92 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

 

individuals but each individual includes in itself a vir-
tuality of all possibilities of the species. Man has in him
the nature of woman and vice versa and this is so
from the very origin of beings. ‘‘Fear your Lord Who
created you from a single soul (min nafsin wahidah),
Who created from it its spouse and from this pair has
produced men and women in great number” (Quran,
1V, 1). Inthe same way the world or the macrocosm
clearly ‘““contains” man who is himself its integrating
part. But man knows the world and, given the princi-
pial unity of Being and Knowledge, this means that all
the possibilities of the world are in a virtual and princi-
pial sense present in man. Man and the cosmos are, as
was said above, like two mirrors each reflecting the
other; hence the Sufi saying that ‘“the universe is a big
man and man a little universe” (al-kawnu insanun kabi-
run wa-l-insanu kawnun saghir). 1t may also be said
that the universe and man are forms of the Universal
Spirit (ar-Ruh) or of the Divine Spirit, or that the two
are complementary aspects of one single ‘‘ pancosmic”’
being, a symbol of God. However the ““outward” or
“objective” form of the macrocosm cannot be grasped in
its totality because its limits extend indefinitely, where-
as the form of man is known. This leads us to say that
man is a qualitative ¢“ abridgement™ of the great cosmic
“book,” all universal qualities being in one way or an-
other expressed in his form. Again, the Prophet said
that “God created Adam in His (own) form™, which
means that the primordial nature of man is as it were
the symbolical final term and in a sense the visible