Three Forms of Knowledge

ISLAMIC MYSTICISM (TASAWWUF)

image source: flickr photos
Text source: "The Way of The Sufi", by Idries Shah


Ibn El-Arabi of Spain instructed his followers in this most ancient dictum:

There are there forms of knowledge. The first is intellectual knowledge, which is in fact only information and the collection of facts, and the use of these to arrive at further intellectual concepts. This is intellectualism.

Second comes the knowledge of states, which includes both emotional feelings and strange states of being in which man thinks that he has perceived something supreme but cannot avail himself of it. This is emotionalism.

Third comes real knowledge, which is called the knowledge of Reality. In this form, man can perceive what is right, what is true, beyond the boundaries of thought and sense. Scholastics and scientists concentrate upon the first form of knowledge. Emotionalists and experientialists use the second form. Others use the two combined, or either one alternatively.

But people who attain to truth are those who know how to connect themselves with the reality which lies beyond both these forms of knowledge. These are the real Sufis, the Dervishes who have attained.

Relevant Post:
states and jackals

Hunger for knowledge or indigestion of teachings!

FULL UP
(from Idries Shah's book, 'Wisdom of the Idiots')

A man came to Bahaudin Naqshband, and said:
'I have travelled from one teacher to another, and I have studied many Paths, all of which have given me great benefits and many advantages of all kinds.
'I wish to be enrolled as one of your disciples, so that I may drink from the well of knowledge, and thus make myself more and more advanced in Tariqa, the Mystic Way.
Bahaudin, instead of answering the question directly, called for dinner to be served. When the dish of rice and meat stew was brought, he pressed plateful after plateful upon his guest. The he gave him fruits and pastries, and then he called for more pilau (rice), and more and more courses of food, vegetables, salads, confitures.
At first the man was flattered, and as Bahaudin showed pleasure at every mouthful he swallowed, he ate as much as he could. When his eating slowed down, the Sufi Sheikh seemed very annoyed, and to avoid his displeasure, the unfortunate man ate virtually another meal.
When he could not swallow even another grain of rice, and rolled in great discomfort upon a cushion, Bahaudin addressed him in this manner:
'When you came to see me, you were as full of undigested teachings as you now are with meat, rice and fruit. You felt discomfort, and, because you are unaccustomed to spiritual discomfort of the real kind, you interpreted as a hunger for more knowledge. Indigestion was your real condition.
'I can teach you if you will now follow my instructions and stay here with me digesting by means of activities which will not seem you to be initiatory, but which will be equal to the eating of something which will enable your meal to be digested and transformed into nutrition, not weight.'
The man agreed. He told his story many decades later, when he became famous as the great teacher Sufi Khalili Ashrafzada.