Note 240 — Chapter XII

نفوس کاملہ انسانی nafus Kamilah insáni. Insan kamil, “the perfect man,” according to the doctrine of the Súfis, is, “the reunion of all the worlds, divine and natural, universal and partial; he is the book in which all books, divine and natural, are reunited. On account of his spirit and intellect, it is a reasonable book, called ‘the Mother of Books;’ on account of his heart, it is the book of the well-guarded table (al lowh); on account of his soul, it is the book of things obliterated and of things written; it is he who is then the venerable sublime and pure pages, which are not to be touched, and the mysteries which cannot be comprehended but by those who are purified from the dark veils. The relation of the first intelligence to the great world, and to its realities themselves, is as the relation of the human soul to the body and its faculties; for the universal soul is the heart of the great world, as the reasonable soul is the heart of the man, and it is on that account that the world is called ‘the great Man.’”—(Definitions de Jorjani. Not. et Ext. des MSS., vol. IX. pp. 86-87). In the passage just quoted, Silvestre de Sacy thinks the perfect man is equal to the first intelligence.—The book of “things obliterated and of things written, the world of transitory things, in which life and death succeed each other.”—The universal soul is an emanation of the divinity, subordinate to the first and universal intelligence.