It has already been established, in our view, that human rational souls differ from one another in quiddity (māhiyyah) and substance (jawhar). Some are noble, divine, and celestial; others are dark, turbid, and profane. . . . Once this has been established, we say: among souls there are those whose very substance and essence are, from the outset, divine souls—disposed toward the Presence of Holiness [or the Holy], endowed with an abundant love for It, and deeply immersed in the degrees of its knowledge. Others possess something of these qualities, yet only in a weak measure. Still others are murky and darkened souls, devoid of these divine attractions and spiritual inclinations, submerged in the sea of passing passion and in the darkness of the world of the senses and fancy.To make these meanings more vividly clear, let me offer the following analogy. The mountains and hills of the world are of two kinds: in some there occurs mineral deposits, while in others there are not. Induction shows that mountains devoid of minerals are far more numerous than those in which minerals are formed. Furthermore, among the mountains that do produce minerals, some yield only inferiour, base substances, such as petroleum, sulfur, lime, and salt; while others produce previous, noble minerals, such as gold, silver, ruby, spinel, and the like. Again, induction shows that the mountains containing these precious and noble minerals are vastly fewer than those producing only the inferiour kinds. We may further observe that, among those mountains which contain these previous and noble minerals—the seven principal metallic bodies—the baser the metal, the more abundant its deposits; whereas the nobler the metal, the scarcer its occurrence.Let human souls be understood by analogy with mountains and hills, and let the lights of the knowledge and love of God correspond to pure, refined gold. Just as most of the mountains and hills of this world contain no mineral deposits at all, so too the souls of most human beings are devoid of any inclination toward the world of spiritual realities. Moreover, even if souls of this kind were to devote themselves to the most rigourous bodily disciplines, they would derive but little benefit from them, just as a mountain lacking any mineral vein yields nothing at all, no matter how much effort one expends in excavating it.And just as the mountains that do contain minerals differ from one another in degrees of richness and abundance beyond all possibility of precise measurement, so too the ranks of souls differ in strength and weakness, in greater and lesser capacity, by differences that admit of no exhaustive determination. And just as it is not impossible that, on rare occasions, there should exist a mountain containing a cavern filled with gold, so likewise it is not impossible that, in widely separated æons, there should arise a human being whose inward cavern of spirit is filled with the lights of the Divine Majesty.
Once you have grasped this analogy, you will understand that not everyone who undertakes spiritual discipline—even in its most arduous forms—is thereby destined to attain anything. Nor does everyone who attains something thereby reach the final end. Indeed, the ultimate end in this path admits of no limit. For just as there is no end to the Majesty of God or to the sublimity of His Greatness, so there is likewise no end to the degrees of beatitude attainable upon this path.
Therefore, keep this analogy constantly before your eyes and firmly fixed in your imagination, lest you be deceived into thinking that everyone who travels the path arrives, or that everyone who seeks necessarily finds. We do not deny that these spiritual disciplines have certain effects in some respects, for perseverance in practice does indeed produce effects of a certain kind. Yet it is evident that merely applying kohl to the eyes is not the same as possessing dark, thick eyelids.1
How excellent are the words of the Sage of Poets [= al-Mutanabbī]:
The heart is urged to forget you,Yet innate nature refuses to be transformed.
Aristotle likewise said: ‘‘Whoever wishes to embark upon the pursuit of these divine sciences must acquire for himself another nature’’ What he means is that one must exert oneself to strip the intellect of its attachments to sense, to mere assumptions (wahm), and to fancy.
1 This line is from a line of verse by the poet al-Mutanabbī, which reads more beautifully in Arabic: وليس التكحُّل في العينين كالكَحَل.
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