al-'Alim

The second of the Seven Leading Names is al-'Alim, The Knower.

Eternal Life occasions Intelligence. Intelligence ('ilm), turning in on itself in Love ('ishq), manifests the Phenomenal World (wujud), as a theater of Witnessing (shuhud).

I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, so I created the world that I might be known. - Hadith Qudsi

The One confers on the many a mode of being and the many confer on the One a mode of knowing.

You are His nourishment as bestowing the contents of His Self-Knowledge, while He is yours as bestowing existence. - Ibn al-'Arabi

All knowledge is grounded in self-knowledge, the essential state of the soul. The soul is to the One as the body is to the soul.

Who knows himself knows his Lord - Hadith

The soul's presential knowledge offers the possibility of blazing new neural pathways.

Look up first and when your eyes are once charged with divine light, then when you cast your glance on the world of facts you will have a much clearer vision, the vision of reality. - Murshid

Witnessing occurs in the confluence of acquired (conceptual) and revealed (presential) knowledge.

The image of perfection is complete only with knowledge of both the ephemeral and the eternal. - Ibn al-'Arabi

Practices

Unlearning

1. Look at situations from another person's point of view.
2. See the right of the wrong and the wrong of the right, the evil of the good and the good of the evil, the pain in pleasure and the pleasure in pain, the gain in loss and the loss in gain.
3. Identify oneself with what one is not.
4. Free oneself from a form and have a sense of the abstract.

Concentration, Contemplation, Meditation (Muraqaba, Mushahida, Mu'ayana)

1. Gaze upon object passively.
2. Close eyes, holding the image.
3. Allow visual image to dissolve into quality of essence.
4. Allow quality to dissolve into essence: awareness without content, sheer presence.
5. Open eyes, perceive object, image, quality, and essence in unison.

Wazifa

Ya Allah, Ya 'Alim, Ya Khabir (Experienced), Ya Mubin (Clear)

Wazifa

Ya Nur (Light), Ya 'Alim

Muhasaba

Say only what you know. (How do you know?)