Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/211

 n-Nun, and implies fana or "passing away," i.e., insensibility to the things of this world, and finally baqa or "continuance" in God. Usually this experience is accompanied by loss of sensation, though this is not always the case, and there are many legends of Sufi saints which represent them as totally unconscious of violence of wounds; and this is not confined to legend, for most extraordinary sufferings are endured, apparently with perfect placidity, by darwishes at the present day, perhaps in accordance with psychological laws which are imperfectly understood, and this is the underlying idea in the exercises undergone by the Rifa'i darwishes and others. The exercise known as zikr (dhikr) or "remembering," in accordance with the command in Qur. 33, 41, "remember God often," is an attempt to make an advance towards the ecstatic state. It was perhaps under Sufi influence that we find philosophy inclining to prefer knowledge obtained by immediate intuition; it was certainly under such influence that ecstasy is treated as a means of obtaining such direct apprehension of truth in the later philosophers.

(ii.) The Sufi doctrine of God as the only reality has a direct bearing not only on creation but also on the problem of good and evil. As a thing can only be known by its opposite, light by darkness, health by sickness, being by non-being, so God could only be made known to man as reality contrasted with non-reality, and the mingling of these two opposites produces the world of phenoma in which light is made