Ibn El-Arabi

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Mohiudin ibn El-Arabi - Sufi Mystic - 13th Century

 

The Three Forms of Knowledge

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

dictum:

 

There are three 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 feeling 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 experientalists use the second form. Others use

the two combined, or either one alternatively.

 

But the 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.

..............ONS..Tony.