From the time that they set out on this path, revelations commence for them. They come to see in the waking state angels and souls of prophets; they hear their voices and wise counsels. By means of this contemplation of heavenly forms and images they rise by degrees to heights which human language cannot reach, which one cannot even indicate without falling into great and inevitable errors. The degree of proximity to Deity which they attain is regarded by some as intermixture of being (_haloul_), by others as identification (_ittihād_), by others as intimate union (_wasl_). But all these expressions are wrong, as we have explained in our work entitled _The Chief Aim_. Those who have reached that stage should confine themselves to repeating the verse— What I experience I shall not try to say; Call me happy, but ask me no more. In short, he who does not arrive at the intuition of these truths by means of ecstasy, knows only the _name_ of inspiration. The miracles wrought by the saints are, in fact, merely the earliest forms of prophetic manifestation. Such was the state of the Apostle of God when, before receiving his commission, he retired to Mount Hira to give himself up to such intensity of prayer and meditation that the Arabs said: “Muhammed is become enamoured of God.” This state, then, can be revealed to the initiated in ecstasy, and to him who is incapable of ecstasy, by obedience and attention, on condition that he frequents the society of Sufis till he arrives, so to speak, at an imitative initiation. Such is the faith which one can obtain by remaining among them, and intercourse with them is never painful. But even when we are deprived of the advantage of their society, we can comprehend the possibility of this state (revelation by means of ecstasy) by a chain of manifest proofs. We have explained this in the treatise entitled _Marvels of the Heart_, which forms part of our work, _The Revival of the Religious Sciences_. The certitude derived from proofs is called “knowledge”; passing into the state we describe is called “transport”; believing the experience of others and oral transmission is “faith.” Such are the three degrees of knowledge, as it is written, “The Lord will raise to different ranks those among you who have believed and those who have received knowledge from Him” (_Koran_, lviii. 12). But behind those who believe comes a crowd of ignorant people who deny the reality of Sufism, hear discourses on it with incredulous irony, and treat as charlatans those who profess it. To this ignorant crowd the verse applies: “There are those among them who come to listen to thee, and when they leave thee, ask of those who have received knowledge, ‘What has he just said?’ These are they whose hearts God has sealed up with blindness and who only follow their passions.”