Presented in Mulla Sadra’s Congress
(Perception in the Transcendent Philosophy and Other Schools of Thought)
Sense Perception
Prof. Sayyed Muhammad Khamenei
[::]
Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of perception, including sense perception, imaginal perception and intellectual perception, begins and is based on external things and the essences of existents.[1]
Mulla Sadra regards all the stages of perception, consisting of a series of immaterial bodily and psychic phenomena, as being originated from the external material existent (object). Unlike some idealist philosophers, who view mental categories as the main source of perception, or rationalist philosophers, who believe in a priori knowledge, or Hegel who takes the “idea” as the origin, he believes in the correspondence between mental knowledge (known by essence) and the external object (known by accident). He also maintains that there is a relation between man’s perceptions and external realities and that our knowledge and imaginations have their roots in our senses.
Sensualists maintain that sense perception ends up here and some of them consider awareness as one of the prerequisites for the truth of perception. According to Mulla Sadra, however, the reflection or impact of external objects on the senses is like the reflection of a picture in a mirror (or on a photographic paper) and that it is too trivial to be called perception.
According to Mulla Sadra, the object’s affecting our senses is only half of what is required for perception and those who like sensualists have not gone beyond the stage of experience and sense have, in fact, sufficed to going half through the way and, naturally, cannot deny the complete process of perception.
Man’s senses (for instance, sight) are too weak to reflect the external reality in the mind and result in the acquisition of knowledge. The signals that our eyes transmit to the brain are nothing more than a phantom (a vague and colorless picture) and this does not count as knowledge. In Mulla Sadra’s philosophy, knowledge should possess revelatory qualities and explicit representativeness, while this is not the case with the phantoms and pictures of material objects. For these revelatory and unveiling qualities to be realized, knowledge and perception should deal with the quiddities of external objects. The difference between phantom on the one hand and quiddity and form on the other is that if the mental form is given an external existence, it will remain the same external thing while phantom is not so.
Like a computer, the brain is also a data processor system which takes man’s commands and is not capable of doing anything out of the framework of the data it is fed. It is aware of its own functions and cannot manipulate them without being commanded to do so. It goes without saying that no perception will be realized without awareness.
Therefore, we accept that our senses are involved in perception as a necessary prerequisite[2] but not as a sufficient condition. The material products of these senses do not constitute our perception and the impressions and sensible forms in the brain cannot be automatically transmitted to the mind.[3] Rather, after the senses do their duties and the sensible forms are produced in the nervous system and the brain, it is time for the soul and mind to create an immaterial phenomenon, called perception or knowledge, from that material phenomenon through employing the two important elements of attention and awareness. Mulla Sadra refers to this immaterial phenomenon as “illuminative form”[4] and believes that attention and awareness are the main two bases of knowledge and perception.
“Attention” is a psychological phenomenon and a psychic factor and is not possible for body and material organs. It requires an essence which possesses simple truth (basit al-haqiqah). None of the signals transmitted by the senses can be regarded as perception unless the perceiver’s attention interferes with the functions of the senses. In practice, we see that, while crossing a street, man does not perceive all of what his eyes see or what his ears hear unless he pays attention to and concentrates on them.
Like “attention”, “awareness” is not a material phenomenon. It is in no way consistent with the matter and refers to the soul, which is free from matter. In Mulla Sadra’s eyes, awareness means the “presence” (or recall) of quiddity in its totality or the main quiddative characteristics of the phenomenon or the external object in mind. The presence of the self and other objects for the self only deserve the simple and immaterial soul, since an essential characteristic of the matter is its unawareness (or in Mulla Sadra’s words, absence) of everything including itself.
According to Mulla Sadra’s philosophy and his theory of trans-substantial motion, the matter is always moving along a hypothetical temporal and straight line (the trans-substantial motion of the matter) and its past and future are “non-existence” and “non-existent”. Therefore, the matter is absent and is even unaware of itself, which is a combination of non-existence and existence, let alone of others. For example, how could the image recorder of the eye’s retina or the nerves of the brain, which does not even know itself, be aware of an external reality? Awareness is basically an existential and positive thing, thus the material impressions of the brain, consisting of both non-existence and existence, cannot be equated with awareness and perception.
Therefore, awareness is the same as the “presence” of the external object (known by accident) in man’s mind and also the same as revelation or representativeness, which Mulla Sadra regards as the prerequisite for perception and acquisition of knowledge. Such “awareness”, “presence” and “revelation” are the only factors which guarantee the truth of each perception and can mark the difference between real perception and the false perceptions of mental patients. As mentioned before, revelation can only be found in the quiddity of external objects.
The soul’s awareness of the soul is what Mulla Sadra calls the soul’s “knowledge by presence” of its faculties and the forms imprinted on them. Mulla Sadra’s theory of knowledge is based on these two factors.
In Islamic philosophy knowledge and perception are divided into two independent types: acquired knowledge and knowledge by presence. Acquired knowledge is obtained by means of the mediation of the five senses and going through different mental stages. This knowledge transfers the quiddity of objects to us; however, it does not involve their existential characteristics (such as temperature, humidity, …). In other words, acquired knowledge is an unproductive kind of knowledge.
Knowledge by presence directly comes to the inner self and, in other words, it is a kind of “intuitive” perception. Unlike acquired knowledge, this knowledge or perception is accompanied by existential and external effects. Through a union with the external object, man’s soul penetrates this kind of knowledge and becomes aware of the depth of its existence.
Man’s knowledge by presence is manifested in different ways:
1. The perception of the self: Man’s knowledge of himself is intuitive and by presence. Even if his five senses are paralyzed, he will still be able to perceive his essence. This is consistent with the fact that he can sometimes know himself through acquired knowledge (for example, through seeing, touching, or the like).
2. Man perceives all his inner faculties, motivations, desires, emotions, thoughts, actions and mental principles through knowledge by presence.[5]
3. The perception of all the input given to the five senses, which are man’s informants, is completed through knowledge by presence. The analysis and understanding of all the input is thoroughly done in the mind and through the soul’s knowledge by presence. The purpose of the present paper is to elaborate on this issue.
4. The unusual methods of perception and knowledge acquisition, which are mainly based on intuition, such as perceptions obtained through ascetic practice, during sleep or in dreams are perfect references for knowledge by presence. This kind of knowledge plays the most important role in perception in Sadrian philosophy.
After paying attention to the product of its senses and gaining awareness of the forms imprinted on them, the soul reconstructs the quiddity of the external object through its creative acts. This is the most important stage of perception.
In addition to possessing the ability to become aware of what goes on in the senses and in the brain and its other inner faculties, the soul has the power of creativity. And it is through this essential creativity that it can construct a form and grant it a kind of existence which is called “mental existence”. Man’s soul is also capable of incarnating impossible and non-existent images and judgments and even “non-existence” itself in the mind and issue positive or negative judgments for them.[6]
In certain places, Mulla Sadra likens man to God for his creative power and argues that the forms which are created in man’s mind have not entered it from the outside (have not transmigrated); rather, they have been produced in that workshop and emanated from there. In Mulla Sadra’s words, the relationship among the forms in the mind and their dependence on each other is emanative and not immanent.[7]
Therefore, unlike other Muslim philosophers, Mulla Sadra does not regard perception as the immanence of the direct image of the object in the mind and as a passive and reflective process. Rather, he views it as the creation of the forms of objects and the product of the mind’s activity and creativity. This is because, unlike Ibn Sina and other philosophers, he believes that perception is immaterial and that, unlike Kant’s categories, the mind’s activity and creativity do not add anything to the data of the senses, but construct their similars with a mental existence (not an external existence) and do not impose any specific mould or color to the mind’s own percepts.
As a result, through the reconstruction of sensory impressions, the mind creates quiddities and some kind of second hand knowledge, like what Hume calls ideas, and arrives at acquired knowledge. To put it more clearly, he builds up acquired knowledge and in Allamah Tabatabaii words: “… It is after the ‘known’ but obtains ‘knowledge’ in return”.[8]
In the process of perception, the sensible forms and the impressions of the senses merely play the role of tools and auxiliary causes responsible for preparing the soul and mind for creating the acquired knowledge or a form and quiddity corresponding to what exists in the external world.
After getting familiar with the process of sense perception as introduced by Mulla Sadra and in his Transcendent Philosophy, it would also be useful to refer to Mulla Sadra’s other theory on perception. As we know, Ibn Sina and all his followers conceived of knowledge as a “psychic quality”. They believed in Aristotle’s theory and maintain that the mind or the perceptive faculty is a fixed tablet upon which are printed perceptions to which they happen by accident and are saved therein. Such supervened forms are considered as “secondary perfection” for man and have nothing to do with his essence.[9]
Mulla Sadra agrees with Aristotle in dividing the quiddities of all objects into ten categories. In the first half of his philosophical life, like all other philosophers, he regarded knowledge as a kind of psychic quality (one of the kinds of the category of quality); however, it seems that he put away with this idea later[10] and came to the conclusion that “knowledge” does not belong to any of the Aristotelian categories and, like the essence of “existence”, it is supra-categorical.
He does not even suffice to this and through referring to the well-known principle of the principiality of existence claims that perception and knowledge are among the stage and modes of existence. Therefore, unlike the philosophers before him, Mulla Sadra does not view knowledge as the supervening and the mind as the supervened. He does not view the mind as the container and perception as the contained, either. Rather, he maintains that knowledge cannot be separated from the “knower”[11] and that the mind is the same as the soul and is one of its faculties.
Mulla Sadra argues that knowledge is not divorced from the existence and essence of the knower but is a part of him, and that is why man’s existence gradually develops with the increase of his new knowledge and perceptions. In this way, the level of his existential perfection goes higher, exactly in the same way that the height of a building increases with the addition of more bricks and stones to its skeleton. Thus knowledge and awareness comprise the “primary perfection” of the soul rather than the “secondary perfection”, as maintained by Ibn Sina and others.
According to Mulla Sadra, when man perceives something, in fact, he causes a quality to emerge and move from the hidden state of potentiality to actuality, and this actuality is a perfection for the soul. Hence, with each perception man’s soul becomes more perfect and the substance of his soul, which, according to the principle of trans-substantial motion is in becoming, accelerates its perfection and, in philosophical terms, its “matter” accepts a new “form”.
It is emphasized that the becoming and the trans-substantial motion of the soul are greatly different from the trans-substantial motion of the matter in the simplicity and indivisibility of the entity of the soul (unlike the matter which is divisible and is a composite of different parts). It is this very simplicity of the soul, all separate things and immaterials which is equal with the awareness of the self and its states and surroundings.
Mulla Sadra’s theory of knowledge and perception comes to its peak in the principle of the union of different levels: perception, the perceiver, and the perceived. He maintains that since perception is nothing but the “acquisition” of the form of the perceived for the perceiver, and because “acquisition” is the same as “existence” and the existence of everything is the same as its “self”, perception and knowledge are the same as what is known by essence and perceived by man. In other words:
PERCEPTION (KNOWLEDGE) = PERCEIVED (KNOWN) [12] (1)
Second, as we know, perception or knowledge is the same as the perceiver and the knower and is not separate from it. This is because knowledge is the same as awareness of the self, and awareness of the self is the same as our selves and essence. That is:
PERCEPTION (KNOWLEDGE) = PERCEIVER (2)
A comparison of equations (1) and (2) results in obtaining the following:
PERCEIVER = THE PERCEIVED OR KNOWN BY ESSENCE (3)
This theory of Mulla Sadra is a part of his general theory on all kinds of perception. As mentioned before, philosophers classify perceptions into sense perception, imaginal perception and intellectual perception. This theory is known as the theory of the union of knowledge, the knower, and the known, or as Mulla Sadra says, the union of the intellect, the intelligent and the intelligible. He believes that like the sense, the sensor and the sensible, imagination and the imagined, as well as the intellect, the intelligent and the intelligible, are united each at their own levels. The significance of this theory is better revealed in its intellectual version.
Generally speaking, this theory indicates that perception is generally the same as the perceived and there is nothing called perception which is separate form the perceived object in the outside (unless man’s mind makes a mental distinction between the two). On the other hand, as the action cannot be separated from the agent, perception (which is the same as the perceived), too, cannot be separated from the perceiver, since perception is the action of the soul and not its passivity. And both of them (and those three) are all dressed in the same thing which is man’s soul and does not possess three external existences.
Wherever there is a known, there is knowledge, and when there is knowledge, there is a knower. The three of these are correlated and correlated things, according to intellectual rule of correlation, correspond with each other. Therefore, knowledge, the knower and the known, or perception, the perceived and the perceiver are all nothing more than the same thing, since they possess only one existence. The perceiver does not mean “a quiddity or something possessing perception”[13] to be considered in separation from perception and what it has perceived; rather, it is the same as perception, since the perceived form and perception are inseparable.
Thus the sense, the essential sensible and the sensing individual or soul are altogether one truth but are considered three different things according to our assumptions and mental considerations in philosophy. However, in terms of existence, all three of them are the same and are of the kind of existence and existence and exist through one existence. Mulla Sadra refers to this relationship as the “union of the sensor and the sensible” and the “union of the intellect, the intelligible, and intelligence”.[14]
It is now crystal clear why the human soul and existence grow with the expansion of his knowledge and awareness, and why man’s existence, while possessing stability and an external real entity, is continually in a developmental motion. And it is in relation to this point that Heraclitus says, “you can never smell the same flower twice.”
The principle of the union of the perceived, the perceiver by essence and perception, or the union of the intellect, the intelligible and intelligence holds a very important place in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy. According to what he says, he was successful to prove this principle by philosophical demonstrations and through long hours of ascetic practice and prayer at last when he was fifty eight years old. Originally, this theory is very old and has been devised by the Illuminationist sages of ancient Iran and Alexandrian philosophers and, particularly, Porphyry has discussed it in his book. Ibn Sina and his disciples could not find the necessary proof for the truth of this principle and as a result refuted it, but Mulla Sadra managed to demonstrate it on the basis of a series of premises and arguments.
It is quite clear that by the perceived he does not mean the external object but a concept that the mind has received (or constructed) or the same “known by essence”. The meaning of union here is the unity and oneness of two things, such as the union of motion with the moved, potentiality with actuality or the matter and form, but certainly not the union of the substance and accident.
The important issue which has occupied the minds of many philosophers and should be dealt with here is the correspondence of the mental concept to the external reality (subject and object) or, as Mulla Sadra says, the “correspondence between known by essence and known by accident”.
Realist philosophers believe in the correspondence between the subject and object; however, there are others who do not agree with this and believe in the separation of mental concepts from external realities or even view external realities as images of mental concepts.
In the Transcendent Philosophy the correspondence between the subject and object is considered as the cornerstone of philosophy, without which there would remain no subject to be discussed in philosophy, rendering all the efforts in this field into a verbal game.
As mentioned before, Mulla Sadra refers to knowledge and perception as “light” (which illuminates the objects) and regards them as being the representation and manifestation of the external reality in the mind and, as a result, calls it the “unveiling”. In Mulla Sadra’s school of philosophy, the key for the correspondence between the subject and object and the guarantor of the real relationship between them is the unity of quiddity in “known by essence” and “known by accident”, since the “quiddity” of objects in the outside and in the mind is one and the same.
In acquired knowledge man constantly deals with quiddities. No one could ever claim that acquired knowledge means the presence of objects in the mind; rather, it is only the quiddity and the limits and boundaries of external objects which come to the mind.
Quiddity is the same as the external reality dressed in “mental existence”. When stating that knowledge has an unveiling aspect, it means that it represents the external quiddity: A triangle is a triangle and not a square or something else, whether in the mind or in the outside. Thus quiddity is both knowledge and the known.
We can perceive all the primary and secondary qualities, quantitative aspects and states of objects, which are the manifestations of the essence of objects, by means of the sense and proceed from them to quiddity. That is why this relationship is referred to as “the saving of essentials” ( inhifaz e dhatiyat ) in both subjective and objective quiddities in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy.
The distinction Mulla Sadra makes between the external and mental objects pertains to the difference in their degrees of existence. The external existent has a stronger existence and can affect other objects (for example, fire can burn things and water can moisturize them); however, the mental existent possesses a weak, shade-like and pale existence and lacks such effects.[15] That is why Gnostics believe that ascetics and those who have a strong will power are capable of granting strength and effects to the same mental existents and have them realized and incarnated in the outside world through their own spiritual power and strength.
Meanwhile, Mulla Sadra emphasizes that the abstraction and stripping of the quiddity of the external object from the matter and materiality is necessary for sense perception; otherwise, the quiddity of the external object will not come to the mind.
Accordingly, Mulla Sadra concludes that man’s mind, too, is abstract (immaterial), since it has the power of “abstraction”, which is a sign of immateriality.[16]
Abstraction is the mind’s tool for hunting external objects and transferring them to the mind itself. Here, he concludes that each perception is basically accompanied by some kind of abstraction. Sense perception abstracts less than imaginal perception; therefore, its abstraction is less, too. Likewise, imaginal perception abstracts less than intellectual perception and, thus, its degree of abstraction is less than that of the latter.
From another perspective and in line with Muslim mystics, Mulla Sadra divides the world of existence into three types of sensory, imaginal and intellectual worlds. In some other place, he divides it into four types: the corporeal world, the world of sensory souls and all sensible forms, the world of immaterial souls and the world of intellects. In these three-fold or four-fold worlds, the quiddities of all material existents are the same and correspond to each other. In spite of the significant differences among these worlds, every quiddity existing in the corporeal world can also be found in all other worlds, although the kinds and degrees of existence in those worlds are different.[17]
What was discussed above could be considered as a confirmation of the correspondence of the material sensible by accident to the ideal and mental sensible by essence and as a guarantee for the unity of the quiddity of everything in the external world and the worlds of the mind and soul, even to the level of intelligible by essence.[18]
It goes without saying that a thorough study of Mulla Sadra’s theory of perception requires more time. Nevertheless, for the sake of brevity, we will contend ourselves with referring to a few important points in this regard.
The first point which deserves to be discussed here is the errors of the senses which might endanger the validity and truth of the forms imprinted on the senses.
It is a proven fact that all the senses are prone to errors. For example, our eyes view a straight rod as a broken one when it is placed in water. Or, the senses of hearing, taste and touch sometimes report things which are against what they really are in the external world. For this reason, some philosophers consider man’s all perceptions other than what is there in the outside and introduce them all as the ideas and creations of the mind.
The issue of the error of the senses or perceptions has been carefully studied and discussed in Islamic philosophy. It is said that error has no way in the senses since they do their job correctly and that errors are actually the same mistakes of man’s mind in making adjustments and passing judgments. Philosophically speaking, man’s faculty of imagination gets involved in recognizing the error, and as Ibn Arabi states: “the senses are the witness and the intellect in the judge”.[19].
The errors made by mental patients have another reason, too. Melancholic patients see and hear things which apparently lack external existence and are the creations of the faculty of imagination, that is, their very disordered mind.
It is also possible for universal statements to give way to errors and this is because of the interference of the faculty of imagination. Following Ibn Arabi and mystics, Mulla Sadra refers to such erroneous statements, issued by the sick mind and causing skepticism and sophism, as the “devil’s interferences” and considers them as evil phenomena.[20]
Nevertheless, Islamic philosophy does not yet claim that all of man’s perceptions correspond to reality and just suffices to saying that, all in all, perceptions can correspond to external objectivity and man is intrinsically of the same view, too.
The second point is that man’s perception is not limited to sense perception; rather, it is accompanied and followed by two other types of perception, called imaginal perception and intellectual perception, which together constitute the chain of man’s perceptions (Mulla Sadra does not agree with imaginal perception, which held a place in Islamic philosophy and almost rejects it).[21]
Sense perception is defined as the presence of the form of every particular and material thing which has accidents before the perceiver, yet without the matter and materiality. Imaginal perception means the presence of the form of every particular but immaterial thing without the presence of the matter. And intellectual perception means the presence of the universal form of every sensory and imaginative thing. This thing is called the “intelligible”; its perceiver is called the “intelligent”; and the universal perception itself is called the “intellect”.
Mulla Sadra divides this intelligible into the “primary intelligible”, the “secondary philosophical intelligible” and the “secondary logical intelligible”. Generally speaking, the degrees of perception consist of sense perception, imaginal perception and intellectual perception (including the primary intelligible, the second philosophical intelligible and the second logical intelligible) in the order given here. There is a real and connective relationship among these different degrees of perception; that is, these degrees function like the changing degrees of water temperature rather than the fixed degrees of a ruler. What is more, the origin of all of them consists of external existents and sensibles.
The third point is that, according to Mulla Sadra and Islamic philosophers, the Arabic word of Dhehn, which is sometimes translated as mind and sometimes as understanding, refers to one of the faculties of the soul which can perceive external objects and entities or man’s internal psychic states. It is the same “perceptive power of the soul that includes “perception” as well as the “sense”, and we might even say that it is different from understanding in English (or verstand in German or entendement in French). It does not have its Kantian meaning, either, and is not limited to understanding and the “power of understanding”.
Evidently, in Mulla Sadra’s view, Dhehn is not the same as the brain or any other material body organ. Moreover, as mentioned before, it should not be considered as a container for knowledge and perception to pre-exist their acquisition. Rather, it is actually the same as man’s acquired knowledge and is simultaneous with it.[22]
The fourth point is that, previously, philosophers defined philosophy as “man’s becoming an intelligible world, similar and corresponding to the sensible and external world. At the end of his theory of perception, Mulla Sadra concludes that according to the principle of the unity of the sensor and the sensible, as well as the union of the intelligent and the intelligible, and also according to the principle of the unity of knowledge and existence, man is a knowledgeable existence who at each and every mode and stage of existence (sensory, imaginal, intellectual) unites with the existents of that mode and stage on the basis of his perception and knowledge.
The conclusion is that through his perceptions of this material world and also through transferring the quiddities of external existents to his mind and spirit, man, in fact, becomes a mental and intellectual world similar to the material world, and in Plotinic terms, the Micro Anthropo, due to his perception of the realities of the world, becomes the same as the world and the universe (or the Macro Anthropo). Thus the intellectual perception of realities and objects, i.e., philosophy, means correspondence to the external world. This is a realistic correspondence which is exactly the opposite to the idealistic correspondence that Hegel and his followers advocate.
The fifth point is that there are a series of distinctions between man’s perceptions and those of animals, which possess sensory and even imaginal perception. One of these differences is man’s possessing intellectual perception and the ability for the perception of universals which lead to rule formation and philosophy and from which other sciences originate.
The other one is man’s perceiving his own perceptions or knowing that he knows, which is called appreciation by Leibniz and “compound knowledge by others.
The abstraction, generalization and analysis of perceptions and the classification of concepts to universal and particular, as well as imagination and judgment, are all among the characteristics of human beings. This paper is devoted to “imaginations”; however, the perceptions which have statements or judgments require a separate study. It must be emphasized that Mulla Sadra has revealed the peak of the elevation of his thoughts in this regard and has portrayed the most delicate and beautiful scenes of man’s power of perception and thought through the magic of his art of writing.
Notes:
[1] al-Asfar, vol. 2, p. 80 (tanvir)
[2] al-Asfar, vol. 2, pp. 305-317
[3] Ibid., vol. 8, p.181
[4] Ibid.
[5] al-Asfar, vol. 6, p. 155
[6] Ibid. vol. 1, p. 264 and al Shawahid al-Rububiyyah, pp. 31-32
[7] al- Asfar, vol.1, pp. 265, 308
[8] Rawish e Realism (The Method of Realism), vol. 1, p. 130
[9] al-Asfar, vol. 3, pp. 327-328
[10] al-Asfar,vol. 1, pp. 297-298 and vol. 3, pp. 312-313, 335
[11] al-Asfar, vol. 6, p. 163
[12] al-Asfar- vol. 2, p.227
[13] al Shawahid al-Rububiyyah, p. 244
[14] al-Asfar, vol. 8, p. 181.
[15] al-Asfar, vol. 4, p. 245
[16] al Shawahid al-Rububiyyah, pp. 208, 350-351
[17] al-Asfar, vol.3, pp. 363, 506 and vol. 4, p. 245
[18] - The correspondence of the three-fold corporeal, imaginal, and intellectual worlds to each other. C.f. Asfar, vol. 6, p. 277 and vol. 7, p. 18.
[19] - Ibn ‘Arabi; Futuhat al-Makkiyah, vol. 2, p. 395
[20] Ibid.
[21] al-Asfar, vol. 3, p. 360-362 and vol. 2, p.293
[22] al- Asfar, vol. 1, p. 264
May 12, 2000
SOAS University in London.
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|http://tanzil.net/#2:243 :: Have you never thought of men who went out of their homes as a measure of safety against death, and they were thousands, to whom God said: "Die," then restored them to life? Indeed God bestows His blessings on men; only most men are not grateful.
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For everything there is a time, when the time comes, revelation comes. One can recite the chapter of Sincerity [Chapter 112 :: http://tanzil.net/#112] for long extended periods in time, but unless the degrees of message contained within are not comprehended one will not be able to become one with that pure perfect perception that is Sincerity, and as usual, it will be exposed when the time comes, when the student became ready the Master appeared, denial & disbelief is a form/feature of Nescience until transformation...
