They believe the emanating principle, proceeding from God, can do nothing without His will and can refrain from nothing that He wills. Some of them deny the existence of evil on the ground that nothing but good can come from God.
The Dabistan: One sect, “the Eternals,” conceive that man is taught his duty by a mysterious order of priesthood,[44] whose number and ranks are fixed, and who rise in gradation from the lowest paths to the sublimest height of divine knowledge.
Another sect, “the Enlightened,” teach that men’s actions should neither proceed from fear of punishment nor the hope of reward, but from innate love of virtue, and detestation of vice.
THE SOUL, ITS LIFE AND CONDITIONS.
The soul existed before the body and is confined in it like in a cage. To the Sufi, death is liberation and return to the Deity.
The soul is confined in a body (metempsychosis) to be purified, to fulfill its destination, the union with Deity.
Without the grace of God (Fazlu allah) no soul can attain this union, but God’s grace can be obtained by fervently asking for it.
The soul of man is of God, not from God, an exile from Him; it lives in the body as in a prison and banishment from God. Before its exile the soul saw Truth, but here it only has glimpses “to awaken the slumbering memory of the past.” The object of all Sufi teaching is to lead the soul onward by degrees to reach that stage again.
“You say ‘the sea and the waves,’ but in that remark you do not believe that you signify distinct objects, for the sea when it heaves produces waves, and the waves when they settle down again become sea; in the same manner men are the waves of God, and after death return to His bosom. Or, you trace with ink upon paper the letters of the alphabet, a, b, c; but these letters are not distinct from the ink which enabled you to write them; in the same manner the creation is the alphabet of God, and is lost in Him.”
RELIGIONS