A person often sees his own beliefs take shape, so that what he experiences through spiritual unveiling and direct witnessing is precisely the error he already believes. A Christian may even see, in his unveiling, the Trinity in which he believes. No created being except the prophets is protected from being left in error. How, then, could anyone other than a prophet obtain a divine light through which he perceives the realities of the unseen and the mysteries of these matters are disclosed to him as they truly are, such that he independently perceives the attributes of the Lord and His angels, and what Allah has prepared in Paradise and Hell for His allies and His enemies?

This account draws originally upon the doctrines of the philosophizers and the esoteric Qarmatians, who regard prophethood as an emanation from the Active Intellect upon the prophet’s soul. They identify the images arising within his soul as Allah’s angels, and the sounds he hears within himself as Allah’s speech. They therefore regard prophethood as something that can be acquired: when a person prepares himself through spiritual discipline and purification, what emanated upon the souls of the prophets emanates upon him. In their view, this account is false by the unanimous agreement of Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Even so, these people do not claim that everyone can attain through spiritual discipline what someone more perfect than himself has attained. On this premise, therefore, it is inconceivable that ordinary people could attain what the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—attained, no matter what they did. Thus, if knowledge of what he reported could be obtained only through this path, a person could not know it at all.

Furthermore, it is well known that, if this were possible, the earliest pioneers would have been more entitled