Читать книгу The Kashf al-mahjúb: The oldest Persian treatise on Súfiism онлайн

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Abú Yazíd Bisṭámí says: “I strove in the spiritual combat for thirty years, and I found nothing harder to me than knowledge and its pursuit.” It is more easy for human nature to walk on fire than to follow the road of knowledge, and an ignorant heart will more readily cross the Bridge (Ṣiráṭ) a thousand times than learn a single piece of knowledge; and the wicked man would rather pitch his tent in Hell than put one item of knowledge into practice. Accordingly you must learn knowledge and seek perfection therein. The perfection of human knowledge is ignorance of Divine knowledge. You must know enough to know that you do not know. That is to say, human knowledge is alone possible to Man, and humanity is the greatest barrier that separates him from Divinity. As the poet says:—

Al-`ajzu `an daraki ´l-idráki idráku

Wa ´l-waqfu fí ṭuruqi ´l-akhyári ishráku.

“True perception is to despair of attaining perception,

But not to advance on the paths of the virtuous is polytheism.”

He who will not learn and perseveres in his ignorance is a polytheist, but to the learner, when his knowledge becomes perfect, the reality is revealed, and he perceives that his knowledge is no more than inability to know what his end shall be, since realities are not affected by the names bestowed upon them.