“And He said to me, ‘The surface of the Sea is a gleam that cannot be reached.’” [Any one who depends on external rites of worship to lead him to God is following a will-o’-the-wisp.] “And its bottom is a darkness impenetrable.” [To discard positive religion, root and branch, is to wander in a pathless maze.] “And between the two are fishes which are to be feared.” [He refers to the middle way between pure exotericism and pure esotericism. The ‘fishes’ are its perils and obstacles.] “Do not voyage on the Sea, lest I cause thee to be veiled by the vehicle.” [The ‘vehicle’ signifies the ‘ship,’ _i.e._ reliance on something other than God.] “And do not cast thyself into the Sea, lest I cause thee to be veiled by thy casting thyself.” [Whoever regards any act as his own act and attributes it to himself is far from God.] “And He said to me, ‘In the Sea are boundaries: which of them will bear thee on?’” [The ‘boundaries’ are the various degrees of spiritual experience. The mystic ought not to rely on any of these, for they are all imperfect.] “And He said to me, ‘If thou givest thyself to the Sea and sinkest therein, thou wilt fall a prey to one of its beasts.’” [If the mystic either relies on secondary causes or abandons them by his own act, he will go astray.] “And He said to me, ‘I deceive thee if I direct thee to aught save Myself.’” [If the mystic’s inward voice bids him turn to anything except God, it deceives him.] “And He said to me, ‘If thou perishest for the sake of other than Me, thou wilt belong to that for which thou hast perished.’ “And He said to me, ‘This world belongs to him whom I have turned away from it and from whom I have turned it away; and the next world belongs to him towards whom I have brought it and whom I have brought towards Myself.’” [He means to say that everlasting joy is the portion of those whose hearts are turned away from this world and who have no worldly possessions. They really enjoy this world, because it cannot separate them from God. Similarly, the true owners of the next world are those who do not seek it, inasmuch as it is not the real object of their desire, but contemplate God alone.] The gnostic descries the element of reality in positive religion, but his gnosis is not derived from religion or from any sort of human knowledge: it is properly concerned with the divine attributes, and God Himself reveals the knowledge of these to His saints who contemplate Him. Dhu ’l-Nūn of Egypt, whose mystical speculations mark him out as the father of Moslem theosophy, said that gnostics are not themselves, and do not subsist through themselves, but so far as they subsist, they subsist through God.