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Ahmad Ahsai, Shaykh - Kitab Sharh al-Ziyara - Earth, Water, Air and Fire
Identifier
003130
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa’i – Kitab Sharh al-Ziyara [translated by Henry Corbin and Nancy Pearson]
I call God to witness that [Earth] is none other than water in the solid state, immobilised air, compact fire, fluid earth. For earth in the fluid state is water in the solid state. In the same sense bodies are also Spirits…
The act of existing can be seen in an analogous way in everything; the further something is from Principle, the weaker become the four realities composing its existence, which is the divine Operation, until the extinction of the latter finally brings about the extinction of the said realities. For the life which is in the spirit – consciousness, discrimination, power of choice – all of this exists, indeed in the body and even in mineral substance, but to an infinitely lesser degree than in the spirit. To say that bodies ‘become tired’ is to say that they are alive, conscious, have discrimination and power of choice, in proportion to their degree of partipation in being.