nature, His attributes and the like make him an
'Arif--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 Hal--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 Islam?"

Death ensues and with it the last stage is reached. (8) It is
Fana--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 {94}
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, Sufiism
possesses no regenerativ