Contemplation and nature in the Perspective of Sufism:

Quotes...

'Contemplation and nature in the Perspective of Sufism':

“There is Hermetic saying, ‘That which is lowest symoblises that which is highest’, expresses a basic law of the science of the symbolic interpretation of nature.The contemplative, by contemplating the phenomena of nature is carried beyond the intermediate realm of reason to the realm of pure forms or ‘Platonic ideas’ (’alam al-jabarat). He studies nature not analyse it according to some conceptual scheme but to come to know himself through the analogy existing between the microcosm and the macrocosm.

(Poetry-Prose)

“It is natural then to see that sages and gnostics have again and again made use of immediate experience of the natural world to express the highest realities and to contemplate the spiritual world in the grand theophanies of nature. It is due to this law of inverse analogy also that poetry has remained throughout the ages the language of seers and prophets, expressing in symbols and images what the language of prose cannot easily convey. Prose has always been more suitable for the expression of ideas belonging to the intermediate realm of reason, while poetry or other forms of expression which lend themselves easily to symbolism, such as music and geometry, have always been the suitable vehicle for the contemplative.”

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Quoted From, Seyyed Hossien Nasr’s “Islamic thought and Life”