Introduction

In Chapter 3, we witnessed the centrality of the meeting with and vision of God in the hereafter in Sufi eschatological imaginations; the final boundary crossing is a crossing towards a visionary meeting with God. In Chapter 4, we saw how the first boundary crossing, Adam's banishment from Paradise, was for some authors a deprivation of this vision. This chapter is about an attempt to attain this vision of God in this-worldly life: Moses's request to see God (Q 7:143). It is my contention that within some Sufi understandings this story signifies an attempt to temporarily restore a paradisiacal state of vision in this world; that is, the yearning for the vision of God promised in Paradise was so strong that they were looking for ways to have a similar experience in the current abode. As we shall see, for some this took the form of a visionary encounter, a foretaste of what was to come in the hereafter. I will argue, however, that even for those who believed in some form of this-worldly vision, the interest in the otherworldy vision remained intact, because of the mere fact that the eschatological encounter with God would be more perfect and eternal, instead of the temporary and limited this-worldly experience.

This resonates with what has been suggested by other scholars of Sufism: the possibility of a direct experiential encounter with God in this world motivates the disregard for eschatological themes other than the meeting with and vision of God. Whereas the meeting (liqāʾ) with God is normally an eschatological matter in Islamic theology, some Sufis claimed such a strong this-worldly experience of this encounter that they lost all interest in the world to come. Another more intermediate attitude remained loyal to the idea that the ultimate encounter between man and God can only occur in the world to come. According to that attitude, meeting, vision and divine manifestation are all in Paradise. An experience of a this-worldly encounter is different from the otherworldly then: it is but a taste of what awaits the believer in the hereafter.