Mystics hold Allah reveals Himself in five planes: (1) the plane of the Essence, (2) the plane of the Attributes, (3) the plane of the Actions, (4) the plane of Similitudes and Phantasy, and (5) the plane of sense and ocular vision. Each of these is a copy of the one above it, so that whatever appears in the sensible world is the symbol of an unseen reality.

Knowledge is not the prolific retention of traditions but a light which floods the heart.

You should know, too, that he whose heart is saturated with anger, greed, indulgence, and readiness to slander people is actually a beast although he appears in the form of a human being. He who has keen insight regards the real meaning of things and not their form. In this world forms obscure the realities which lie within them, but in the hereafter forms will conform to realities and the latter will prevail. For this reason every individual will be resurrected according to his own spiritual reality; the slanderer will be resurrected in the form of a vicious dog; the greedy, a wild wolf, the haughty, a tiger, and the ambitious, a lion. Traditions have attested to this and the men of insight and discerning have testified to it.

The primary study of the man who wishes to be a poet is his own knowledge, entirely. He seeks for his soul, inspects, tempts it, instructs it. As soon as he knows it, his duty is its cultivation... the soul must be made monstrous... I say that he must be a voyant, make himself into one. The poet makes himself into a seer by a long, tremendous and reasoned derangement of the senses.