The word Sunna, meaning the Practice, derives from the root SNN, meaning 'to form'. It is nothing less than the form of man, that is, man as a living social organism, man in his wholeness. Any mechanistic or legal idea from your Judaic or Christian background must be removed before you can open to this reality which is utterly organic, physical and metaphysical, a spontaneous human creature in harmony with his creation being the end result, and not an inhibited and outwardly controlled animal. The error of the Jews was not that they failed to obey the Law, but that they turned what was a scientific Law about man – that is, if you do this, that happens – into a legalistic structure exterior to and imposed on man. The error of the Jews made it inevitable that when the existential reality of lawfulness, in its organic sense, the Messiah, appeared, they could not recognise him. So involved were they with the theory, they failed to identify the practice in a living and perfect exemplar. The error of the Christians was its counterpart – so determined were they to enshrine the metaphysical aspect of man's nature, so terrified were they of losing the secret of man's glory, that they felt obliged to enshrine it in a Mystery, in symbol and ritual, letting its protectors be an elite whose raison d'etre was to guard the Secret, until in the end these men did not feel obliged to respond to the social obligations of the teaching, so that they became immoral and corrupt in the name of the perfect Teacher. These two attitudes are what may be understood as 'religion', they are the forms that bind together (religio) a people in an exploitation that must inevitably lead to tyranny.