the essence of comparison and reasoning by analogy. For understanding something through the familiar, habitual use of comparison and analogy is easier than grasping something immediately without a known parallel.
What is seen in this manner—in this state and in the preceding one—exists within a person’s heart and soul, even though it is a likeness of reality and a means of apprehending it.
What is seen in the first manner, however, is the very thing that exists externally, not something seen within the heart. Some philosophizing laypeople claim that the speech the prophets hear and the angels they see exist only within their hearts. Such is the extent of their knowledge, for that is the furthest limit of what they have experienced and witnessed among their fellow human beings, so they suppose that nothing lies beyond it. Others may oppose them, imagining that what is heard and seen cannot exist within a person, but must all come from outside. Both views are mistaken.
Rather, some of it exists within a person, such as what one sees and hears in sleep, whether an image that admits of no interpretation or one that does.
Some of it exists externally, such as Mary’s seeing the messenger when he appeared to her