84 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

itself corresponds to the universal Soul (an-Nafs al-
kulliyah).! TFor the Prophet said that the ““first thing
God created is the Pen; He created the (guarded)
Tablet and said to the Pen: Write! And the Pen
replied : and what shall I write? (God) said to it:
Write My Knowledge of My creation till the day of
resurrection ; then the Pen traced what had been
ordained.” So the Spirit includes all the Divine
Knowledge concerning created beings, and this means
that it is the Truth of truths or the Reality of realities
(Hagigat al-Haqa’iq) or—according to the aspect in
which it is envisaged—the direct and immediate mani-
festation of this Reality of realities.

Certain Sufi writers, such as ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jili,
give the name Holy Spirit (Rah al-Quddius) to the
uncreated essence of the Spirit and compare it to the
Face of God (Wajh Allah); this is what is here to be
understood by the divine Intellect.

The uncreated essence of the Spirit corresponds to
what Hindus call Purusha or Purushottama ; its creat-
ed nature corresponds to what they call Buddhi, the
“Intellectual Light.”” Now Buddhi is the first product

1. The individual soul is conditioned by form ; the universal Soul is
necessarily beyond form. In either case Soul is to Spirit as is substance to
essence, or materia to forma, this last expression being taken, not as form
which limits but as the *‘ formative ** essence. Thus individuals are distingu-
ished by virtue of the Spirit, just as they are escentially united in it, and are
substantially united in the universal Soul while differentiated by virtue of
their forms, the  plastic” suoport of which is precisely the universal or
“ total ”* Soul. Insofar as the Spirit is polarised in a certain sense in relation
to each particular being we can speak of many ¢ spirits.”” The essential
oneness of the Soirit thus in no wise implies that man’s spirit is definitely
reintegrated into It merely by the death of the body ; for it is the soul which
individualises the spirit, acd the soul is immortal.