. . T AN = ‘w-‘mn-iqfi:;* = = o T Eaget 44 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE opposition, which is real though not absolute. Finally there is the exegesis founded on the phonetic symbolism of the Quran. According to this science each letter—i.e. each sound, since Arabic writing is phonetic—corresponds to a determination of primordial and undifferentiated sound, which is itself like the sub- stance of the perpetual Divine enunciation. Modern Europeans have difficulty in conceiving that a sacred text, though clearly linked with certain historical con- tingencies, corresponds, even in the very form of its sounds, to realities of a supra-individual order. It will therefore be as well to give here a brief summary of the theory of the revelation of the Quran. According to the “inner meaning’’ of the surat al-qadr (XCVII) the Quran “ descended ” as a whole during the ““night of predesti- nation’” as an undifferentiated state of Divine knowledge and was ““fixed,” not in the mind of the Prophet, but in his body, i.e. in the mode of consciousness identified with the body the relatively undifferentiated nature of which is related to pure cosmic potentiality.! Always potentiality is “night’’ because it contains the possibili- ties of manifestation in a total and intermingled way. In the same way the state of perfect receptivity—the state of the Prophet when the Quran “ descended ’—is a 1. R. Gu:non wrote thus of the ‘‘night of predestination *’, the lailatu’l-qadr, in which the descent (tanzil) of the Quran took place : 5o ove: THTNS night, according to the commentary of Muhyi-d-Din ibn ‘Arabi, is identified with the very body of the Prophet. What should be particularly noted here is that the “‘ revelation ** was received, not in the mind. but in the body of the beirg *“ entrusted with the mission ”” of expressing the Principle. The Gospel also says: ‘“ Et verbum caro factum est”” (*“And the Word was made flesh *’) (caro and not mens) and this is another and a very exact exoression, in the form proper to the Christian tradition, of what the /ailatu’l-qadr represents in the Islamic tradition.” (Translated from Les Deux Nuits, in Etudes Traditionnelles, April and May, 1939).