Texts of Islam

Oriental Mysticism: Part II: Chapter V. Of the Four Universal Sources

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This is an excerpt from *Oriental Mysticism* (1867) by E.H. Palmer, a scholarly exposition of Sufi and Islamic Unitarian (Wahdaniyya) metaphysics drawn from primary sources. The text explains a cosmological framework in which the universe is divided into four "Sources": God's nature, the Constructive Spirit, and the Invisible and Sensible Worlds — each successive Source being a manifestation of the one before it. The central argument is a pantheistic or panentheistic one: because all existence emanates from God as a "hidden treasure" desiring to be known, everything that exists is ultimately a manifestation of the divine nature. The text distinguishes between Unitarian and Sufi schools on the question of whether these Sources have precedence over one another in time and place, with Sufis allowing temporal and spatial precedence (framed through terms like *azal* and *azal i azál*) while Unitarians insist on precedence of order and causation only, comparable to the sun and its rays. A distinctive concluding claim is that the universe functions as God's mirror, and the human heart as the mirror of the universe — meaning the spiritual seeker need only look inward to know God. Palmer presents this material analytically and comparatively, referencing Quranic verses and companions of Mohammed to ground the doctrines in Islamic textual tradition.

Oriental Mysticism: Part II: Chapter V. Of the Four Universal Sources

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