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159 part iii Intellect The Sufi saint, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, is someone who understands how his own limited created nature shapes and, in fact, distorts his reception of God’s gift of existence and his gift of intellectual illumination. But because he has this realization, the Sufi saint is also able to rise above this limitation. Through the exercise of the analogical imagination, he is able to see God in all things and in all thoughts. The saint becomes a pure mirror in and through which God is reflected. As a pure, polished mirror, the Sufi saint sees the Real with the “heart,” in the special sense that we shall see below. When he knows the Real with his heart, the Sufi’s entire being— body, soul, and, particularly, intellect—“beats” to the rhythm of divine manifestations in creation. In this sense, the Sufi saint rises above mere rationality and becomes pure intellect, that is to say, a pure and undistorted mirror of the divine Essence fully conformed to the divine Reality. What allows the saint, however, to conform to the divine manifestations in creation is the Holy Qur’an. By assimilating the words of the Qur’an into his or her heart, the Sufi saint becomes conformed to the activity of the divine as a key to its proper lock. Hence, the Sufi saint becomes annihilated in his or her self only to become more receptive to the words of the Holy Qur’an. For Eckhart as well, the goal of the spiritual life is not to “know” an image of God or to “have” an image of God, but to be the image of God. Eckhart explains that it is the nature of an image qua M 160 Intellect image not to have any being of its own but to reflect entirely and wholly that of which it is the image. Its essence is through and through relational. Thus, to be an image of God for the soul is to be wholly related to God without any attachment to any possession or even being of one’s own. The being of such a soul is to reflect God’s Being. For Eckhart, the essence of intellectuality is fulfilled when there is perfect conformity between knower and known. Insofar as the human being is a finite creature, the essence of intellectuality remains unfulfilled, because there cannot be a perfect conformity to the divine image. He or she can only know God by analogy. But when he or she is an image of God, there is perfect conformity and thus true intellectuality. This, for Eckhart, is the true sense of imagination: actually to become an image qua image. What this means in practical terms, for Eckhart, is that the human being must reflect God’s Word in his or her every thought and action, to allow the divine Word and his or her relation to it to become the ultimate basis of his or her life and action. Hence, there is an absolute necessity for scriptural exegesis in the writings of both Eckhart and Ibn ‘Arabi for the fulfillment of true intellectuality . For both Ibn ‘Arabi and Meister Eckhart, scriptural hermeneutics is an eminently philosophical or metaphysical activity, essential to any science of being that is true, because it conforms the soul to the inner and transcendent Logos of all things. Reason becomes intellect in the interpretation of the revealed text in that revelation pulls the soul out of itself, forces it to let go of its finite attachments and calls it to subsist in the Logos of all things, which is intellect in all of its purity. Left to its own devices, reason becomes egocentric, relating reality only to itself and its finite concepts. As such, reason without revelation is cut off from true intellectuality. It is only when reason is called out of itself by revelation that it rises to the level of intellect, where is becomes a pure and detached reflection of truth in itself. ...

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