and for gathering aspirations through inspiration’s purity. They say aspiration has three ranks: aspiration of awakening, aspiration of will, and aspiration of reality.
Know that aspiration of awakening is the heart’s wakefulness to what the human reality gives of matters to which wishing attaches, impossible or possible. It is stripping the heart for wishes. This aspiration makes him consider the ruling concerning what he wishes for, so he proceeds according to what knowledge of that ruling gives. If it gives turning back, he turns back; if resolve, he resolves. Its possessor thus needs knowledge of what he wishes for.
(Aspiration of Will and Collectedness)
Aspiration of will, the murīd’s first truthfulness, is an aspiration of collectedness against which nothing can stand. It occurs frequently among people called al-ʿAzabiyya in Ifriqiya, who kill whomever they wish through it. When the self becomes collected, it affects the cosmos’s bodies and states, and nothing resists it. Knowledge of this has even led some who possess neither unveiling nor strength of faith to hold that the signs appearing within the cosmos at certain people’s hands come only from this aspiration.
Its strength is such that, when it subsists in the murīd, it affects perfect shaykhs, who are directed through it. A shaykh may receive an opening in knowledge he does not possess and for which he is not intended, through the aspiration of a murīd who believes that this
Notes
Translator’s note TN5443-1: The supplied group-name العزابية is retained provisionally as al-ʿAzabiyya, without adding a sectarian or personal identification. The reported powers of collected aspiration and the explanation attributed to those lacking unveiling remain the author’s claims and distinctions.
