Then this man said: ‘Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has a reality that, at present, He alone knows.’ He then vacillated, saying on one occasion: ‘No one other than Him can know the reality of the Lord Most High, either in this world or in the Hereafter.’ On another occasion he said: ‘Rather, whoever perceives the Lord Most High and sees Him will know it. He—glorified be He—sees Himself and knows His own reality; and when we see Him, we shall know His reality.’

Judge Abū Bakr said: The word ‘sense’ may be used to mean perception: someone is said to have sensed something when he has perceived it. It may also mean a bodily organ. If by ‘sense’ Dirār means an organ and a physical structure unlike those of the other senses in the observable world, then the claim that perception requires a physical structure has already been refuted. If he maintains that the perception he affirms falls outside the category of perceptions, except that it differs from them because its object differs from theirs, then this is correct, but he was mistaken in calling it a sixth sense. If, in advancing his view, he was alluding to differences among perceptions, then perceptions in the observable world would exceed