Unveiling

Because everything is defined and shaped by our final cause or telos, it follows that the final cause or telos of humanity can no longer be ignored and it must be recognized, even if certain people continue to ignore it and refuse to recognize it. As has been stated:

Have I learnt all, globally and distinctly, 

Of Thine Essence, O Thou, in Whom all Qualities are united?

Or is Thy Face too sublime for Thy Nature to be grasped?

I understand then that His Essence cannot be understood. 

Far be it from Thee that anyone may fathom Thee, and far be it from Thee

That anyone ignore Thee, – Oh perplexity!

In any case, such knowledge or understanding of the “final cause” or telos is nevertheless “unveiled” (Tajalli) regardless of whether it is ignored, recognized, or misunderstood. This “unveiling” (Tajalli) may contradict what some people are prone to believe, while for others, the “unveiling” confirms what has long been perceived or intuited through the intellect, with the intellect being wholly a matter of heart and soul rather than a matter which pertains to mere cognition or sensory perception. In fact, this “unveiling” (Tajalli) will occur even to those who ignore it and refuse to recognize it based on the attribute or “name” through which the denial of recognition or ignorance is being perpetuated and carried out. It has been written:

To he who invokes the Names of my well Beloved, I reply; I call, and Layla replies to my call. 

It is thus because we are but one single spirit; You call us two bodies, it is strange; We are as one single person having two names and one single essence. 

By whatever Name thou dost invoke the Essence, that is the Name which will visit thee. 

My essence is His Essence, and my name is His Name. My relation towards It, is that I am engulfed in the Union. In Reality we are not two essences in a single being, But the lover is himself the Beloved.

As the Sufi mystic and scholar Abdul Karim Al-Jili wrote: “And know that the perception of the Supreme Essence consists in that thou knowest, in the path of Divine intuition, that thou art Him, and He is thee, without there being fusion of the two, the servant being servant and the Lord being Lord, not that the servant becomes Lord, nor that the Lord becomes servant.”

Al-Jili added:

“Now, if thou knowest this truth by the path of intellectual taste (Zawq) and of Divine intuition (Kashf) which exceeds direct science and vision – and it will be only after the essential ‘crushing and self-effacement,’ the sign of this intuition consisting in the fact that there is first the ‘extinction’ (Fana) of ‘me’ by the unveiling of the Lord, then extinction of the Presence of the Lord by the unveiling of the secret of the Lordship and finally extinction of that which depends on the Qualities by the realization of the Essence – if then this happens to thee, thou hast attained the Essence.” 

It follows that the essence is grasped and understood as a result of an ascension through the “hierarchy” of human faculties and into the realm of the intellect. It is in the realm of the intellect where “lord and servant” become one as a result of the “primordial unity” which emerges between the supreme intellect and the individual intellect by virtue of the individual’s ascension through the “hierarchy” of faculties. In turn, the intellect gathers knowledge as well as an understanding of absolute reality “from its most exalted to its most based aspects” not through “the explorations of thought” as Ibn Arabi argued. Rather, one’s knowledge, perception, and understanding of absolute reality “depends solely upon unveiling (Tajalli), from which one knows the principle of the world’s forms which receive His spirits.”

Yet, the irony is that even though absolute reality is revealed or ‘unveiled’ to mankind through the one to whom the absolute reality is being revealed or unveiled (Insan al-Kamil), the fact of the matter is that: “The world is visible and the Vicegerent is invisible. That is why the sultan is set under the veil.” As a result, it is only under the most strict and stringent conditions and controls by which the unveiling can occur and transpire.