of Súfíism regarding the Divine nature. (4) Knowledge. The meditation in the preceding stage, and the investigation of the metaphysical theories concerning God, His nature, His attributes and the like make him an 'Árif—one who knows. (5) Ecstasy. The mental excitement caused by such continued meditation on abstruse subjects produces a kind of frenzy, which is looked upon as a mark of direct illumination of the heart from God. It is known as Hál—the state; or Wajd—ecstasy. Arrival at this stage is highly valued, for it is the certain entrance to the next. (6) Haqiqat—the Truth. Now to the traveller is revealed the true nature of God, now he learns the reality of that which he has been for so long seeking. This admits him to the highest stage in his journey, as far as this life is concerned. (7) That stage is Wasl—union with God.
"There was a door to which I found no key;
There was a veil past which I could not see:
Some little talk of Me and Thee
There seemed—and then no more of Thee and Me."
He cannot, in this life, go beyond that, and very few reach that exalted stage. Thus arose a "system of Pantheism, which represents joy and sorrow, good and evil, pleasure and pain as manifestations of one changeless essence." Religion, as made known by an outward revelation, is, to the few who reach this stage, a thing of the past. Even its restraints are not needed. The soul that is united to God can do no evil. The poet Khusrau says: "Love is the object of my worship, what need have I of Islám?"
Death ensues and with it the last stage is reached. (8) It is Faná—extinction. The seeker after all his search, the traveller after all his wearisome journey passes behind the veil and finds—nothing! As the traveller proceeds from stage to stage, the restraints of an objective revelation and of an outward system are less and less heeded. "The
religion of the mystic consists in his immediate communication with God, and when once this has been established, the value of ecclesiastical forms, and of the historical part of religion, becomes doubtful." What law can bind the soul in union with God, what outward system impose any trammels on one who, in the "Ecstasy," has received from Him, who is the Truth, the direct revelation of His own glorious nature? Moral laws and ceremonial observances have only an allegorical signification. Creeds are but fetters cunningly devised to limit the flight of the soul; all that is objective in religion is a restraint to the reason of the initiated.[[84]]
Pantheistic in creed, and too often Antinomian in practice, Súfíism possesses no regenerative power in Islám. "It is not a substantive religion such as shapes the life of races or of nations, it is a state of opinion." No Muslim State makes a national profession of Súfíism.
In spite of all its dogmatic utterances, in spite of much that is sublime in its idea of the search after light and truth, Súfíism ends in utter negation of all separate existence. The pantheism of the Súfís, this esoteric doctrine of Islám, as a moral doctrine leads to the same conclusions as materialism, "the negation of human liberty, the indifference to actions and the legitimacy of all temporal enjoyments."