DUAL ASPECT

According to Sufi tenets the two aspects of the supreme Being are termed Zá t and Sifat, the Knower and the Known. The former is Allah and the latter Mohammed. Zát being only one in its existence, cannot be called by more than one name, which is Allah; and Sifat, being manifold in four different involutions, has numerous names, the sum of them all being termed Mohammed. The ascending and descending forms of Zát and Sifat form the circle of the Absolute. These two forces are called Nuzul and Uruj, which means involution and evolution. Nuzul begins from Zát and ends in Sifat; Uruj starts from Sifat and ends in Zát, Zát being the negative and Sifat the positive force.

Zát projects Sifat from its own self and absorbs it within itself. It is a rule of philosophy that the negative cannot lose its negativeness by projecting the positive from itself, though the positive covers the negative within itself, as the flame covers the fire. The positive has no independent existence, yet it is real because projected from the real, and it may not be regarded as an illusion. Human ignorance persists in considering Zát to be separate from Sifat, and Sifat independent of Zát.