Abstract

The present essay deals with bewilderment, which is in Sufism one of the important objects of desire and one of the high stations of the Sufis. It may, at the beginning, seem synonymous with wandering off the straight path but in Sufism it is a gnosis which enters in a Sufi’s heart without reflection, and which shows the Sufi’s mystical knowledge being limitless. Since God’s nature is an infinite reality, our reasons fail to comprehend it as well as fail to understand realities of the invisible domain. God is the greatest mystery that neither rational faculty nor intuition can grasp its nature and always remain complicated and bewildering. Although the philosophers and Sufis have made a great effort to understand the truth and are in agreement with each other in many cases, they do not sympathize in the case of bewilderment, whereas the philosophers always tend to avoid bewilderment, the Sufis tend to seek it; so bewilderment is blameworthy for the philosophers but praiseworthy for the Sufis.