Manners of relation between God and Man: An Analysis of the Sufi View of Themselves as Guardians and the Possibility of Direct Communication with God

Having distinguished the chain of prophets and the chain of saints, Sufis characterize the former with indirect communication with God and the latter with direct communication with God. Now the question arises: What is the theoretical ground of the Sufi view that saints other than problems are superior to prophets and talk directly with God? And with what themes such direct communication takes place? In this paper, I try to answer to these two questions, I draw upon the descriptive-analytic method to clarify the notion of Sufi guardianship and consider two As-cension-like experiences in which direct communication with God is claimed: Bāyazīd’s ascension and Ibn ‘Arabī’s ascension. An analysis of these two experiences shows that, first, Sufis believe that it is possible for them to have an experience like that of Prophet Muhammad’s ascen-sion in which they see themselves so existentially close to that there is no intermediary between them and God, either men or angels, and sec-ond, what is central to their communication with God is the identity of the two parties of the communication.