124 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

The sensory faculties may themselves become sup-
ports for the Spirit or mirrors which refract its light.
Also every sensory faculty—whether it be hearing,
seeing, smelling, taste or touch—implies a unique
essence which distinguishes it in quality from the other
faculties, and this essence has its prototype in Pure
Being. For the spiritual man who realises Being in
relation to one of these prototypes the respective faculty
becomes the direct expression of Universal Intellect so
that he either ‘“hears’’ the eternal essences of things or
““sees”’, them or ““tastes’ them.! From another angle
intuition appears of itself in one case or another as a
““hearing” (sama‘), as a ‘“vision” (ru’yah) or as a
““taste” (dhawq) which is intellective in its nature.

It was said above that the two faces of the Spirit,
the ontological and the intellectual, are respectively re-
flected in the heart and the reason. At a more external
level the existential aspect of the Spirit is reflected in
speech, the complement of reason ; indeed the Universal
Spirit is at the same time Intellect (‘A4g/) and Word
(Kalimah), the direct ‘‘enunciation’ of Being. Both
these aspects are to be found in the Greek word Logos
which means principle and also idea and speech ; in the
same way man is°defined either as a ‘“ thinking animal >’
or as an ““animal endowed with speech” (haywan natig).
From the principial point of view the idea is dependent
on the Word, inasmuch as it is an intellectual reflection
of Reality, but in man the idea precedes speech. In the

1. See also the translation of ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jili’s Universal Man
selections) in French ; collection * Soufisme,’” 1953.