THREE ASPECTS OF THE WAY 109

something supra-individual because it is universal.
The virtues retrace in the individuality and in an
existential mode the stages or the modes of knowledge
and they are consequently reflections of knowledge, not
cerebral and fleeting reflections, but reflections firmly
fixed in the will ; in other words they are acquisitions
of being and not improvisations of thought. For this
very reason virtues are indispensable supports of know-
ledge and this is why Sufis identify them with spiritual
degrees.

This brings us to the theory of the spiritual “state
(al-hal) and the spiritual “station’ (al-magam) which
must be briefly mentioned. In this sense of the term
a ““state’ is a passing immersion of the soul in the
Divine Light. According to their intensity and dura-
tion ‘““states” are spoken of as *glimmers” (lawa‘ih),
“flashes” (lawami), *‘irradiation” (tajalli), etc. A
“station” is a ‘“state’ that has become permanent.
The correspondence between the various  stations”
and spiritual virtues is inevitably very complex ; the
ethical trace of a spiritual degree is the more subtle as
the degree is more lofty and the incommensurability
between the Reality contemplated and the human re-
ceptacle more profound. The various psychological
definitions of the spiritual stations have above all a
speculative or suggestive value.

The spiritual virtues, like the Divine Qualities
which they reflect in the human order, can be considered
separately and distinctly with greater or lesser degrees
of differentiation, or they can be summed up in a few