WILLIAM C. CHITTICK

Averroes: "How did you find the situation in unveiling
and divine effusion? Is it what rational consideration
gives to us?

Ibn al-'Arabī:"Yes and no. Between the yes and the no
spirits fly from their matter and heads from their bodies." ¹

SUFISM, SOMETIMES CALLED "Islamic mysticism," has been found wherever there have
been Muslims. In general, Sufis differ from ordinary Muslims by stressing inward-
ness and spirituality rather than activity and Law. ² Sufis have tried to intensify and
perfect their knowledge of God, and one of the natural results of these efforts has
been the direct experience of the object of faith. Descriptions of such experiences
are always expressed in terminology that is recognizably Islamic, but those who speak
of it unanimously assert that they have witnessed the single and unique Reality that
underlies all appearances and all experience.

Sufism has an enormous primary literature, most of it unpublished and little of it
translated. Writings that have a distinctively Sufi flavor appear in the eighth-century
C.E. and have continued to be written throughout the Islamic world down to modem
times. Here I can do no more than look at a few teachings of the most widely influ-
ential Sufi author since the thirteenth century, Ibn al-'Arabī (d. 1240), known to the
tradition as the "greatest master." It needs to be kept in mind that Ibn al-'Arabī's
writings represent "an ocean without shore," as his foremost student in the West has

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