%

 

18 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

for esotericism, it realises that intelligence which is
beyond forms and it alone moves freely in its limitless
space and sees how relative truths are delimited.!

This brings us to a further point which must be
made clear, a point, moreover, indirectly connected
with the distinction drawn above between true mysticism
and religious “mysticism.” Those who stand “outside”
often attribute to Sufis the pretension of being able to
attain to God by the sole means of their own will. In
truth it is precisely the man whose orientation is to-
wards action and merit—that is, exoteric—who most
often tends to look on everything from the point of an
effort of will, and from this arises his lack of under-

standing of the purely contemplative point of view which
[ envisages the way first of all in relation to knowledge.
In the principal order will does in fact depend on

knowledge and not vice versa, knowledge being by its
nature “impersonal.” Although its development, start-
ing from the symbolism transmitted by the traditional
teaching, does include a certain logical process, know-
ledge is none the less a divine gift which man could not
take to himself by his own initiative. If this is taken
into account it is easier to understand what was said
above about the nature of those spiritual means which
are strictly “initiatic’’ and are as it were a prefiguring of
the non-human goal of the Way. While every human
efi'ort  every efiort of the will to get beyond the hmlta-

those means Wthh are, S0 to say, of the same nature as
oot

1. The Quran says: ‘‘God created the Heavens and the earth by the
Truth (al-Haqq)”. (LX1V,3)