Al-‘Arabî ad-Darqâwî, Lettres d’un maître soufi (Letters of a Sufi Master)

 “The men who possess knowledge of God do not flee from things as others do, for they behold their Lord in all things. Others flee from them because the vision of created things prevents them from seeing the One from whom existence flows […] And know (may God have mercy on you) that nothing prevents us from contemplating our Lord except our preoccupation with the desires of our souls. Do not say that it is existence that veils the One who gives existence, for by God, it is only the imagination (wahm) that veils Him from us—imagination that gives rise to ignorance. If we truly knew, it would lead us to the knowledge of certainty, and certainty would tear our hearts and our innermost consciousness away from the vision of ephemeral things...”