#chittick

In trying to express the nature of intellectual knowledge, Muslim scholars commonly cite mathematical understanding as an example, and they consider true mathematical insight as a halfway house on the road to intellectual vision. A real knowledge of mathematics does not derive from rote learning or rational argumentation, but rather from the discovery of the logic and clarity of mathematics in one’s own self-awareness. When one perceives the truth of a mathematical statement, one cannot deny it, because it is self-evident to the intelligence.

Glory be to Him who veils Himself through His manifestation and manifests Himself through His veil!

It is the very centrality and totality of the human state which makes any "linear" and "horizontal" evolution of man impossible. One cannot reach a more central point in a circle than the center itself. Once at the center one can always move either upward or downward but no further in the horizontal direction. The evolutionary view of man as an animal, which even from the biological point of view is open to question, can tell us little as to the real nature of man; no more than can the theories of many anthropologists who discuss anthropology without even knowing who man, the anthrōpos, is and without realizing the complete states of universal existence which man carries with him here and now.

…when people learn intellectual knowledge that they have not verified for themselves, they do not in fact know what they think they know. This is called “compound ignorance” (jahl murakkab). In other words, they do not know it, and their ignorance is compounded by the fact that they do not know that they do not know it.