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SUFISM AND MYSTICISM i

in its spiritual actuality and its own modes of expres-
sion, from the framework imposed on the individual
by religion and also by reason, and in this sense the
inner nature of the Sufi is not receptivity but pure act.

It goes without saying that not every contemplative
who follows the Sufi way comes to realise a state of
knowledge which is beyond form, for clearly that does
not depend on his will alone. None the less the end in
view not only determines the intellectual horizon but
also brings into play spiritual means which, being as it
were a prefiguring of that end, permit the contemplative
to take up an active position in relation to his own
psychic form. Instead of identifying himself with his
empirical “I” he fashions that “I”’ by virtue of an
element which is symbolically and implicitly non-
individual. The Quran says : ““We shall strike vanity with
truth and it will bring it to naught” (XXI, 18). The
Sufi ‘Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish prayed : ‘Strike with
me on vanity that I may bring it to naught.” To the

extent that he is effectively emancipated the contempla-

tive ceases to be such-and-such a person and ‘‘becomes”
the Truth on which he has meditated and the Divine
Name which he invokes.

The intellectual essence of Sufism makes imprints
even on the purely human aspects of the way which may
in practice coincide with the religious virtues. In the
Sufi perspective the virtues are nothing other than
human images or “‘subjective traces’’ of universal Truth ;!

1. Tt will be recalled ti.at for Plotinus virtue is irtermediate between the
soul and intelligence.

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