ability to act and puts the will to act in his heart, and that human actions are metaphorical and that God is the real agent. Muḥammad b. Wási` says, describing the gnostic: “His words are few and his amazement perpetual,” because only finite things admit of being expressed in words, and since the infinite cannot be expressed it leaves no resource except perpetual amazement. Shiblí says: “Real gnosis is the inability to attain gnosis,” i.e. inability to know a thing, to the real nature of which a man has no clue except the impossibility of attaining it. Therefore, in attaining it, he will rightly take no credit to himself, because inability (_`ajz_) is search, and so long as he depends on his own faculties and attributes, he cannot properly be described by that term; and when these faculties and attributes depart, then his state is not inability, but annihilation. Some pretenders, while affirming the attributes of humanity and the subsistence of the obligation to decide with sound judgment (_taklíf ba-ṣiḥḥat-i khiṭáb_) and the authority maintained over them by God’s proof, declare that gnosis is impotence, and that they are impotent and unable to attain anything. I reply: “In search of what thing have you become so helpless?” Impotence (_`ajz_) has two signs, which are not to be found in you: firstly, the annihilation of the faculties of search, and secondly, the manifestation of the glory of God (_tajallí_). Where the annihilation of the faculties takes place, there is no outward expression (_`ibárat_); and where the glory of God is revealed, no clue can be given and no discrimination is conceivable. Hence one who is impotent does not know that he is so, or that the state attributed to him is called impotence. How should he know this? Impotence is other than God, and the affirmation of knowledge of other than God is not gnosis; and so long as there is room in the heart for aught except God, or the possibility of expressing aught except God, true gnosis has not been attained. The gnostic is not a gnostic until he turns aside from all that is not God. Abú Ḥafṣ Ḥaddád says: “Since I have known God, neither truth nor falsehood has entered my heart.” When a man feels desire and passion he turns to the soul (_dil_) in order that it may guide him to the lower soul (_nafs_), which is the seat of falsehood; and when he finds the evidence of gnosis, he also turns to the soul in order that it may guide him to the spirit, which is the source of truth and reality. But when aught except God enters the soul, the gnostic, if he turns to it, commits an act of agnosticism. There is a great difference between one who turns to the soul and one who turns to God. Abú Bakr Wásiṭí says: “He who knows God is cut off from all things, nay, he is dumb and abject (_kharisa wa-´nqama`a_),” i.e. he is unable to express anything and all his attributes are annihilated. So the Apostle, while he was in the state of absence, said: “I am the most