In contrast to the theologians and jurists, they tried to dissolve dogmatic knots in the soul. They did everything they could to discourage their disciples from getting stuck in the words and expressions and to urge them to look beyond the words into the invisible reality that is expressed.
In the general Sufi perspective, words have much the same relation to meaning as body has to spirit. The spirit is there at the depths of our souls to be actualized and realized, but this could never happen without our initial embodiment. In the same way, doctrinal expression will be left behind when one achieves the root awareness of the heart, but can never uncover one’s own heart without prophetic guidance. This guidance is unpacked precisely in the theory and praxis embodied by the writings and moral character of the great teachers of the past. xi

The Divine Reality is at the same time Knowledge and Being He who seeks to.approach that Reality must overcome not only ignorance and lack of consciousness but also the grip which purely theoretical learning and other "unreal" things of the same kind exert over him. It is for this reason that many Sufis, including the most outstanding representatives of gno- xi sis such as Muhyi-d-Din ibn ‘Arabi and Omar al-Khayyam affirmed the primacy of virtue and concentration over doctrinal learning. It is the truly intellectual who have been the first to recognize the relative nature of all theoretical expressions xii xi-xii

Men of modern culture are no longer accustomed to think in terms of symbols and so modern investigations are unable to distinguish between what, in two analogous traditional expressions, belongs to the external form and what is the essential element, and for that very reason the erudite European is led to see borrowings by one tradition from another where in fact there is only a coincidence of spiritual vision, and fundamental divergences where it is only a question of differences in perspective or in mode of expression. xiii

This introduction to the doctrine of Sufism is necessarily incomplete. It treats chiefly of metaphysic, which is the basis of everything; method is dealt with only in broad outline, while cosmology receives no more than a passing reference. xv