A R R

142 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

it is the irradiation which actualises the predisposition
of the heart; it is the irradiation which gives to the
spiritual state its intelligible quality. It is, says Ibn
‘Arabi, “evident by itself” for it affirms itself imme-
diately and positively in the spiritual state as a divine
“aspect” or “Name,” whereas the predisposition as
such remains—as our author puts it in his Wisdom of
the Prophets (the chapter on Seth)—‘ the most hidden
thing there is.”

According to this latter aspect of things there is
thus nothing in the heart’s receptivity which is not
response to the divine irradiation or revelation, the
lightning flashes of which it intermittently receives.
These flashes vary according to the different *“ aspects
or “Names” of God and the process is never exhausted
either on the side of the divine irradiation, which is
essentially inexhaustible, or on the side of the primor-
dial plasticity of the heart.

Ibn ‘Arabi himself takes his stand alternately at one
or other of these points of view. On the one hand he
affirms that the divine ““content’’ of illumination cannot
be grasped and that only the receptive ““ form > of the
heart—a “form > which unfolds itself starting from the
basic predisposition of the being in question—imparts
its quality or “colour” to the irradiation. On the
other hand he says that the “form’’ the heart takes on
in contemplation of God is wholly wedded to the modes
of the irradiation. What the recipient can impose
on the divine irradiation is in fact only a limitation, and
this limitation is nil compared with its qualitative