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The_Savior_from_Spiritual_Error, page : 47
(4) the Sufi or Mystics, who claim that they alone enter into the `presence‟
(sc. of Allah), and possess vision and intuitive understanding.
I said within myself: `The truth cannot lie outside these four classes.
These are the people who tread the paths of the quest for truth. If the truth
is not with them, no point remains in trying to apprehend the truth. There is
certainly no point in trying to return to the level of naive and derivative belief
(taqlid) once it has been left, since a condition of being at such a level is
that one does not know one is there; when a man comes to know, the glass
of his naive beliefs is broken. This is a breakage which cannot be mended,
a breakage not to be repaired by patching or by assembling of fragments.
The glass must be melted once again in the furnace for a new start, and out
of it another fresh vessel formed‟.
I now hastened to follow out these four ways and investigate what these
groups had achieved, commencing with the science of theology and then
taking the way of philosophy, the `authoritative instruction‟ of the Batiniyah,
and the way of mysticism, in that order.
(sc. of Allah), and possess vision and intuitive understanding.
I said within myself: `The truth cannot lie outside these four classes.
These are the people who tread the paths of the quest for truth. If the truth
is not with them, no point remains in trying to apprehend the truth. There is
certainly no point in trying to return to the level of naive and derivative belief
(taqlid) once it has been left, since a condition of being at such a level is
that one does not know one is there; when a man comes to know, the glass
of his naive beliefs is broken. This is a breakage which cannot be mended,
a breakage not to be repaired by patching or by assembling of fragments.
The glass must be melted once again in the furnace for a new start, and out
of it another fresh vessel formed‟.
I now hastened to follow out these four ways and investigate what these
groups had achieved, commencing with the science of theology and then
taking the way of philosophy, the `authoritative instruction‟ of the Batiniyah,
and the way of mysticism, in that order.