[heyday]

The Great Sufi Shaykh, Ibn al- 'Arabi wrote about these very things and William Chittick both translates and comments on the Sufi teachings in The Sufi Path of Knowledge. The following are extracts of both Al-'Arabi and Mr. Chitticks remarks, and I am not going to burden the text by differentiating. (Just read the book!):

Are they equal," asks the Koran, "those who know and those who know not? (39:9)

Knowledge is a divine attribute of all-encompassingness, so it is the most excellent bounty of God. ...For man, the seeker of knowledge, the acquisition of knowledge is endless, since the objects of knowledge are endless. This is the secret of man's felicity. Knowledge, the greatest good, is also the greatest joy and the greatest pleasure. The never-ending trajectory of man's life in the next world has to be explained in terms of his constant growth in knowledge.

For the felicitous, this knowledge is totally congruent and harmonious with their own souls, which have been shaped in this world throught faith and practice, and hence every increase in knowledge is an increase in felicity. For the wretched, knowledge of things as they actually are is a searing torture, since it contradicts their beliefs and practices in this world. Every new knowledge - every new self-discosure, recognized now for what it is - is a new misery.

Unveiling gives knowledge of the actual situation.

And what do we see?
We see that God actually manifests Himself in the forms which make up the contents of the cosmos and our minds. God "imaginalizes" Himself everywhere; werever we look, we perceive His "dream." Hence, we love God in everything that we love. God reveals Himself in every form, thus making it necessary that we love Him an ANY form which we love. Hence, all the Cosmos is noble in respect to its substance. There is no ranking in excellence within it. A maggot and the First Intellect are the same in the excellence of the substance. Ranking in excellence becomes manifest only within the forms, which are the properties of the levels.

The Barzakh or Breath of the All is one entity which is neither Being nor nothingness; it is imagination, which is He/not He. In this intermediary realm, every attribute necessarily goes back to God, who is the source of each reality, even the reality of "nonexistence."

The All undergoes fluctuation in states to make manifest our entities, just as the number "one" undergoes fluctuation in the levels of the numbers to make manifest their entities.

_________ __ ________ __