and therefore not unknown. “There is no god but Him, the Mighty, the Wise” [Al Imran 3:6].
(Distinguishing the Eye of Sense from the Eye of Imagination)
Some people perceive this imagined thing with the eye of sense, and others perceive it with the eye of imagination. I mean in wakefulness. In sleep it is certainly perceived with the eye of imagination. If a person wants to distinguish the two while awake, whether in this world or on the Day of Resurrection, let him look at the imagined thing and hold it fast with his gaze.
If the modes of being of the thing he looks at change before him as its forms change, while he does not deny that it is that very thing, and his gaze does not hold it back from changing forms, as with someone watching the chameleon change colors, then it is unquestionably the eye of imagination and not the eye of sense. He has perceived imagination with the eye of imagination rather than the eye of sense.
Few of those who claim to have unveiled fiery and luminous spirits notice this when those spirits appear to their eye as perceptible forms. A person may not know how he perceived them, whether with the eye of imagination or the eye of sense. Both perceptions are through the visual faculty of the eye, for it affords perception with the eye of imagination and with the eye of sense. This is a subtle knowledge, the knowledge that distinguishes the two eyes, and distinguishes the visual faculty of the eye from the eye of sense.
If the eye perceives the imagined thing without becoming inattentive to it, and its forms do not change before it, and it does not see it in different places simultaneously, with the entity unmistakably one and neither shifting nor changing into different
Notes
Translator’s note TN1227-1: The author distinguishes the visual faculty of the eye from the “eye of sense” and “eye of imagination.” In this account the visual faculty can serve either mode. The changing appearance of a form while its identity is recognized is the proposed diagnostic.
