yet you do not accept!" But if God grants him a respite, he reverts to that which He had forbidden him from doing.
This sect has been overcome by the enticing self (al-nafs al-musawwilah), and the call of the Adversary (da'wat al-didd) has firmly settled within their souls; thus, they never desist from an abomination. They have publicized what God commanded to be kept hidden, and they have deemed permissible what God made forbidden. It is God whose help is sought against them.
And it is narrated from [the Sheikh] 1 Abu Sa'id, may God sanctify his soul, what he stated in Kitab al-Ma'arif (The Book of Mystical Knowledges): "Verily, within a human being there are five spirits. Among them is the spirit that never sleeps; when the human sleeps, it remains continuously [awake] 2 , and from it arise the dreams that the sleeper sees. It never enters into acts of disobedience nor into forbidden matters, and it is the Spirit of Faith (Ruh al-Iman). In proportion to the [purity of the] essence within the body and its strength or weakness, so is the knowledge and action, which constitutes the essence of the Intellect."