The image of the God whom the faithful creates is the Image of the God whom his own being reveals. Thus it is psychologically true to say that 'the God created in the faiths' is the symbol of the Self. The God to whom we pray can be only the God who reveals Himself to us, by us, and for us, but it is praying to Him that we cause the 'God created in the faiths' to be himself enveloped in the Divine Compassion, that is, existentiated, manifested by it. The theophanies of the 'Gods' manifested to the heart or to the faiths are all theophanies of the real One God (Haqq Haqiqi). When we are the musalli, this must be borne in mind he who knows this is the gnostic who has untied the knot of closed, limited dogmas, because for him they have become theophanic symbols.
Quotes about gnostic (5 Quotes)
Questioner How do you know God Abu Asaid al-Kharraz By the fact that He is the coincidentia oppositorum. Corbin's commentary ... the entire universe of worlds is at once He and not-He (huwa la huwa). The God manifested in forms is at once Himself and other than Himself, for since He is manifested, He is the limited which has no limit, the visible which cannot be seen. This manifestation is neither perceptible nor verifiable by the sensory faculties discursive reason rejects it. It is perceptible only by the Active Imagination (Hadrat al-Khayal...) at times when it dominates man's sense perceptions, in dreams or better still in the waking state (in the state characteristic of the gnostic when he departs from the consciousness of sensuous things). In short, a mystic perception (dhawq) is required. To perceive all forms as epiphanic forms (mazahir), that is, to perceive through the figures which they manifest and which are the eternal hexeities, that they are other than the Creator and nevertheless that they are He, is precisely to effect the encounter, the coincidence, between God's descent toward the creature and the creature's ascent toward the Creator. The 'place' of this encounter is not outside the Creator-Creature totality, but is the area within it which corresponds specifically to the Active Imagination, in the manner of a bridge joining the two banks of a river. The crossing itself is essentially a hermeneutics of symbols ..., a method of understanding which transmutes senosory data and rational concepts into symbols (mazahir) by making them effect this crossing.
The 'God created in the faith' manifests Himself no longer in order to impose Himself on the faithful, but in order to express His limits, for these limits are the condition which makes possible one among the many divine epiphanies. The gnostic does not receive a ready-made Image of his Lord, but understands Him in the light of the Image which in the course of his manajat, his intimate dialogue, appears in the mirror of his heart as subtle organ.
I have... had a disturbing dream in which I break through a cave wall near Nag Hammadi and discover urns full of ancient Coptic scrolls. As I unfurl the first scroll, a subscription card to some Gnostic exercise magazine flutters out.
Imam al-Ghazali God is much too great for the senses to reach Him or for reason and logic to plumb the depths of His Majesty. Indeed, He is much too great for anyone but Himself to plumb the depths of His Majesty or for anyone but Himself to know Him. Verily, no one knows God but God. The highest degree of gnosis that His servants can attain is the realization that true gnostic knowledge of Him is impossible for them. Furthermore, no one can know that in its totality except a Prophet of a righteous saint (siddiq). As for the Prophet, he has clearly expressed this by saying, 'I cannot enumerate the ways of praising Thee Thou art as Thou has praised Thyself.' As for the righteous saint, he says, 'The incapacity to attain realization is a realization.'