The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.134

v1.c11.134

[156] With the Sufi the gradation is similar, but not identical.⁶⁶ He has only four states of probation. With him the first is *Nāsūt*, or humanity, in which the disciple, subjecting himself to the canons of his faith, attempts to purify his soul by the practice of religion. It may be compared to the *Dāsya* of the Bhakta. The second is *Jābrut* when, by religious exercises in the preceding stage, the devotee attains power to abandon the observances of religious forms and ceremonies, as he now exchanges, to use their own phrase, “practical for spiritual worship”. Its relation to the third stage of the Bhaktas, our Indian Sufis, when they, rising above the ordinances of the Smṛti, profess themselves to be the friends of the Deity, is evident. The next is a state of knowledge (*Āraf*) of which extreme sanctity is the peculiar characteristic. It has its counterpart in the *Śānta* of the Vaiṣṇavas. The last state of Sufi excellence is *Wasil* or union with the Deity, and in this the Sufis apparently differ from the Bhaktas. The former, adopting the doctrine of the modern Vedāntists, believe the supreme cause of all to bear the same relation to the human soul which the sun does to its rays; that like unto the solar rays, emanations from the Divine Soul are continually darted forth and re-absorbed, and that this absorption to the primary essence is the great end and object of their religion. They hold that when in the state of *Wasil*, a Sufi saint has thoroughly understood the relation of his own self to the divinity, he might with propriety proclaim of himself, “I am the truth” [*An ul haq*], just in the same way that the Vedāntist do the Vedic dogma of *So'hamasmi*, “I am he,” “*Aham Brahma*”; and the like. While the latter maintain that the human soul is distinct and radically different from the Divine one, although possessing in some measure its nature, both being uncreate and eternal, and that a state of fellowship with the Deity in one eternal round of divine felicity, is the highest reward of their religion.