SUFISM AND MYSTICISM 21

ation” of the Supreme Being : *“. . . and they will ques-
tion you about the Spirit ; say : The Spirit is of the Order
of my Lord, but you have received but little knowledge.”
(Quran, XVII, 84). In the process of his spiritual libe-
ration the contemplative is reintegrated into the Spirit
and by It into the primordial enunciation of God by
which ““all things were made ... and nothing that was
made was made without it.”” (St. John’s Gospel).!
Moreover the name ‘““Sufi” means, strictly speaking,
one who is essentially indentified with the Divine Act ;
hence the saying that ‘“‘the Sufi is not created” (as-sufi
lam yukhlaq), which can also be understood as meaning
that the being who is thus reintegrated into the Divine
Reality recognises himself in it “‘such as he was’ from

all eternity according to his “principial possibility, im-

mutable in its state of non-manifestation”—to quote

Muhyi-d-Din ibn ‘Arabi. Then all his created modali-
ties are revealed, whether they are temporal or non-
temporal, as mere inconsistent reflections of this princi-
pial possibility.?

1. For the Alexandrines too liberation 19 brought about in three stages
which respectively correspond to the Holy Spirit,the Word and God the Father.

2. Ifitis legitimate to speak of the principial, or divine, possibility of
every being, this possibility being the very reason for his “personal unique-
ness’’, it does not follow from this that there is any multiplicity whatever in
the divine order, for there cannot be any uniqueness outside the Divine Unity.
This truth is a paradox only on the level of discursive reason. It is hard to
conceive only because we almost inevitably forge for ourselves a *‘substantial’
picture of the Divine Unity.

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