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Introduction L ess bounded by logic and the expectations of reason, dreams seem to create their own rules. A friend might appear in the form of someone else—and yet the dreamer never hesitates to recognize her. A person might even change forms in the duration of a dream, or fly, or experience non sequitur shifts in health, or meet those who have died. Abstract concepts such as “strife” might appear in tangible forms such as animals or the wind. Yet while often strange and unpredictable, dreams do observe the boundaries of human experience. Forms, lights, symbols, sounds, and scenes in the dream world all have some basis in the world of wakefulness . In other words, dreaming does not propose an entirely new method of perception , nor does it introduce visions or thoughts completely unfamiliar to the human imagination. Rather, a person comes to the dream world with presuppositions, memories, and familiar faculties (especially sight and audition). What the soul encounters during the unconsciousness of slumber is not material like the world of the outer senses; that is certain. Equally certain, however, is the seeming materiality of the soul’s experience: The soul sees in forms. This fascinating and yet everyday phenomenon of dreaming gives us a starting place for discussing visionary experience in the Sufi tradition. This is not a book about dreams. Rather, this book considers those who encountered the world around them with the spiritual clarity we might only have in dreams: medieval Muslim mystics, who apperceived the divine in matter and in forms. However distant we may feel from the proclamations of the Sufis, in our most profound dreams we have all beheld the abstract in images and sounds. We have all “seen,” via representational forms, that which cannot be seen: deceit, friendship, emotions, hopes, and meaningful abstractions. While this differs from mystic experience, we can at least begin to familiarize ourselves with mystical claims of encountering meaning in sensory fashion. I hope that by reflecting on the altered perception claimed by mystics, through this example as well as throughout the present book, the complex and contradictory language of mysticism will come to new life. Islamic mysticism particularly yearns for such new life. After all, a labyrinth of misunderstandings , surrounding Islamic mysticism and even Islam itself, has arisen from a failure to acknowledge the relevance of vision. By considering the sensory as a vehicle for 2 Sufi Aesthetics that which the soul beholds, the imaginative literature of Islamic mysticism will seem far less imaginary. The erotic poetry produced by medieval Muslim mystics will seem far less allegorical. Moreover, the paradise found in the Qur’an, in the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and in centuries of Islamic literature, will seem far less simplistically profane. Let there be no ambiguity about this. This study, while focused on a particular school of witnessing and love found in the world of Sufism, responds to questions raised by those who have mishandled the Islamic tradition. Some, coming from a perspective in which neat distinctions between sacred and profane or spiritual and corporeal must exist, have failed to understand Sufi expressions of eroticism in poetry. Others have taken the matter even further. Recent discussions of the Qur’anic paradise as an abode of meaningless sensual pleasure, as a meeting place for lascivious , self-righteous fanatics, have so misunderstood the spirituality and vision behind Qur’anic paradisal imagery that a new perspective is necessary, one informed by some of the most profound instances of contemplation on Islam’s sacred sources. While it might take many chapters to work through the complexities of this vision and its workings, my hope is that, by the end of this book, one can understand that what is granted to mystics in this world can be granted to the believer in the next, namely, visions of God, his attributes, and his names, in a manner that corresponds to the propensities of the human experience and acknowledges the purposefulness of that human experience. Thus it is that this book, much like the writings of the Sufis it discusses, largely concerns vision, especially the envisioning of the divine in forms. If the word “beauty” also arises, it is only because God, when seen, is the Absolutely Beautiful. Seeing God—as impossible as that may or may not be in this temporal world of ours—stands as the apex of spiritual felicity, not only in Islamic mysticism, but even in the Qur’an itself. Vision in Islamic Mysticism It is...

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