also at odds with the self-evident truths of sensory perception and direct experience, and of reason and inference. Each of them inevitably takes pleasure in some things and suffers pain from others. He therefore distinguishes between what he eats and drinks and what he does not, and between heat and cold that harm him and those that do not. This distinction between what benefits him and what harms him constitutes the reality of revealed law and religion.

Whoever supposes that a human being can reach a point at which these two are always equal to him has made a false claim and contradicted the self-evident evidence of the senses. A person may, however, occasionally experience a condition such as intoxication, unconsciousness, or something similar that prevents him from perceiving certain things. But for his perception to cease entirely while he remains alive is impossible. Even a sleeping person has not lost his own awareness: in his dreams he sometimes sees things that distress him and at other times things that delight him.

Thus, the states described as overwhelming absorption, self-effacement, intoxication, and the like involve only a lack of awareness of some things rather than others. Although they reflect a deficiency in the person experiencing them—because his discernment is impaired—they never reach a point at which discernment disappears altogether. Whoever denies all discernment in this spiritual station and exalts it has misunderstood both the reality of creation and the reality of religion: divine decree and revealed law. He has misunderstood Allah’s creation and His command, supposing that such a state exists when it has no existence, and supposing it to be praiseworthy when there is nothing praiseworthy in lacking discernment—that is, reason and knowledge.

If you hear some spiritual teachers say, “I wish to have no wishes,” or that one who knows Allah has no interest of his own and becomes like a corpse in the hands of the person washing it, or something similar, this is praiseworthy only with respect to