that? Another point of disagreement is whether punishment in this world and the Hereafter can be known through reason alone. A fuller discussion of this belongs elsewhere.

Some have posited a third category of goodness and badness, claiming agreement on it: an action’s being an attribute of perfection or deficiency. Most earlier scholars who discussed this question did not mention this category. Some later scholars, however, did mention it, such as al-Rāzī, who adopted it from the philosophers. Upon examination, this category is no different from the first. The perfection a person acquires through certain actions ultimately comes back to what is agreeable or contrary to his interests—that is, pleasure or pain. The soul takes pleasure in what perfects it and suffers from deficiency. Thus, perfection and deficiency ultimately come back to what is agreeable and what is incompatible. This is discussed at length elsewhere.

(The point here) is that the distinction between good actions, through which the person performing them experiences pleasure, and evil actions, through which he experiences pain, is a matter of sensory perception recognized by all animals.

Thus, if someone who claims insight into the reality of divine decree, annihilation in the oneness of divine lordship, and istilām claims that he remains in ‘ayn al-jam‘ (undifferentiated awareness), such that he does not distinguish between what causes pain and what gives pleasure, his claim is known to be false—if he understands what he is saying. Otherwise, he is astray, speaking of something whose reality he does not understand. This is usually the case with those who speak about this. For one of these people may experience this state—“the experience of annihilation in the oneness of