SUFI INTERPRETATION OF THE QURAN 43

interpretation is limited to the idea of the recompense
and punishment. The Sufi understands this verse of
the Quran in the sense of the saying of the Prophet:
“He who knows himself (nafsahu) knows his Lord.” !
The latter interpretation is no less faithful to the literal
meaning than is the exoteric interpretation, and indeed
it brings out the whole logical strictness of the formula,
though without excluding the application envisaged by
the learned men  of the exterior”, (‘Ulam@ az-zahir).
In the same way, when the Quran affirms that the
creation of the heavens and the earth and all creatures
was, for God, like the “creation of a single soul ”’, the
exoteric interpretation will at most see here the simul-
taneity of the whole creation where the exoteric inter-
pretation at the same time also deduces from it the
intrinsic unity of the cosmos, which is constituted as
single universal being,.

At times the Sufi exegesis in a sense reverses the
exoteric meaning of the text. Thus, the Divine warn-
ings of destruction and annihilation, which are ““ from
the outside” applied to the damned, are incidentally
interpreted as describing the self-examination and ex-
tinction of the soul in spiritual realisation. Indeed the
point of view proper to the individuality as such and
the point of view of transcendent, impersonal intellect
may contradict one another by the very fact of their

1. This interpretation is further confirmed by the context of the passage
quoted from the Quran. Thus, when it is said that on the day of resurrection
man wi'l receive an open book: ‘““read thy book; it sufficeth that thou
shouldest this day make up thine own account,” the Last Judgment is
presented as a knowledge of oneself with regard to which man’s will will be
thereafter entirely passive.