The realm of imagination predominates among them. Sometimes they imagine things that have a reality, and sometimes things that have none: the imagined divinity of human beings, the imaginings of Christians, the notion of the Awaited One, and the notion of the ghawth (Helper) residing in Mecca, through whom they imagine the affairs of heaven and earth are governed. Thus al-Tilimsānī says, “Through spiritual unveiling, we have established what contradicts clear reason.”

For this reason, the practitioner of spiritual seclusion is afflicted with three delusions:

First, he believes that he himself has the greatest aptitude of all people.

Second, he imagines that his shaykh is the most perfect person on earth.

Third, he imagines that he can attain his goal without any means, relying chiefly on the power of imagining. Imagined notions may indeed produce effects, but they are false, as with the shaykhs who have not followed the paths prescribed by religious law and prophethood, whether in rational inquiry or practice, but have instead followed the Sabian path.

Resembling these people in certain respects are most of the Ahmadiyyah, Yūnusiyyah, and Harīriyyah; many of the ʿAdawiyyah and the followers of al-Awhad al-Kirmānī; and a great many Sufis and dervishes in the lands of the East. Thus permissiveness prevails among them, and they do not believe in the obligations and prohibitions of religious law.

When they engage in unrestricted devotional practice, they do not know in their hearts who their deity is. If their heretical adepts define him, they identify him with absolute existence. Some of them worship righteous human beings, their graves, and the like. At times they resemble the polytheists, and at times they resemble