148 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

case of the material mirror. When you contemplate
forms in it you do not see the mirror, though you know
it is only thanks to the mirror that you see these forms
—or your own form. God has manifested this pheno-
menon as a symbol especially appropriate to the reve-
lation of His Essence so that he to whom God reveals
Himself should know that he sees Him not ... So force
yourself to see the body of the mirror while looking at
the form reflected in it : never will you see both at the
same time. So true is this that some, having observed
this law of the reflection in mirrors (whether material
or spiritual), have held that the reflected form is inter-
posed between the sight of him who contemplates and
the mirror itself, and this is the loftiest thing they have
grasped in the domain of intellectual knowledge. In
reality it is as we have said above—that is, that the
reflected “form” does not essentially hide the mirror,
since the mirror manifests the form and we know im-
plicitly that we see it only by virtue of the mirror. The
spiritual point of view inherent in this symbolism is
analogous to that of the Vedanta. The impossibility of
grasping the mirror “objectively” at the same time as
we contemplate our image in it expresses the ungrasp-
able character of Afman, the Absolute “Subject,” of
which all things, including the individual subject, are
only illusory ‘‘objectivations.” Like the expression
“Divine Subject,” the symbol of the mirror evokes a
polarity whereas the Essence is beyond all dualism such
as that of “‘subject” and ‘“object”: this, however, is
something no symbol could express.