Relationship Between Knowledge & Love

In reality the distinction between the way of knowledge and the way of love amounts to a question of the predominance of one or the other; there is never in fact a complete separation between these two modes of spirituality. Knowledge of God always engenders love, while love presupposes knowledge of the object of love even though that knowledge may be only Divine Beauty, which is an aspect of Infinity, and through this object desire becomes lucid or clear. Full, integral love, which revolves round a single ineffable point, gives a sort of subjective infallibility that comes from knowledge, but only to all that forms part of the "personal" relationship of the adorer to his Lord. It is the object, Beauty that love virtually coincides with knowledge. In a sense Truth and Beauty are criteria of one another, although sentimental prejudices distort the concept of beauty just as, from another angle, rationalism limits truth.

It is highly significant that there is hardly a single Muslim metaphysician who did not compose poetry and whose most abstract prose is not in the passages transformed into rhythmic language full of poetic images, while, on the other hand the poetry of the most famous hymners of love, such as 'Umar ibn al-Farid and Jalal ad-Din Rumi, is rich in intellectual perceptions.

As for the attitude of fear (al-khawf), which corresponds to the way of action, this is not directly manifested in the style of expression; its role is an implicit one. It is true that fear stands, as it were, only at the threshold of contemplation, but, when it is spiritualized, it can none the less bring man out of the collective dream which the "world" is and bring him face to face with Eternal Reality. Love is higher than fear even as knowledge is higher than love, but this is true only of direct, immediate knowledge, which outstrips reason (or discursive though), for spiritual love embraces every individual faculty and imprints each of them with the seal of Unity.

In his Mahasin al-Majalis Ahmed ibn al-Arif says that love (al-mahabb'ah) is "The beginning of the valleys of extinction (fana') and the hill from which there is a descent towards the stages of self-naughting (al-mahu); it is the last of the stages where the advance guard of the mass of believers meets the rear guard of the elect." Muhyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi on the other hand considers love to be the highest station of the soul and subordinates to its every possible human perfection. This may seem strange, coming as it does from one of the most eminent of the representatives of the way of knowledge. The explanation is that, for Ibn Arabi, knowledge is not a station of the soul. In the perfection of knowledge nothing specifically human remains since such knowledge is identified with its object, the Divine Reality. In its immediate actuality knowledge can thus no longer be attributed to man or to the soul but only to God, since it no longer has any psychic outline. At the same time the loftiest station of the soul is not a psychological correlative of knowledge like prudence or veracity but is integral love, the complete absorption of the human will by the Divine attraction. It is the state of being "lost in love" of which Abraham is the human prototype.