Suhrawardi - Three Treatises on Mysticism.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

27
CHAPTER ELEVEN,
Whatever is useful and good is bad; whatever is the
veil of the is
way the unbelief of men. To be satisfied with
self through what it acquires and to make up with that is a
weakness in the path of the [mystical] travelling and to be
pleased with oneself is vanity, although
it is on account of
Truth. To turn the face towards God entirely
is liberation.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
A fool placed a light before the sun and said: U O
mother, the sun has made our light invisible. " She replied:
"If it is taken out of the house, especially near the sun,
nothing will remain. Then the light arid its brilliancy will
vanish/' But when one sees a big thing he considers a small
one contemptible in comparison with that. One who enters
a house from the sunshine cannot see anything although
it (the house) is illuminated. "Everyone that is thereon
will pass away; there remaineth but the countenance of thy
Lord of Might and 7
1 u
Glory/ Is not everything except
God in vain ?" 2 "He is the First and the Last, and the
Outward and the Inward; and He is Knower of all things." 8
not God Himself th\t is present everywhere. In fact, they have assigned
Him a definite place, the 'arsh. The author meets their arguments by saying:
God does not live in a place, and He is therefore not in directions, because
he \vho lives in a house is in directions, since the house is in directions. He
also proves this by a neg itive proof according to ^
*. He further
negates their contention of "Everything of the house resembles the landlord"
which is based on r> Jl J Al -> a* Jf by quoting the Quranic verse*^ ^^ and
concludes that the house and the master of the house are not one from
which it follows by inference thitGod is free from place and direction.
1. Quran LV, 26-27.
2. From Labid ;
cf. A. Huber, Der 1)1 wan des Libid, ed. C. Brockelmann,
Leiden 1891, p. 28.
3. Quran LVlf, 3.