it is confirmed that the heart contains Allah, although it is not
described by satiety. Had it been filled, it would have saturated.
Abu Yazid also said, "We have pointed to this station, saying:
O Creator of things in Yourself,
You encompass all You have created!
You create that whose being has no end in You,
for You are narrow and vast!
Had that which Allah created shone in my heart,
this shining dawn would not have shone.
But that which contains Allah
does not exclude creation.
How is that, O Hearing?
Anyone can create by illusion in his imagination that which has no existence save in the
imagination. This is a common matter. By aspiration (himma), the gnostic creates that
which has an outside existence in his aspiration. However, it continues only as long as
the aspiration continues to preserve it without being tired by preserving what it created.