Kashani Tafsir — Yusuf 12:1 – Al-Kahf 18:110

Alif lām rāÌ. Those are the verses of the Book that makes plain: [the interpretation of] this has already been mentioned.

We will tell thee the most beautiful of tales. What a beautiful tale is the tale of Joseph! It is the tale of the passionate and the object of passion, the talk of separation and union. It wants the pain-stricken to read the tale of those in pain. It wants the passionate to report about the pain of passion and the burning of the passionate. It wants the burnt so that the burning of the longing may leave a trace. I am the slave of the yearner who lights up the fire of longing at the top of the Friend's street. I envy the eye that rains down tears at separation in love for the Beloved. I scatter spirit and heart before the lost-hearted one who tells the story of the lost-hearted. In the city my heart inclines, my dear, to him who sings your passion's tale, my dear. On the day when the seed of passion's pain was planted in the hearts of the familiar, the heart of Jacob the prophet was on the highway of this talk. He found flourishing in disengagement and solitariness, he took himself into the crucible of discipline and self-purification, and he became receptive to the seed of passion's pain. When the seed reached the earth of his heart, the water of “He sprinkled them with some of His light” nurtured it until the jasmine of the Covenant grew up. Then, as a pretext, the beauty of Joseph was made his kiblah, and his mortal nature was given ac- cess to its own kind. This cry went out: “Jacob's throat has been hung by the noose of desire for Joseph.” Within the curtain of jealousy that center point of the Haqiqah said, “Call Me Arsalan so that no one will know who I am.”

When Joseph said to his father, " O my father, surely I saw eleven stars and the sun and the moon. I saw them prostrating to me. " Ibn ʿAbbās said, " The eleven stars allude to the eleven brothers. " God is saying, " The stars are bright by themselves and people take to the road by them, " which is in His words, " By the stars they are guided " [16:16]. " In the same way Joseph's brothers had the brightness of prophecy, and within them was found the guidance of the people. " Their treachery toward their brother and their envy toward him are minor sins of the sort that occur for prophets. The wisdom in this is that the world's folk may come to know that the faultless is God, who is one and unique, and all other things have faults. In this meaning they have sung, I am the faulty and my Lord is pure- my faultiness is evidence of the Pure. It was said to Ḥasan, " Does the man of faith have envy? " He said, " What has made you forget the sons of Jacob? " Someone may say that Joseph was an immature child when he saw this dream, and it is known in the Shariah that no rulings apply to the act of a child. Since his act has no ruling, how can his dream have a ruling? The answer is that if the child's act is achieved by his own intention and aim, it can be attributed to his susceptibility to shortcoming and defect. But a dream is a divine showing, and in that children and adults are the same.

['O my son] do not relate your vision to your brothers, lest they plot against you some plot: this is one of those undifferentiated inspirations (ilhāmāt), for an Unseen form of the disengaged spiritual realities may appear, in a universal way that transcends time, to the spirit and the vestige of it then arrives in the heart and it does not become individuated in the soul by differentiation until knowledge of it, as it is, comes about, whereupon there follows fear and caution from it in the soul if it should be something unpleasant or rejoicing and gladness if it should be desirable. This kind of inspiration is called 'warning' or 'good tiding'. He [Jacob], peace be upon him, therefore feared what would happen before it happened and so forbade him [Joseph] from informing them of his vision as a precaution. But his cautiousness may also be due to the vision being proof of his [Joseph's] exalted and honoured status and his greater capacity over his brothers. He [Jacob] thus feared that they would be envious of him once they sensed that [privileged status].

Thus, will your Lord prefer you: that is, just like that election, by granting [Joseph] that tremendous vision, so He elects you [O Muḥammad] for prophethood, for truthful visions, especially the like of these, are the prelude to prophethood, and so he came to understand from his vision that he is one of the beloved [of God] for whom unveilings precede their wayfaring; and perfect His grace upon you, of prophethood and kingship.

Verily in Joseph and his brethren are signs for those who inquire, that is, glorious signs for those who inquire about their story and come to know it, [signs] which will prove to them, first, that pure [divine] election is a matter exclusive to God's wish, exalted be He, and is not connected to the effort made by a striving person or the will of a seeker, so that they might come to know the levels of pre-eternal preparedness; and, second, that the one for whom God wills good none can avert [that good] and the one whom He protects none can cause him misfortune or seek [to inflict on] him evil, so that their certainty and their trust might be strengthened and that they might witness the self-disclosures of His acts and His attributes; and, third, that Satan's plotting and his misguidance are something from which no one, not even prophets, are safe, so that they might be on their guard from him. But much more than all that is that these [signs] will apprise them by way of understanding - which is the transferral to the mental - of their states at the beginning, at the end and in-between the two and of the modality of their wayfaring to God in order to incite their yearning and their will, to sharpen their insight and to strengthen their resolve. That is because the similitude of Joseph is that of the heart which is prepared, of extreme beauty, dearly beloved to his father, Jacob the intellect, envied by his brothers from another mother (ʿallāt), namely, the five external senses and the five internal ones as well as [that of] anger (ghaḍab) and lust (shahwa), [all being] the children of the soul, except for the memory, which is not envious of him and does not seek to harm him, leaving eleven [in total], matching their number. As for their envy of him and their seeking to harm him, this is [to be understood as being] through that these [senses] are by their nature drawn to their pleasures and appetites, and impede the use of the intellect, the reflective faculty, for the actualisation of the perfections of the heart such as forms of knowledge and [noble] character traits, and are averse to that. They only want it [the intellect] to use them to actualise corporeal pleasures and the appetites of those animal faculties. But there is no doubt that reflection (fikr) looks more to the heart [than to the senses] and it is more intensely and more abundantly inclined to the actualisation of felicities of the heart such as forms of knowledge and virtues [than to those of the senses]. That is the significance of their saying:

'Surely Joseph and his brother are dearer to our father than we are: his brother [Benjamin] is the practical rational faculty from Joseph's mother the heart, Rachel the self-reproaching soul whom Jacob the heart married after the death of Leah the commanding soul. They said 'surely Joseph and his brother [�]', because just as the intellect entails perfecting of the heart with forms of knowledge and gnoses, it also entails perfecting this faculty by inferring all manner of virtues such as beautiful character traits and noble deeds. Their description of him [Jacob] as being in misguidance, which is to be remote from what is correct, by saying: Lo! our father is in plain misguidance, is a deficiency of rational consideration on their part and [an indication of] the remoteness of his way of actualising corporeal pleasures from theirs. Their casting of him [Joseph] into the bottom of a well is their [the senses'] mastery over the heart and their drawing of it towards the lower aspect by the occurrence [in the heart] of love for the body and correspondences with it until it was [finally] cast into the bottom of the well of corporeal nature. Except that he [Joseph] had been dressed in a shirt from Paradise which Gabriel, peace be upon him, had brought to Abraham on that day when he was denuded and cast into the fire and had dressed him in. Isaac had inherited it [from Abraham] and from him Jacob inherited it and attached it to an amulet around his [Joseph's] neck. So Gabriel came to him in the well, took it out and dressed him in it, for otherwise the water would have drowned him and his private parts would have been exposed, as has been related. It [the shirt] is an allusion to the attribute of original preparedness and the light of primordial nature, which is what preserved Abraham from the fire and shielded him by the will of God such that it was coolness and safety for him. As for their [the senses'] drawing of the intellect down so that it considers what pertains to livelihood and the actualisation of the means for that and that it orients itself towards that [pursuit], that is the significance of their words:

so that your father might be solely concerned with you, and that thereafter you might be a righteous folk', that is, in terms of organising livelihood and the preparing of the means thereto according to what is desired. As for their tempting of the intellect away from the heart by means of beguiling satanic insinuations and ego-centric censures, despite the intellect's aversion thereto, that is the significance of what they say when they are tempting Jacob away from him [with the statement]:

Send him forth with us tomorrow to frolic and play.As for their lie with regard to the wolf [devouring their brother] that is because the irascible faculty, once it manifests and flares up, veils the heart totally from the acts that are specific to him. Apparently it seems to be more powerful in its damaging of him, its incapacitating of his acts and its veiling of him, [all of] which constitutes the meaning of 'the [act of] devouring', despite the fact that the concupiscent faculty, the senses and the remaining faculties are more harmful to the heart and are more damaging to him in the same regard and are more able to draw him down to the lower aspect, being more recalcitrant and more severe in its refusal to receive rational directions and to obey commands and divine prohibitions. The compliance of the heart in consenting to seek spiritual perfections from it and the manifestation of that vestige from the irascible faculty, despite this being the opposite in reality, is the 'false blood on his shirt'. The turning of Jacob's eyes white [with grief] at being separated [from his son] represents the wearying of [his] insight and the loss of the light of intellect when Joseph the heart came to be at the bottom of the well of nature. The one of the caravan who brought him out of the well is the reflective faculty.

So when they went with him and agreed to put him at the bottom of the well, We revealed to him, " Surely thou shalt inform them of this affair of theirs when they are unaware. " Even if the care of his father was cut of from him, he received revelation from his Patron. Such is the custom of God: He never opens up a door of trial to the souls of His friends without opening up the doors of limpidness and the sorts of friendship to their hearts. If trial blocks a road for the servant, so what? God will open up the top of the road of limpid- ness with the attribute of friendship. If He takes back one mouthful, what's the loss? He will wrap up a hundred morsels for you. This is as they say: If I broke your necklace when drunk, I'll buy you a hundred gold beads to replace it. Although Joseph was sorrowful at separation from his father, why should he have lamented? He was colored by union with the revelation of the Real. The Real's revelation to him in that empty well was sweeter to him than union with Jacob in Canaan. Indeed, all caresses are in the midst of suffering, and beneath one disappointment lie a thousand treasures. The Pir of the Tariqah said, " If the marks of familiarity are true, whatever arrives from the Friend is beautiful doing. When there is no suspicion of the Friend in the apportioning, complaint is a fault. If this claim has meaning, happiness and grief will be the same for it. " I have a spirit inscribed with passion for You whether You pull it to happiness or grief.

They sold him for a paltry price. It is not surprising that Joseph's brothers sold him for a small price. What is surprising is the work of those travelers, who acquired someone like Joseph for twenty dirhams! It is not surprising that people should sell subsistent paradise for this small world. What is surprising is that they gain such a magnificent paradise and tremendous kingdom with a loaf of bread given to a poor man! Indeed, good fortune does not have a price, and the Real's generosity is nothing but a gift. If what Joseph possessed in himself-the characteristics of sinlessness, the realities of proxim- ity, and the subtleties of knowledge and wisdom-had been unveiled to his brothers, they would not have sold him for that small price, nor would they have called him a slave. A single speck of those characteristics and subtleties was unveiled to the governor of Egypt and Zulaykhā. Look how they bestowed their kingdom on his work and what value they placed on him! So also, when the women of Egypt saw his beauty, they said, " This is no mortal! This is none but a noble angel " [12:31]. Yes, it is showing that does the job, not seeing. MuṣṬafā said, " O God, show us things as they are! " Ibn ʿAṬāÌ said, " Beauty is of two sorts, outward beauty and inward beauty. Outward beauty is an adorned creation and a lovely form. Inward beauty is perfect character and fine conduct. " The Lord of the Worlds showed Joseph's outward beauty to his brothers. They saw nothing more, even though in God's eyes the outward has no importance. Hence they sold him for a small price. A trace of the inner beauty was shown to the governor of Egypt, so he said to his wife, " Give him generous lodging " [12:21]. This is so that the world's folk may know that in God's eyes im- portance and worth belong to inner beauty, not outward. MuṣṬafā said, " God gazes not on your forms or your possessions, but He gazes on your hearts and your deeds. " It is said that one day Joseph looked in a mirror and gazed on himself. He saw perfect beauty and said, " If I were a slave, what would my price be!? Who would be able to pay it? " The Lord of the Worlds did not let that pass, not until Joseph had tasted the punishment of gazing on himself.

And the ʿAzīz's wife, the one called Zulaykhā, to whom he entrusted his [the heart's] welfare with his statement, 'Give him an honourable place. Maybe he will be useful to us, or we may adopt him as a son', is the very self-reproaching soul which sought illumination by the light of the spirit, the vestige of which reached it, but which failed to attain fixity (tamkīn) therewith and did not attain the degree of the reassured soul. God's establishing of him [Joseph] in the land constitutes His empowering of him, after the cleansing and being illuminated by the light of the spirit, to [be able to] resist the soul and the faculties, and His granting of him mastery over the land of the body by the use of his instruments in the actualisation of perfections and in the governance of it by means of acts of [spiritual] discipline until such time as that [potential] perfection which resides in his preparedness emerges into actuality, as He says, that We might teach him the interpretation of events, in other words, that We might teach him about Our act, what We did with him in the way of delivering [him] and empowering [him] with fixity. And God's way [always] prevails, through His reinforcement, His facilitating of success and assistance until such time as he reaches the full extent of the perfection of his prime at the station which his preparedness entails so that He might then endow him with knowledge and wisdom, as He says:

And when he reached his prime We gave him [power of] judgement and knowledge: [one's] 'prime' is the end-stage of the arrival at the original primordial nature by means of disengaging from the coverings of created nature, that which we [Sufis] call the station of chivalry (futuwwa). However, most people are not aware that such matters are [completely] in the hands of God and so they press on to [spiritual] striving, struggling and training unaware that the striving, the struggling, the training and the spiritual discipline are also [all] from God. God has made these causes and means for what He has predetermined and that is why He has not separated them by saying, after stating We gave him [power of] judgement and knowledge: Thus, We reward those who are virtuous, in [their] pursuit, will, struggle and spiritual discipline.

Zulaykhā's tempting him away from his soul and her closing of the doors to him is an allusion to the manifestation of the self-reproaching soul in her - for variegation at the station of the heart takes place as a result of the manifestation of the soul, while variegation at the station of the spirit takes place as a result of the presence of the heart [there] - and [an allusion] to her attracting of the heart [Joseph] to her soul by seducing it and gaining mastery over it and adorning its attributes and its pleasures for it, and her closing of its [the heart's] exit to the spirit by blocking the thoroughfares of reflection and the outlets of light with her [the soul's] veiling attribute.

His desiring of her is the inclining of the heart to her [the soul] because of the lack of fixity and uprightness. His seeing of the proof of his Lord is [his] perception of that variegation by the light of insight and the consideration of the intellect, as is related in the story to the effect that his father appeared to him and forbade him, or raised his voice at him - it is also said that he struck the back of his neck with the palm of his hand such that his lust was expelled through his fingernails until it dissipated. All of that is an allusion to the intellect's forbidding him [Joseph the heart] from mixing with the soul by [seeing] the proof [of his Lord] and [perceiving with] the light of insight and guidance, and [an indication of] its effect on him through luminous power and support that necessarily brings about the dissipation of her [the soul's] lust and darkness, permeating her to her extremeties and removing from her the dark configuration by means of a luminous configuration. The tearing of his shirt from behind is an allusion to her piercing of the garment of the luminous attribute, which he possessed as a result of [his] virtuous character traits and righteous deeds, by exercising an effect on the heart by means of its attribute, for this is an attribute which the heart acquires from the aspect that lies adjacent to the soul, the one called the breast, which is without question the rear [aspect].

As for His words, whereupon they encountered her master at the door, this is an allusion to the emergence of the light of the spirit upon the heart's turning to it by means of remembering the rational proof and the coming upon it [the heart] of the holy inrush, its attempt to make the soul subordinate to itself while it struggled to draw it down to its [lower] aspect and the mastery acquired [by the light] over the heart then over the soul by means of this [holy inrush]. As for her statement, 'What is to be the requital of him who desires evil against your folk: this is an intimation that the soul insinuates its individual desires in the form of its rational best interests and adorns them such that its corruption is confounded with its rational best interests which [interests] the intellect is obliged to be mindful of, to uphold and to meet [the soul] with. Its [the intellect's] contravention of it [the soul] with regard to these [desires] is the desiring of evil against her [the soul] and [the desiring] of repulsive qualities by virtuous ones, which pertain to matters of everyday life, such as the conniving of women against men and the inclining of the heart to the upper aspect through its [the soul's] false words and claims.As regards the witness from her own folk, it is said that he was a paternal cousin of hers, that is to say, reflection (fikr) which knows that the corruption that afflicts character traits and deeds only comes about because of the soul and its mastery. For, were it to come from the direction of the heart and from the latter's inclination to the soul, then that [corruption] would afflict belief and resolve, and not simply deeds. It is also said that he was a maternal cousin of hers, that is to say, corporeal nature which acts as an indicator of the lower inclination in the soul, that [inclination] which attracts the heart from the direction of the breast and which pursues activities in the earth of the body. His consenting [with Joseph] and his apprising of the spirit by the light of guidance of the fact that the defect lay in the deed and not in the belief or resolve [of Joseph], which [defect] can only arise from the ego-centric provocation of the soul, is the significance of His words:

So when he saw that his shirt was torn from behind, he said: 'Indeed this is of the guile of you women. Verily your guile is great.

As for His words: O Joseph, ignore this; and you [O woman], ask forgiveness for your sin, this is an allusion to the rising of the light of the spirit upon the heart and his [the heart's] attraction to its [that light's] side because of the luminous descending inrush (nāzil) and the spiritual incoming thought (khāṭir) which turns him [the heart] away from the direction of the soul and commands him to reject her [the soul's] deeds, reminding him lest that inclination occur again. The effect of that inrush and that incoming thought upon the soul takes place as a result of illumination and purification; her illumination by the light of the spirit, which is reflected onto her from the heart, is her asking forgiveness for the dark configuration with which she had overwhelmed the heart. When the heart attains this status of conjunction with the spirit and irradiation by its light and the spirit has been illuminated by the rays of the light of the heart and purified of its impurities, she [the soul] comes to love him fervently, since she is now being illumined by his light and shaped by his configuration. [Her] drawing close to him and [her] desire to arrive at his station is not in order to attract him to his soul or to fulfil her need from him by using him to actualise natural pleasures or by dragging him down from his station and level to her level and where he is then shaped by her configuration and participates in her acts and pleasures as was the case when she was the [evil-] commanding [soul] such that her faculties, even the natural faculties, are affected by what affects her: that is the significance of the statement of the women in the city:

'The ʿAzīz's wife has been seducing her boy. Indeed he has smitten her heart with love. The more that the heart acquires mastery over her with his luminous configuration and the sensorium of his essence the primordial and the one earned through his gradual elevation to the vicinity of the spirit and his attainment the waystation (manzil) of the mystery, the more that the corporeal faculties are illumined by his light because of his subordination of the soul and her subordination to him such that their attention is diverted from their acts and they are bewildered, desisting from their conduct with regard to [securing their] nourishment, distracted from the knives of their instruments by which they used to regulate the task of seeking pleasure, nourishment and enjoyment, injuring that power of theirs by which they employ their instruments in their [various] disposals, and remaining dumbfounded in their repasts which constitute [their] acts of slyness in the organs of the body which the soul has prepared for them during her hospitality to them. That is the significance of His words:

And when they saw him, they were in awe of him and cut their hands, and they exclaimed: 'God preserve us! This is no human being: this is but a noble angel!'As for her saying [to Joseph], 'Come out before them', this is her seeking of the self-disclosure of his light out of her volition and her requirement that this [light] come out on her upon the actualisation for her of the preparedness for illumination. When the soul has devoted itself to the path of desiring the heart and her contending with him over the resolve for the wayfaring has diminished and she has been trained to be obedient to him, it becomes time for spiritual discipline in the way of entering into spiritual retreat (khalwa) because then the heart will have disengaged from his attachments and impediments and will have disengaged his resolve by the absence of hesitation, since with hesitation of resolve - due to his [the heart's] attraction now to the direction of the soul, now to the direction of the spirit -there can be neither spiritual discipline nor wayfaring and spiritual retreat becomes invalid due to the fact there is no concentration, which is one of its prerequisites. This [kind of] spiritual discipline is not the disciplining of the soul by making it obedient - for this [kind] does not require spiritual retreat, but [requires] avoiding the commission of contraventions and pursuing the breaking of it and the subjugating of it by resisting [it] through all kinds of acts of renunciation and worship - rather, it is the disciplining of the heart by rising above its [the hearts] attributes, its forms of knowledge, perfections and unveilings in the wayfaring along the path of annihilation and the seeking of presential vision and the encounter, which takes place after [the presence of] immunity against the mastery of the soul, as she [Zulaykhā] says:

Indeed I did attempt to seduce him, but he was immune. He sought protection from his soul and demanded more [thereof]. Yet if he does not do what I bid him, of paying [me] my share, he shall verily be prevented from corporeal pleasures, the spirit of vain desire and objects of sensory perception by being isolated and cut off from these; and verily shall he be of those brought low', by the loss of his dignity and status with us, our forsaking of him and his separation from headship of the assistants and servants in the body. But because isolation was beloved to him as it was to the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, when he used to seek solitary retreat in [the cave of] ḤirāÌ,

he said, 'My Lord, prison is dearer to me than that to which they are urging me. He said 'than that to which they are urging me', and supplicated to God to fend off their wiles from him with his words and if You do not fend off their wiles from me, then I shall tend towards them and become of the ignorant, because it is in her [the soul's] nature to incline to the lower aspect and to attract the heart to herself. The occasion for drawing him [the heart] down to her [the soul] so that he never disappears and her illumination by his light and her obedience to him is an accidental matter, one that does not last, while the heart always reinforces her in her deeds since he possesses two natures and two faces. With one of them he tends towards the spirit and with the other he tends towards the soul, and he turns with one face to that one and with the other face to this one. Thus there is nothing closer to his nature than this 'tending' to her [the soul] out of his ignorance, were it not for God's protection of him by causing the upper aspect to prevail [over the lower one] and reinforcing him with the lights of the higher [angelic] council, as the Prophet, peace be upon him, once said, 'O God, make my heart stand firm upon Your religion', whereupon it was said to him, 'You say that even though you are a prophet who receives revelationsḍ' He said, 'And what security is there for me against the fact that the heart is like a feather strewn in an open expanse, the winds blowing it around in every which way!' This supplication epitomises the heart's need [for God], which [state] is ever-obligatory for it.

So his Lord answered him, and He fended off their wiles from him, that is, He reinforced him with holy support and fortified him with castings from the august glories, turning his face away from the side of abomination to the side of the Holy, fending off thereby their machinations. Truly He is the Hearer, of the heart's communion at the station of mystery, the Knower, of what ought to be done with it when it is in need of Him.

Then it seemed [good] to them, after they had seen the signs that they should imprison him for a while: in other words, there appeared to the ʿAzīz of the spirit, the women of the soul, the faculties and the spirit assistants, such as the intellect and reflection and others, a certain opinion on which they were all agreed and that was that they should imprison him, namely, that they should leave him in the isolation which was dearer to him. As for the spirit, this was because of its subduing of him by the light of presential vision and preventing him from acts of free disposal and from his attributes. As for the soul and all of the faculties, it was because of their inability to attract him after they saw the signs of [divine] immunity, sincerity of resolve and his refusal to incline to them as well as his dazzling of them with his light and his faithfulness in being needy of God, for otherwise they would never have left him alone in his solitariness. As for estimation, it was because of its retreat from his light and flight from his shadow when he stood firm in his religion and sought refuge in the Truth. As for the intellect, it was because of its illumination by the light of the guidance; while for reflection, it was because its authority is actualised during solitariness.

As regards the two youths who entered the prison with him, one of them was the faculty of spiritual love that adheres to him; this one was the King's cupbearer, the one who gives him the wine of divine love to drink, as is related in the story in which he is [described as being] the cupbearer. The other [youth] was the vain desire of the soul which also does not part with him in any state. For vain desire is the life of the soul which it receives as an effusion from the former because of its [the soul's] vying. This [second youth] was the King's baker who managed the food stores of the city, as is related. Only these two remained by him during the [period of] solitariness and no one else. As for the cupbearer's dream, where he says, 'I dreamed that I was pressing wine', is the faculty of love being guided to the pressing of the wine of divine love from the grapes of the gnosis of the heart during the sleep of obliviousness to the real presential vision. As for the dream of the baker, where he says, 'I dreamed that I was carrying on my head bread whereof the birds were eating, this represents the orientation of vain desire in its totality to the actualisation of the pleasures of the birds of ego-centric faculties, their shares and their lusts which were likened to birds, in terms of the way in which it attracts their shares, because of the speed of their movements towards these [shares].

As for the words, 'The food, with which you are provided, shall not come to you, to the end of this [verse]: an allusion to the his [Joseph's] prohibiting the two from their shares until he had made clear to them what the outcome of their affair will be concerning the tasks which they have to fulfil through judicious guidance, right direction, rectification and setting [things] right. His manifesting to them of [his] affirmation of Oneness with his words, Lo! I have forsaken, to the end of this [verse], constitutes his urging them to fulfill the incontrovertible divine command, to refrain from inquisitiveness and not to allow the disuniting of [their] orientation or the dissipation of [their] aspirations. For, the specific quality of vain desire is disunity, division and devotion to the various lusts of the contending faculties. The specific quality of [spiritual] love at the beginning, and before reaching the end, is attachment to virtuous attributes and devotion to these regardless of the beauty of the essence. So he called them both to the affirmation of Oneness with his words, Lo! I have forsaken the creed of a folk who do not believe in God, in other words, those idolaters who worship the graven images of the soul's attributes, nay [who worship] the presence of the heart and its attributes, and who in the Hereafter, that is, and who are veiled from subsistence in the spiritual world, [and he called them also] with his words,

It never was for us to associate anything with God, and [also] with his words:

Are several lords better, or God, the One, the Almightyḍ in other words, [what is meants is] if for each of you had several lords, similar to where God says shared by several [masters], quarrelling [Q. 39:29], this one commanding him to one thing, that one commanding him to another thing, mutually exclusive in that respect and incapacitated, where in the case of [the faculty of] love, then [lords] such as the attributes and the names, and in the case of vain desire, then [lords] such as the ego-centric faculties, would that be better for him, or a single lord commanding him to one thing, as He has said And Our command is but a single word [Q. 54:50], a powerful vanquisher who subdues all and whose command no one impedes and for whom nothing is impossibleḍAnd he [Joseph] compelled them by means of judicious guidance (siyāsa) to be united in orientation. For, when the heart is overcome by the [inclusive] unity, its love is fortified against love of the attributes and is turned towards the essence. And if it is trained in the affirmation of Oneness, its vain desire is curbed against devotion to shares and lusts and against separation in the actualisation of pleasures and is content to restrict itself to [the fulfilling of] dues and urgent needs as per the command of the Truth, and not in obedience to Satan.

As for his statement, As for one of you, he shall serve his lord wine to drink, this is a designation of the task of the first [youth], after being judiciously guided to avoid idolatrous association, [the designation] being the granting the love of pleasures mastery over the spirit; and as for the other, he will be crucified so that the birds will eat from his head, an illustration of what the outcome of the affair of the second one will be: his crucifixion represents the preventing of him from the acts of his own soul, the curbing of him from his own exigencies, making him firm and establishing him in the stem of the vegetative natural faculty such that the imaginal faculty has no power of disposal on him nor he on it or on any of the other animal faculties. That is the mortification of vain desire, so that after this mortification and crucifixion the birds of the faculties of the soul eat from his head by the command of the Truth, this being the halting with the dues; decided is the matter regarding which you sought opinion', in other words, your matter stands firm and established in this way [shown]. That is the moment of his arrival and his [attainment of] propinquity to God and the time when the station of sanctity (walāya) through annihilation in God becomes manifest. If the two faculties are empowered with regard to the matter he has designated for each of them, followed by His command for the arrival at the station of the presential vision of the Essence and his solitariness comes to an end, then the length of the period of imprisonment will constitute the duration of his wayfaring to God. Once he is able to complete the annihilation, the status of the two faculties would then be proper, since they would then be [functioning] through God and not through themselves, whereupon the period of solitariness would end with the incipience of the period of subsistence through the existence bestowed from the Truth; but this had not yet been completed because of the existence of a remnant, the one alluded to in his words:

'Mention me to your lord', in other words, seek existence at the station of the spirit through love and settlement therein, for when love intoxicates the spirit with the wine of divine love, the spirit rises to the station of [inclusive] unity and the heart to the station of the spirit: at that station the spirit is referred to as being 'hidden' (khafiyy) and the heart as being a 'mystery' (sirr), but none of that is annihilation because both of them would in that instance be in existence and engulfed by the light of the Truth. Such a halting at this station gives rise to insolence and I-ness, which is why He says: But Satan caused him to forget to remember his Lord, in other words, the Satan of estimation causes Joseph the heart to forget to remember God, exalted be He, by being annihilated in Him, [and this was] because of that lingering presence of the remnant and the seeking of the station of the spirit - for otherwise, he would have been distracted from remembering [both] his soul and his existence. It was because of his being veiled at this station and because of this remnant that he tarried, in prison for some years. To this the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, alluded when he said, 'May God have mercy upon my brother Joseph. Had he not said, �mention me to your lord�, he would not have stayed in prison for some years'.Or [it could also be interpreted as] that the vanquished Satan of estimation, forbidden and veiled from the Side of the Truth caused the Messenger of love brought near after the raising of his degree, his mastery and the prevailing of his authority as well as his bewilderment in the divine beauty and the overwhelming intoxication, to forget to mention Joseph the heart in the presence of presential vision, because the lover who witnesses the [divine] beauty is bewildered and oblivious to all creatures, including the differentiations of his existence, nay, his very soul, immersed as he would be in the source of the union until his annihilation is complete and his intoxication comes to an end, whereafter he returns to wakeful consciousness (ṣaḥw) and remembers the differentiation. Moreover, when his annihilation comes to an end at his immersion in the sea of Ipseity and obliteration in the Essence of [exclusive] Unity and the period of imprisonment is concluded, God, exalted be He, will give him life through His life and will endow him with an existence from His Essence and His attributes.

The king said, " I see seven fat cows that seven lean ones are eating. " The beginning of Joseph's trial was the dream concerning which he said, " I saw eleven stars " [12:4]. The cause of his deliverance was also a dream, that seen by the king of Egypt, who said, " I see seven fat cows. " This is so that you will know that things are done by the predetermination and governance of God and that He is one in driving things and taking care of things. Even though the causes are apparent, remaining with the causes is an error. The Pir of the Tariqah said, " Not seeing the cause is ignorance, but staying with the cause is associationism. Pass beyond the cause and reach the Causer. Do not close the door of causes lest you not reach yourself. " The recognizer's eyes are not on the Tablet, nor on the Pen. He is not bound to Eve, nor in prison to Adam. He has a constant thirst, even though he has a cup again and again. O most gener- ous Guardian, O most merciful Fount of Bounty! Take back the cup once so that this poor wretch may breathe! " It has been said that Joseph was perfect in two things: one was beauty of created nature, the other knowledge and astuteness. The beauty of created nature is the perfection of form, and knowl- edge and astuteness are the perfection of meaning. The Exalted Lord predetermined that his beauty would be the cause of trial and his knowledge the cause of deliverance. Thus the world's folk may know that beautiful knowledge is better than beautiful form. As the proverb says, " Knowledge bestows, though it be slow. " Since Joseph's knowledge of visions was the cause of his kingdom in this world, why is it surprising that knowledge of the Patron's attributes is the cause of the recog- nizer's kingdom in the afterworld? God says, " When thou seest it, thou wilt see bliss and a great kingdom " [76:20].

As for the courtiers who said, 'A jumble of dreams!, those were the noble faculties, such as the intellect, the reflection that is veiled by estimation, and estimation itself that is veiled from the mystery of spiritual discipline and from [that of] change, as in the case of those who are veiled by these [faculties] and who have halted with them, whom you find reckoning the states of folk who practice spiritual discipline to be [mere] fairytales. As for the messenger of love who 'remembered after a time', he only remembered by means of the manifestation of the angel of the Holy Spirit and the latter's inspiration to him and causing him to see the differentiations of his existence by returning to the multiplicity after the unity - otherwise he would be in the state of annihilation, consumed by the source of the union, seeing therein neither the existence of the heart nor anything else: how then would he be able to rememberḍ He would only remember as a result of his becoming manifested by the light of the Truth after his non-existence.

As for the year, in which the people will be granted relief, and in which they will press [fruit], that is the moment of his giving of enjoyment to his soul during complete reassurance and universal security.

As for the statement of the women of the faculties: 'God preserve us! We know of no evil in him', and the statement of the ʿAzīz's wife: 'Now the truth is out, [these constitute] an allusion to the illumination of the soul and of the faculties by the light of the Truth, their assumption of the attribute of justful speech and truthfulness, the actualisation of the trait of justice by means of the light of [inclusive] unity, the manifestation of love immediately upon separation after union, and [to] the perfection of the soul's reassuredness because of its affirmation of the heart's merit and sincereness, and [of] its guilt and his [the heart's] innocence. For part of the [process of the] perfection of the soul's reassuredness is its admission of guilt and its seeking of forgiveness for the excesses it has committed when it was a commanding [soul] and its holding on to divine mercy and lordly protection [from sin].As for the King's wish to use him for himself, that represents his making the heart as the viceregent (khilāfa) over the kingdom after complete perfection, as is related in the story [to the effect] that he [the King] made him sit on his throne, placed his own crown on his head, gave him his ring to wear and girded him with his sword as well as removed Potiphar from office. After Potiphar died, the King gave him his wife, Zulaykhā, in marriage and then himself abdicated the throne in favour of him and devoted himself to worship of his Lord. All of that is an allusion to the station of viceregency (khalīfa) of the Truth, similar to where He said to David, We have indeed made you a viceregent on the earth [Q. 38:26]. The death of al-ʿAzīz is an allusion to the arrival of the heart at his station and the departure of the spirit to his presential vision of the unity. As for his [Joseph's] marriage to al-ʿAzīz's wife, that is an allusion to the heart's giving the soul enjoyment of shares after reassurance, for the noble illumined soul, through [its enjoyment of] shares, becomes stronger in observing the preconditions for uprightness, enforcing the laws of justice, inferring the principles of knowledge and deed, which were the two children whom, according to the story, she bore him, Ephraim and Misha.

That, so that he may know that I did not betray him secretly.... But I do not acquit my own soul. Surely the soul commands to ugliness. When [the governor's wife] said, " That, so that he may know that I did not betray him secretly, " she saw the success-giving and protection of the Real. When she said, " I do not acquit my soul; surely the soul commands to ugliness, " she saw the shortcoming of her own service. The first clari- fies gratitude for God's success-giving, the second clarifies apology for shortcoming. The servant must always be passing back and forth between gratitude and apology. Whenever he looks at the Real, he should see blessings, take delight, and increase in gratitude. Whenever he looks at himself, he should see sin. He should burn and come forth in apology. Through the grati- tude, he becomes worthy of increase, and through the apology he becomes deserving of forgiveness. This is why the Pir of the Tariqah said, " O God, when I look at myself, I ask who is more miserable than I. When I look at You, I ask who is greater than I. " When my gaze falls on my own clay, I see nothing worse in the world. When I pass beyond my attributes, I look at myself from the Throne. Fuẓayl ʿIyāẓ was seen retired from the people and sitting in the corner of a mosque, having made the Real's remembrance his intimate friend. He had brought to hand the chevaliers' retreat with the Real, on the carpet of expansiveness in the tent of He is with you [57:4]. A friend arrived and saw him alone. He took seeing him as a blessing and sat before him. Fuẓayl said, " My brother, what has made you sit with me? " What has made you intrude upon me in this seclusion? Such detachment, that you attend to me! The dervish said, " Please excuse me. I did not know. I was unaware of your present moment and ec- stasy. Now tell me something about your present moment and speak of a fine point about your traveling so that I may not remain without a portion of companionship with you. " Fuẓayl said, " I will say what is fitting for you.

That, so that he may know that I did not betray him secretly.... But I do not acquit my own soul. Surely the soul commands to ugliness. When [the governor's wife] said, " That, so that he may know that I did not betray him secretly, " she saw the success-giving and protection of the Real. When she said, " I do not acquit my soul; surely the soul commands to ugliness, " she saw the shortcoming of her own service. The first clari- fies gratitude for God's success-giving, the second clarifies apology for shortcoming. The servant must always be passing back and forth between gratitude and apology. Whenever he looks at the Real, he should see blessings, take delight, and increase in gratitude. Whenever he looks at himself, he should see sin. He should burn and come forth in apology. Through the grati- tude, he becomes worthy of increase, and through the apology he becomes deserving of forgiveness. This is why the Pir of the Tariqah said, " O God, when I look at myself, I ask who is more miserable than I. When I look at You, I ask who is greater than I. " When my gaze falls on my own clay, I see nothing worse in the world. When I pass beyond my attributes, I look at myself from the Throne. Fuẓayl ʿIyāẓ was seen retired from the people and sitting in the corner of a mosque, having made the Real's remembrance his intimate friend. He had brought to hand the chevaliers' retreat with the Real, on the carpet of expansiveness in the tent of He is with you [57:4]. A friend arrived and saw him alone. He took seeing him as a blessing and sat before him. Fuẓayl said, " My brother, what has made you sit with me? " What has made you intrude upon me in this seclusion? Such detachment, that you attend to me! The dervish said, " Please excuse me. I did not know. I was unaware of your present moment and ec- stasy. Now tell me something about your present moment and speak of a fine point about your traveling so that I may not remain without a portion of companionship with you. " Fuẓayl said, " I will say what is fitting for you.

Yet the wage of the Hereafter, that is, the spiritual share in the way of the pleasure of the presential vision of the Beauty and the inspection of the lights of the august glories of the Enduring Face, is better for those who believe, with entific faith, and guard against, the remnants of I-ness.When he returned to the station of differentiation and sat on the throne of kingship for his viceregency, his brothers came to him, the animal faculties, after he had been separated from them for a long time in the prison of spiritual discipline and spiritual retreat (khalwa) in Egypt of the Holy Presence and [after his] immersion in the source of union.

And they entered to him, seeking proximity to him by means of having been edified with the refined manners (ādāb) of spiritual individuals, because of the reassuredness of the soul and its illumination and the illumination by it of those [animal] faculties, and their having been trained by the configurations of virtues and [noble] character traits, seeking provision from the nourishing beneficial forms of knowledge in the way of character traits and the divine precepts; and he recognised them, together with the virtuousness of their state and their goodliness, by means of [his] astuteness and purity, and their impoverished need of the meanings they were seeking from him, but they did not recognise him, because of the superiority of his level over theirs, as a result of [his] disengagement, and his possession of qualities which they were unable to comprehend, and that is why he sought the presence of the practical rational faculty with his statement:

'Bring me a brother of yours from your father, since universal meanings that are attached to deeds can only be comprehended by that [rational] faculty. Know also that for those beloved [of God] their unveilings precede their [spiritual] efforts. Thus they teach their faculties the divine precepts and rulings and direct them after the arrival, even if their souls should be reassured before that [arrival]. As for the provision with which he equipped them is a small measure of particulars which they are able to comprehend and work with.

He says, But if you do not bring him to me, there will be no measure for you, of universal meanings actualised, with me; and do not come near [me]', since your level is remote from mine, unless by means of him [Benjamin]. But since the practical rational faculty, because it has not departed from the station of pure intellect to the station of the breast, is not able to accompany the sensory faculties and cast [upon them] the particular meanings that cause them to function or to bring about the movement of the yearning longing faculty towards rational best interests:

They said, 'We will try to tempt his father away from him, that is, by purifying preparedness for the reception of his [Jacob's] effusion.

As for his statement, to his young men: 'Place their merchandise in their saddlebags, this is an allusion to the heart commanding its young men, the vegetative faculties, at the giving of enjoyment to the soul during [its] reassuredness, to supply the substrata for their faculties by which they are nourished and by which they are empowered to earn their perfections, since these are that merchandise of theirs from which they can seek provision. Their saddlebags represent the instruments of their perceptions and earnings; so that they may, recognise their faculties and their capacities to earn, when they return to their folk, from among all of the animal faculties, such as the irascible, the concupiscent and their like, and so they might come back', to the station of profit-making and seeking provision from the nourishment of meanings and forms of beneficial knowledge from that merchandise.

So when they went back to their father, having purified their preparedness and been trained by the configurations of virtues they required of him that he send forth with them the practical rational faculty to supply them permanently with virtuous character traits by means of meanings. In other words, they sought to be supplied from his effusion; that we may obtain the measure, that we may profit from him. For surely we shall not use him to actualise our goals and bring about his perdition, as we did, during the time of ignorance, with his brother [Joseph]. Rather, we will guard him well by obligating ourselves to him and being mindful of him on the path to perfection.The taking from them of a covenant and a pledge in sending him forth with them expresses the precedence given to the sound conviction of faith over deeds and obligating them to that covenant first. Otherwise their state as they embarked on the task would not have been proper and would not have had a wholesome effect.

['O my sons] do not enter by one gate, that is, do not wayfare along the path of a single virtue, such as munificence for example but not bravery; or do not conduct yourselves according to one of God's descriptions only, exalted be He, for the presence of the [inclusive] unity is the source of all virtues and the essence of the [exclusive] unity is the principle of all the attributes. Thus wayfare along the path of all of the separate virtues until you have acquired the attribute of justice whereafter you can turn to the presence of the [inclusive] unity, and onduct yourselves according to all of the attributes until the essence is unveiled to you. It is related in a ḥadīth that on the Day of Resurrection, God, exalted be He, discloses Himself to the various religious groups according to the belief of each [one of them] and so they recognise Him. But He then undergoes a transmutation into another form and they deny Him. Yet I cannot avail you against God anything, in other words, I cannot ward off anything from you should He withhold from you the granting of success or veil you with certain veils from your perfections, for the intellect can only effuse knowledge, not bring a preparedness into existence or remove a veil.

And when they entered, that is, [when] they obeyed the command of the intellect to wayfare along the path of all of the virtues, it did not avail them from the direction of God, anything, in other words, their being veiled by the veil of Majesty and privation from the pleasure of arrival did not avert anything from them, because the intellect is only guided to primordial nature and only itself guides to gnosis. As regards being illumined by the light of the Beauty and delighting in the pleasure of yearning by seeking contact, and tasting of fervent love from the perfection of the Majesty and the Beauty, nay, the Majesty of the Beauty and the Beauty of the Majesty, that is something that can only be facilitated by the light of guidance that comes from the Truth [Himself]; it was but a need in Jacob's soul, to make them perfect by means of virtues. And verily he was possessed of knowledge, because God had taught him, not because he enjoyed eyewitness or presential vision; but most of mankind do not know, that, and so they suppose that perfection is how much knowledge the intellect possesses; or [it could be understood as] mankind of the senses who do not know the knowledge of the universal intellect;

he [Joseph] took his brother into his arms, by virtue of the correspondence between them in terms of disengagement;

he put the drinking-cup into the saddlebag of his brother, the drinking-cup with which he distributes the measure to people, in other words, his faculty for comprehending forms of knowledge from which he can then derive the knowledge of divine precepts and infer the canons of justice. For the practical rational faculty becomes more able to comprehend rational concepts after disengaging from the garments of estimation and imagination, as does the considerative one, which is the faculty that manages the affair of livelihood, and the one tarnished with illusion in its initial state.The attribution of theft to him is because of his habituation, in the locus of estimation, to comprehending [only] the particulars of those meanings attached to substrata, and [because of] his remoteness from comprehending universals. So when he became better enabled to [comprehend] them after being taken into his brother's arms and drawing from him that faculty by means of disengagement, it was as though he had stolen [something] whereas he had not stolen. As for the crier who accused them of theft, he is illusion and because of the presence of something illusory [ḍ] the state of all changed from what it had been; their [the cameleers] non-compliance with him and his supposing that to be the case was a deficiency on their part [ḍ].The load [of one camel] promised for whoever brings [back] the goblet represents the obligations of the divine law (taklīf) which come about by means of the practical intellect when it draws that knowledge from the heart. The goblet is the faculty of preparedness by which his knowledge is actualised. The one missing it who searches their saddlebags and the one who pulls it out of his [Joseph's] brother's saddlebag is reflection, whom the heart had sent for that task.

Thus We schemed for Joseph.... We raise in degree whomsoever We will. Ibn ʿAṬāÌ said, " We tried him with various sorts of trial until We conveyed him to exaltedness and eminence. " In terms of allusion He is saying, " We turned Joseph over to various sorts of trial and kept him for a long time in the station of bewilderment on the carpet of remorse until We conveyed him to the place of generosity and elevation and let him taste the wine of nearness and intimacy. In face of this blessing that tribulation was not heavy, and next to this nearness that remorse was no loss. " The wont of the Lord of the universe is this: The foundation of happiness is all suffering, and be- neath one disappointment lie a thousand treasures. If you want the wisdom of this clearer and an explication fuller, it means, " We ruled and decreed in the beginningless that Joseph would be king of Egypt. First We showed him the abase- ment of slavery so that he would be informed of the remorse of captives and slaves. Then We tried him with the trial of prison so that he would be aware of the burning and grief of prisoners. We threw him into the gloom of exile so that he would not be heedless of the helplessness of exiles. " Be a mother to orphans, nurture them with gentleness, be noble to askers, fulfill their requests. The generosity We showed to you in your poverty and orphanhood- you show the same, O generous in character, to Our creatures. [DS 36] We raise in degree whomsoever We will. First there is going straight, then unveiling, then con- templation: " We give whomsoever We want a high standing, and We lift up his degrees: first the success of obedience, then the realization of recompense; first the self-purification of deeds, then making states limpid; first the resoluteness of service in the station of the Shariah, then the finding of contemplation in the Haqiqah itself. " Going straight alludes to the Shariah, unveiling alludes to the Tariqah, and contemplation alludes to the Haqiqah itself. The Shariah is servanthood, the Tariqah is selflessness, and the Haq- iqah is freedom in the midst of both. Become free of everything in the realm of being- be that Heart-taker's " companion of the cave. "

As for the significance of: They said, 'If he is stealing, a brother of his stole before', it is that the heart, alone from among all of the faculties, had been prepared for this meaning beforehand, and so they continued not to recognise the two [Joseph and his brother], accusing the two before their father in order to actualise what they sought and to seek a pleasure beyond the one they sought [ḍ]. It is said that Abraham, God's blessings and peace be upon him, used to own a belt which the eldest of his children would inherit. So after Isaac, Joseph's paternal aunt inherited it since she was the eldest of the children, and she had also raised Joseph after the death of his mother Rachel. But when he came of age, Jacob wanted to take [possession of] it [the belt] from her, but she would not renounce [possession of] it. So she tied the belt underneath his clothes, peace be upon him, and then said that she had lost the belt. When it was found upon him [Jacob], it was handed over to her and Jacob left it with her until she died. This [belt] is an allusion to the station of chivalry which he [Jacob] inherited from Abraham the spirit before the station of sanctity, during the time of his youth. It was the reassured soul that had tied it around him, the one that had embraced it at the time of the death of Rachel the self-reproaching [soul]. Jacob's desire to strip her of this [belt] is an allusion to the fact that the intellect desires to be elevated to the [station of the] earning of gnoses and realities; and when he finds it [the intellect] described with qualities of excellence at the station of chivarly, he is satisfied with it and leaves him with the reassured soul wayfaring along the path of virtues until she [the reassured soul] passes away through annihilation in God at the station of sanctity. But God knows best. As for Joseph's keeping his words secret in his soul, that is his awareness of their inability to perceive his station and their falling short of his perfection, and these [words] were: you are a worse case.The one who requested to be taken by Joseph the heart in place of his brother the practical intellect was [the faculty of] estimation since it tends to interfere with rational concepts and yearns to be elevated to the horizons of the intellect; his [estimation's] judgement concerning these [concepts] in an improper way and their [the brothers'] inclination to his leadership of them, excluding the practical intellect, is on account of the correspondence between them in terms of their attachment to substrata and his [estimation's] wish to actualise for them their goals in the way of corporeal pleasures.

But when the heart found that his property, being the comprehension of rational meanings, with the practical intellect and not [with the faculty of] estimation: He said, 'God forbid that we should take anyone save him with whom we found our property; for then truly, if we were to take estimation in his place, and take him into our arms and cast on him what we cast to our brother [Benjamin], we would be committing a terrible injustice since we would be assigning something a place to which it does not belong.

Their despairing of him is their sensing that estimation would not be placed in charge of them and they would not be permitted to enjoy his exigencies or judgement. The most senior of them who reminded them of the pledge they had given to their father, [the pledge] being the conviction of faith, and [who reminded them] of their failure regarding Joseph when estimation had ruled, was reflection (fikr); that is why the exegetes he was the one who made the fairest decision regarding Joseph and prevented them from killing him. As for his words, So I will never leave this land until my father permits me, this means I shall not make any move without the judgement of the intellect, as opposed to estimation, until I die.

Return to your father and say, " O our father! Surely thy son has stolen. " When Jacob became distracted and distraught in separation from Joseph, helpless in his pain with- out remedy, he wanted to make the remembrance of that dear one a balm for his wound and to be passionate with someone linked to Joseph. He made Benjamin his reminder and sympathizer, for he had drunk water from the same drinking place as Joseph and had been nurtured on the same lap. The heart of the passionate man always inclines toward someone who has a link or some sort of similarity with the object of passion. Do you not see that Majnūn of Banī ʿāmir went out to the desert hunting for a gazelle? He saw that its eyes and neck were like those of Laylā. He was passing his hands over its neck, kissing its eyes, and saying, " Your eyes are her eyes, your neck is her neck! " When Jacob fastened his heart to Benjamin and when a part of him came to rest in him, the venomous sickle was once again drawn from the sheath of time and Benjamin was separated from his father. Then the name of thief was thrown on him, and this added trial to his trial-salt was sprinkled on his wound and the burn was once again burned. Just as fire wants to kindle burnt rags, so also the pain of separation wants to settle down with a burnt heart. Whenever pain steps forth from this heart of mine another pain takes its place in the breast. I become the companion of every pain for fire flares up when it reaches the burnt. Whenever Jacob saw Benjamin, he was consoled by him, for " He who is prevented from gazing is consoled by a trace. " 4 Then, when he was held back from Benjamin, the burning reached the utmost limit and he moaned at the pain in his heart. With the tongue of longing he said,

and the caravan with which we approached, from among the animal faculties. So ask them that they might inform you of your son's thievery.

'Nay,' he said, 'but your souls have beguiled you into something: that is, your physical bodily natures adorned for you the delighting in corporeal pleasures and sensory passionate desires, such that you supposed these to be perfection and [supposed] the pursuit of rational concepts, adherence to divine precepts and being under the command of virtues a deficiency. Yet beautiful patience!, in other words, it is for you to be beautifully patient in always implementing the divine precepts and [conducting yourselves according to] the virtues, to halt with the judgement of the Law and [that of] the intellect; or [it means] beautiful patience in partaking of enjoyment according to the [dictates of the] Law is more comely for you than disregarding the Law and dogged pursuit of the judgements of nature; or [it means], then for me it is to be beautifully patient with regard to Joseph and his brothers continuing to seek the irradiation of the holy lights, the sending down of revealed judgements and deducing of the bases thereof, something to which I have no access. Therefore I must be separated from them until they are free to look after the best interests of both sides and to fulfil the dues of both matters, namely, those of everyday life and the final return. For just as the intellect entails the pursuit of perfection and the making good of the final return, so it entails the making good of the body and the organising of the means of livelihood, as well as the balancing of the constitution by means of nourishment and the nurturing of faculties by means of pleasures; or [it means] then it is my task to endure with beautiful patience [all of] that. It may be that God will bring them all [back] to me, from the direction of 'the highest horizon' [cf. Q. 53:7] and by elevation from my stage to what my consideration and vision entail in the way of being mindful of both sides and [what] my station and my level [entail] in the way of mediating between the two waystations. Indeed He is the Knower, of realities, the Wise', in governing the worlds, and so He does not leave them to be mindful of the upper aspect but oblivious to the lower aspect so that the city of the body is then ruined and its people perish. That was before the complete protection, which we have mentioned, since this is the station of striving after the unveiling and the wayfaring along the path of uprightness after the affirmation of the Oneness.

" Oh, my grief for Joseph! " And his eyes turned white because of the sorrow that he was suppressing. Revelation came from the Compeller of all engendered beings: " O Jacob! You grieve so much for him, but you do not grieve for what you are missing of Me by being busy with grief for him! " O Jacob, how long this sorrow and regret at separation from Joseph? How long will you suffer grief and coldly sigh? Do you not suffer grief that you are held back from Me while busy with him? " With two kiblahs you can't walk straight on the road of tawḤīd- either the Friend's approval, or your own caprice. [DS 488] " O Jacob! Be careful not to pass Joseph's name over your tongue any more, or I will remove your name from the register of the prophets. " The Pir of the Tariqah said, " Jacob's remembrance of Joseph was the seed of heartache, and Joseph's remembrance of Jacob was the seed of ease. Since Jacob had all that rebuke for remem- bering Joseph, everything other than remembering God is loss. It is said that remembering the Friend is like the spirit. Look more carefully: remembering the Friend is the spirit itself! " When Jacob saw the harshness of the Real's rebuke, he no longer mentioned Joseph's name. Then the mercy and gentleness of the Exalted Threshold gave this command to Gabriel: " O Ga- briel, go to Jacob and remind him of Joseph. " Gabriel came and mentioned Joseph's name. Jacob sighed. Revelation came from the Real: " O Jacob, I know what is beneath your moaning. By My exaltedness, were he dead, I would resurrect him because of the beauty of your loyalty. " And his eyes turned white because of the sorrow that he was suppressing. Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq said, " Jacob wept because of a created thing, so his eyesight went. David wept more than Jacob, but his eyesight did not go, because his weeping was for the sake of his Lord. " Weeping for the Real is of two sorts: weeping from the eyes and weeping from the heart. Weeping from the eyes is the weeping of repenters in fear of God; they weep at seeing their own disobedience.

As for their saying: 'you will never cease remembering Joseph, this is an allusion to the intensity of his affectionate yearning, longing and attraction to the aspect of the heart, in that condition, to the exclusion of them, by virtue of the intimate correspondence between them in terms of disengagement and inclination to the higher world.

As for his words, and I know from God what you do not know, is an allusion to the fact that the intellect knows that the heart will soon return to the world of creatures and will halt with habit after having been to the Side of the Truth and having separated from the rule of habit, similar to the question once posed: 'What is the endḍ', to which it was said, 'It is to return to the beginning'.

It was on the basis of that knowledge that he said, O my sons, go and enquire about Joseph and his brother, and that was at [the moment of] his being unengaged in wayfaring totally and at the arrival of the effect of that disengagement to the intellect, by virtue of its proximity to his level in terms of descent (tanazzul) and drawing down close (tadallī), such that he commands [his children] the faculties to draw him [Joseph the heart] down to their station by seeking the shares in the form of the corporeal concentration (jamʿiyya) and [by] managing their particular livelihood and best interests. That was the spirit which forbade them from despairing of Him, since the believer finds this spirit and beatitude in the second life which will be through God and in which he will be alive through Him and will enjoy in His presence all manner of bliss and the pleasures of the Gardens of the acts, the attributes and the Essence, by means of the soul, the heart and the spirit, in contrast to the disbeliever, as He has said: Indeed none despairs of the [gracious] Spirit of God save the disbelieving folk'.

As for their statement: ['O ʿAzīz] misfortune has befallen us and our family, this is an allusion to their difficult situation, their evil state and straitened condition as they halt with dues; and we have come with reject merchandise: an allusion to their weakness, by virtue of the paucity of the substrata of their faculties and the falling short of their nourishment to secure [for them] what they desire. And their saying, so fill up for us the measure, is an attempt to solicit his sympathy by seeking the shares.

As for his statement, 'Do you realise what you did to Joseph and his brother [�]ḍ, this is an allusion to the descent of the heart to their station in the locus of the breast so that they might recognise him and remember their state at the beginning and what they did to him during the time of ignorance and misguidedness.

As for their saying, 'Is it really you, Josephḍ', this is a marvelling on their part at his state in that luminous configuration and courtly splendour and the remoteness of [all of] that from his state at the very beginning. As for his words, God has truly shown favour to us, to the end of this [verse]: is an allusion to the causative factor in all of that and the cause of his perfection.

Their statement, 'By God, truly God has preferred you over us: an allusion to the faculties, upon uprightness, being guided to his perfection and their falling short of that.

As for his words, 'There shall be no reproach on you this day - since these [faculties] are innately disposed to the acts of [physical] nature [which they commit]. And his words, God will forgive you: an allusion to their exoneration from sin upon being illumined by the light of virtue and being subject to His command upon perfection.

Go with this shirt of mine and cast it upon the face of my father so that he may come to seeing. Joseph said, " Take my shirt to Jacob, for his pain has not ceased from the time he saw the shirt stained with the wolf's blood. The balm will also be my shirt. " When they took the shirt from Egypt, the morning breeze was commanded to take the shirt's scent to Jacob's nostrils so that, before Joseph's messenger could give the good news, he would receive it from the Real's mes- senger and recognize the Real's perfect gentleness and favor toward him. According to the tasting of the recognizers, this is the divine breeze that wanders furtively around the world to the doors of the breasts of the faithful and the tawḤīd-voicers to see where there may be a limpid breast and an empty secret core in which to dwell. Her love came to me before I knew love- it came across a carefree heart and took possession. To this alluded the Prophet: " Surely your Lord has breezes in the days of your time, " and so on. As for Jacob, this generosity was shown to him by means of passion for Joseph. Beneath this lies a magnificent secret. Its explanation is that contemplating Joseph for Jacob was by means of con- templating the Real. Whenever Jacob saw Joseph with the eyes of his head, he was gazing on the Real in contemplation with the eye of his secret core. So, when he was veiled from contemplating Joseph, his heart was also veiled from contemplating the Real. All of Jacob's anxiety and grieving was because of the loss of the contemplation of the Real, not the loss of companionship with Jo- seph. His longing and lamenting at separation from Joseph was because he had lost his mirror. He did not weep for the mirror itself, but for his heart's intimate, which he no longer saw. He burned because of losing that. Hence, on the day when he saw him again, he fell down in prostration, for his heart was contemplating the Real. He was prostrating before the contemplation of the Real, for none other than God is worthy of prostration.

Their father said, " Surely I find Joseph's scent. " The wonder is that the bringer of the shirt found nothing of that scent, but Jacob found it at the dis- tance of eighty farsakhs. For that was the scent of passion, and the scent of passion blows only on the passionate. Moreover, it does not always blow. As long as a man has not been cooked by passion and pounded by the trial of passion, the scent will not blow on him. Do you not see that at the beginning of the work and the outset of the story, when Joseph was taken away from him, the first stage was not reached when they threw him into the well. Jacob had no awareness of this and caught no scent. Finally, at Canaan, he reported about Joseph's scent: " Surely I find Joseph's scent. " It is said that in the House of Sorrows, Jacob wept a great deal every dawn. Sometimes he lamented miserably, sometimes he wailed at his abasement, sometimes he opened the journal of passion and began the chapter on passion. Sometimes he put his head on his knees, sometimes he placed his face in the dust, his two hands raised in supplication. Sometimes he recognized Joseph's scent from the dawn wind and said with the tongue of his state, " The wind at dawn brings your scent, my dear- I am the dawn wind's slave in the tracks of your scent. " Thus it is that on the day of relief the morning breeze brought the scent of Joseph to Jacob and brought him into proximity. This is the custom of the lovers: asking in the lands, conferring with ruined encampments, and sniffing news from the winds. In this meaning someone sang, " I will let the winds guide me to your scent when they blow from your direction And ask them to carry my greetings to you. Respond to me if they come one day. "

As for his 'misguidance of old', this is his fervent love for the heart from pre-eternity and his distraction from their aspect.

As for his saying, 'Did I not say to you, �Indeed I know from God what you do not knowḍ�, this is an allusion to his prior knowledge of the heart's return to the station of the intellect.His asking of forgiveness for them is his establishing of them upon the judgement of the intellectual virtues by means of uprightness after their purification, their acquisition of intelligence and their reception of luminous configurations after shedding the dark ones. Their entry upon Joseph is their arrival at the station of the breast at the point of uprightness. Their entry into Egypt is the being of all in the presence of the divine concentration of the [inclusive] unity despite the variance in their levels of excellence at the source of the union of the unity. The raising of his parents upon the throne represents the elevation of the two levels of the intellect and the soul over the levels of the remaining faculties and the increase in their propinquity to him and the potency of their authority over these [other faculties]. Their falling down in prostration before him represents the submission of all and their obedience to him by the command of the divine [inclusive] unity without their souls' exercising any motion, such that not a single hair or vein moves in them except by means of God.

So, when they entered in upon Joseph, he embraced his parents.... And he lifted his parents to the throne, and they fell prostrate before him.... " He acted beautifully toward me when He brought me out of prison and brought you from the desert after Satan had sowed dis- sension between me and my brothers. Surely my Lord is gentle toward what He will. " In going to Egypt, all were the same. But at the time of proximity and caresses, they were differ- ent, for he put his father and maternal aunt on the throne of generosity and singled them out for the companionship, nearness, and embrace, as the Exalted Lord says: " And he lifted his parents to the throne. " But he brought his brothers down to the place of service: " And they fell prostrate before him. " This is an allusion that tomorrow at the resurrection, all the faithful will be brought into paradise, both the disobedient who have been forgiven and the obedient who have been approved. Then those who were the folk of disobedience, the ones received by the Real's forgiveness, will be set down in paradise, and the folk of recognition will be singled out for the special favor of proxim- ity and nearness. They will be brought to the Presence of At-ness: at an Omnipotent King [54:55]. The Pir of the Tariqah said, " The folk of service are one thing, the folk of companionship something else. The folk of service are prisoners of paradise, the folk of companionship com- manders of paradise. The prisoners are in joy and bliss, and the commanders dwell in secret whis- pering with the Beneficent. " He acted beautifully toward me when He brought me out of prison. The beautiful-doer is not he who acts beautifully at the beginning. The beautiful-doer is he who acts beautifully after your disloyalty. Joseph saw the disloyalty of his own soul at first, when he sought refuge with the cup- bearer in prison and said, " Remember me to your lord " [12:42]. Then he saw that his deliverance from the prison was through the Real's bounty and generosity, and he counted that as beautiful doing. He said, " He acted beautifully toward me when He brought me out of prison.

So, when they entered in upon Joseph, he embraced his parents.... And he lifted his parents to the throne, and they fell prostrate before him.... " He acted beautifully toward me when He brought me out of prison and brought you from the desert after Satan had sowed dis- sension between me and my brothers. Surely my Lord is gentle toward what He will. " In going to Egypt, all were the same. But at the time of proximity and caresses, they were differ- ent, for he put his father and maternal aunt on the throne of generosity and singled them out for the companionship, nearness, and embrace, as the Exalted Lord says: " And he lifted his parents to the throne. " But he brought his brothers down to the place of service: " And they fell prostrate before him. " This is an allusion that tomorrow at the resurrection, all the faithful will be brought into paradise, both the disobedient who have been forgiven and the obedient who have been approved. Then those who were the folk of disobedience, the ones received by the Real's forgiveness, will be set down in paradise, and the folk of recognition will be singled out for the special favor of proxim- ity and nearness. They will be brought to the Presence of At-ness: at an Omnipotent King [54:55]. The Pir of the Tariqah said, " The folk of service are one thing, the folk of companionship something else. The folk of service are prisoners of paradise, the folk of companionship com- manders of paradise. The prisoners are in joy and bliss, and the commanders dwell in secret whis- pering with the Beneficent. " He acted beautifully toward me when He brought me out of prison. The beautiful-doer is not he who acts beautifully at the beginning. The beautiful-doer is he who acts beautifully after your disloyalty. Joseph saw the disloyalty of his own soul at first, when he sought refuge with the cup- bearer in prison and said, " Remember me to your lord " [12:42]. Then he saw that his deliverance from the prison was through the Real's bounty and generosity, and he counted that as beautiful doing. He said, " He acted beautifully toward me when He brought me out of prison.

My Lord, indeed You have given me [something] of sovereignty, that is, of the Oneness of sovereignty which is the Oneness of the acts, and You have taught me the interpretation of events, that is, the meanings of things hidden in the Unseen and what a [given] form of the Unseen ultimately refers to, something which belongs to the affirmation of the Oneness of the attributes, Originator, of the heavens of the attributes at the station of the heart and [of] the earth of the affirmation of the Oneness of the acts at the station of the soul. You are my Protector, in the affirmation of the Oneness of the Essence in this world of the sovereignty and the Hereafter of the spiritual [angelic] realm. Receive me in death in submission [to You]: annihilate me from myself in a state of being obedient to Your command and not insolent as a result of the subsisting of [my] ego, and join me to the righteous', who are firmly fixed at the station of uprightness after being annihilated in the affirmation of Oneness.

And most of them when they believe in God, with cognitive faith, only do so by ascribing partners [to Him], by affirming [the existence of] an existent other than Him; or [when they believe] with entific faith, then only by committing idolatry by being veiled in their I-nesses;

a pall of God's chastisement, a veil, issuing from a deeply-rooted dark configuration, that obstructs their preparedness from receiving perfection; or the coming, of the minor resurrection, upon them suddenly, while they are unaware, of the light of unveiling and the affirmation of Oneness and so their veil is not lifted and they remain forever veiled.

Say: 'This, way that I wayfare upon, which is the way of the affirmation of the Oneness of the Essence, is my way, specific to me, upon which is only me alone, I call to, the Essence of the [exclusive] unity that is qualified by all of the attributes at the source of the union, I and whoever follows me, along this path. And all who call to this way are followers of mine, for the prophets before me all called to the principle and to the final return and to the Essence of the [inclusive] unity that is qualified by some of the attributes, with the exception of Abraham, peace be upon him, for he was the pole (quṭb) of affirmation of [God's] Oneness. That is why the Prophet [Muḥammad] was a follower of him, when considering the union without differentiation, since there is none who can complete the differentiations of the attributes except him [Muḥammad], blessings and peace be upon him. Otherwise someone other than him would have been the seal of the way of the truth as he was, because no one can call except to that station of perfection which he has reached. So Glory be to God!, I [Muḥammad] declare Him to be [exalted] above that anyone other than Him should be upon His way. Nay, He is the wayfarer upon His way and the Caller to His Essence, and I am not of the idolaters', who affirm the other at the station of the affirmation of Essential unity, those who are veiled from Him by [their] I-ness; rather I am annihilated by Him from myself, for He is the One who calls to His way.

And We did not send before you [any messengers] save men inspired by revelation, that is, individuals in whom some remnant of manliness subsisted, from among the people of the towns of the attributes and the stations, and not from Egypt of the essence, for the subsistence that is actualised for the folk of fixity can only be in the measure in which they are annihilated and have returned to creation and can only be commensurate with the ascension. Complete annihilation and perfect ascension can only be in the case of the pole who possesses the perfect preparedness, who attains every single level, and in whose case must be the complete return that subsumes all of the differentiations of the attributes upon subsistence: that person is the 'seal' (khātam), That is why the Prophet said: 'It is as though the edifice of prophethood has been completed and built with only one brick remaining to be put in place: I am that [final] brick'. It is to this meaning that he alluded in his statement, 'I was sent to complete the noble character traits (makārim al-akhlāq)'. Have they not travelled, in the land of their preparedness, and seen the nature of the, final, consequence for, the affair of, those who were before them, and the ultimate end of their perfection so that they might attain the full extent of their progress and actualise [the like of] their perfections in accordance with their [individual] preparednesses. For every person there is a specificity and his specific preparedness entails a specific felicity which will be his final sequel, and by acquiring awareness of the specificities of souls and the ultimate ends of their wayfaring there is actualised for the soul from those perfections a unifying configuration which is the perfection of the Muḥammadan community in accordance with their varying preparednesses, and this is the abode of the Hereafter, which is better for those who guard against the attributes of their souls which constitute the veils of [their] preparednesses. Will you not understandḍ, that this station is better than this perishing abode and its enjoyments that you pursue, for, [the Hereafter] it is indeed the [true] Life, if they only knew [Q. 29:64].

Until when the messengers despaired, that is, [until when] they have journeyed and guarded themselves and their conquest and victory over unveilings slackened by the disbelief of the faculties of the soul, until when the messengers, those who are the noble leaders of the people, despaired of attaining perfection, and thought that, their suppositions had deceived them in terms of their preparedness for perfection or their hopes, Our help came to them, in the way of reinforcement and the granting of success by the replenishing [of them] with the lights of the angelic realm and the realm of invincibility, and whomever We wished We delivered, of those messengers and their followers belonging to the folk of [God's] solicitude. And, Our vanquishing by means of veils and chastisement, cannot be averted from the sinning folk, when We make manifest upon their hearts the attributes of their souls so that they then cause them [their hearts] to acquire wicked configurations that veil and harm [them].

Verily there is in their stories a crossing over [moral] for people of pith, that is, [a moral] by which they can cross over from the exoteric aspect of these [stories] to their esoteric one, in the way that We provided a [spiritual] crossing over in the story of Joseph for the possessors of intellects that are stripped of the skin of illusory things, unadulterated with the coverings of sensory things. It, this QurÌān, is not a discourse that has been fabricated, by the soul, but a confirmation of what, was fixed beforehand in the Tablet, and a detailing of everything, that is undifferentiated in the world of [divine] decree and a guidance to the affirmation of Oneness, and a mercy, by means of the self-disclosures of the attributes from behind the curtains of His verses, for a folk who believe, in the Unseen by virtue of the purity of their preparedness.

Alif Lām Mīm RāÌ This is one of the secrets of love, one of the treasures of recognition. In the midst of their spirits, the friends have a deposit, but they do not know what they have. The wonder is that they keep on seeing an ocean and they weep in hope for a drop. This is like the Pir of the Tariqah said: “O God, Your stream is flowing-how long will I be thirsty? What sort of thirst is this that I see one cup after another? “Who has ever had a state rarer than this? I'm thirsty and clear water is flowing before me. “Exalted of the two worlds! How much will You be hidden, how much apparent? My heart is bewildered, the spirit distracted. How long this curtaining and self-disclosing? When at last will there be the everlasting self-disclosure?” The allusion is that today the friends have nothing more than the scent of the lights of those secrets and the whiffs of those traces, and that, other than MuḤammad the Arab, no one is worthy of that face-to-face vision. First He alludes to the road of recognition for the elect, since their gaze is on the Essence and the attributes, which are called “the World of the Command.” Then He uncovers the road of recog- nizing Himself for the common people. He knows that their gaze does not pass beyond the newly arrived things, the engendered beings, and the World of Creation. He says,

God is He who lifted up the heavens without pillars that you see. Heaven and earth, land and see, air and space, are the World of Creation, the playing field of the gaze of the creatures, whose end is apparent and which can disappear. But the World of the Command can never have an end, for it is necessarily continuous. As long as a man does not pass beyond the World of Creation, he will not be given access to the World of the Command. The che- valiers whose gaze travels in the World of the Command are the Pegs of the earth. Just as in respect of form the world's mountains keep the earth in place, so also in respect of meaning the chevaliers keep the world standing. " Through them rain falls and through them provision is given. " This is why the Lord of the Worlds says,

And He it is who spread out the earth and placed within it unshaking mountains. In terms of the allusion and intimation of the Folk of the Haqiqah He is saying, " It is He who spread out the earth and placed within it the Pegs, namely the friends and masters among His servants, to whom recourse is had and from whom assistance comes. " The sun rises in the east and sets in the west for a hundred years before someone's eyes are daubed with the collyrium of the Haqiqah by the pencil of solicitude. Perhaps we will be allowed to see those chevaliers and reach endless felicity with one look at them. For thousands of years the moon-faced beauties of Firdaws and the houris of paradise have been standing in wait in that busy bazaar: When will the fortunate procession of those chevaliers be conveyed to the highest of the High Chambers so that they, as hangers-on, may step into the pageant of good fortune at an Omnipotent King [54:55]. On the day Junayd's bier was carried, a bird came and sat on the edge of his coffin. People were waving their hands at it but it would not leave. Ruwaym said, " In generosity the bird is telling us with the tongue of its state, 'Leave me alone, for my claws have been fixed to the edge of his coffin with the nails of passion. Today this frame of Junayd is the portion of the cherubim. If not for the intrusion of your tumult, you would fly with me like falcons in this air.' " When they buried him, one of the poor stood above him and recited these verses: " Oh the grief at separation from a group who are lamps and fortresses, rain clouds, cities, and unshaking mountains, good, security, and stillness. The nights will not change for us until they are brought forth by fate. So every fire belongs to our hearts, every water belongs to our eyes. "

And on, the earth of the body, are tracts neighbouring each other, such as bone and flesh, fat and nerves, and gardens of the trees of the natural, animal and human faculties, of the vines of the appetitive faculties from which are pressed the wines of the vain desires of the soul, and [gardens] of the [vines of the] rational faculties from which are pressed the wines of love and fervent love, and sown fields that are the vegetative faculties, and the date-palms that are all of the other external and internal senses, sharing one root, such as the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and not sharing a root, such as the tongue, and the instrument of reflection, that of estimation and that of memory, watered by the same [source of] water, the water of life, and We make some of them to excel others in, the flavour of objects of perceptions and natural dispositions, as in the superiority of the intellect's objects of perception over those of the senses, and [the superiority of] eyesight over touch and the natural disposition of wisdom over that of modesty and the like. Surely in that are signs for a people who understand, the wonders of His handiwork.

And if you are wondering, because of their statement, then that [statement of theirs] itself is the cause for wonder, since man becomes a new creation in every minute, indeed, the world [itself] becomes a new creation at every moment by the changing of configurations, states, conditions and forms. How can one who has contemplated the world of engenderment and corruption with a heedful eye deny the [reality of] new creationḍ Those are the ones who, have been veiled from the presential vision of the acts and the self-disclosures of [His] lordliness, and how much more so [are they veiled] from the self-disclosures of the divine attributesḍ those - fetters shall be around their necks, and so they are unable to raise their heads - lowered [as they are] in disgrace towards the earth, their eyes restricted to [perceiving only] what is close to them of [things perceptible to] the senses - in order to see the angelic realm of the spirits and witness the world of [divine] power and the rational concepts that are remote to the waystations of the senses; and those, they shall be the inhabitants, of the Fire of the acts in the lowest pit of the abyss of physical nature, abiding therein.

And they would have you hasten on the evil rather than the good, because of the correspondence between their preparedness and evil, this [itself] being on account of the mastery of dark configurations and vices on that [preparedness], and so they incline to evil because evil prevails over them, when there have indeed occurred before them, punishments of the likes of them. Truly your Lord is forgiving to mankind, despite their evil-doing towards their own souls when they acquire those wicked configurations that veil [them] from the light, [forgiving] to those in whom such [configurations] have not taken deep roots and have not annulled their preparednesses, and so He removes them with the light of His mercy; and truly your Lord is severe in retribution, of those in whom such [wicked configurations] have become deeply rooted and have become a rust, annulling [their] preparedness.

And those who disbelieve say, 'Why has not some sign been sent down upon him from his Lord!': having become veiled, they did not see the signs that bore witness to [Muḥammad's] prophethood, such as his [the Prophet's] assumption of God's attributes, because of their non-perception and the blindness of their insights. That is why they did not reckon these as signs and requested them according to their vain desires. Your duty is only to warn them, and not to guide them, for guidance belongs to God; and for every folk there is a guide, who corresponds to them in terms of the genus-correspondence of primordial nature and so they acquire an affinity with him at the point of his perfection and his reception of the divine light cast upon him. They accept guidance from him and so God guides them according to His manifestation [in that guide]. Therefore, whoever corresponds to you in terms of that original genus-correspondence will receive guidance from you, and whoever does not, will not.

Those are hidden mysteries known only to God, who, knows what every female bears, and thus He knows what the female of the soul bears in the way of the child of perfection, in other words, the potential of every preparedness, and [knows also] the increase in the wombs of preparedness as a result of self-cleansing, self-purification and the blessed company of perfections, and [He knows] the reduction [in these preparednesses] as a result of engrossment in passionate desires. And everything, in the way of perfections, with Him is according to a, designated, measure, in accordance with [a person's] receptivity. Or [it means]: and everything in the way of the potential for receptivity is with Him according to a measure [designated] in pre-eternity issuing from His holiest effusion, neither increasing or decreasing. Or: for every folk there is a guide, who is God, exalted be He, as He has said You [Muḥammad] cannot guide whom you like, but [it is] God [who] guides whomever He will [Q. 28:56], by virtue of the fact that He knows the potential for receptivity that is in [all] preparednesses, the [potential for] increase and decrease [in them] and so He determines on that basis their perfections.

[He is] the Knower, of the Unseen in the way of the potential for receptivity in preparednesses as well as [Knower] of the witnessed of those perfections present that emerge into actuality; the Great, in stature, whose majesty is above granting the requirements of certain preparednesses, yet He embraces them all and gives them [all] what they require; the High Exalted, above that His effusion should be stemmed such that it fails the actualisation of a preparedness and be the cause of it lacking what it requires.

[They are all] the same, those of you who keeps his words secret, in the hiding-places of his preparedness, and those who proclaim them openly, by exteriorising knowledge from [a state of] potentiality to [one of] actuality, and those who lurk, in the night that is the darkness of his soul, and those who go forth, exiting from the station of the soul and departing to the daylight that is the light of the spirit.

For him are attendants, reinforcements that follow one another from the angelic realm and arrive to him by the command of God, guarding him, from the snatches of the jinn [cf. Q. 37:10] of the imaginal and estimative faculties and the overcomings of the bestial and the predatorial ones and their destruction of him. Indeed God does not alter the state of a people, in terms of an outward or inward grace or perfection, unless they have altered the state of their souls, in terms of their preparedness and the faculty for reception, as the divine effusion is all-inclusive and contiguous, like flowing water. Have you not considered His statement watered by the same [source of] water. And We make some of them to excel others in flavour [Q. 13:4]ḍ Thus that person is coloured by the nature of his preparedness: the one whose preparedness is pure, his effusion will likewise be pure and so his goodness will increase. Similar is the case with outward graces, which inevitably change into scourges merited by some manifest or hidden cause. That is why the verifiers said that the supplication whose response is forthcoming, as alluded to in His words, Call on Me and I will respond to you [Q. 40:60], is the one that issues forth by the tongue of preparedness. Moreover, according to one of the pious predecessors (salaf), 'That mouse has eaten into my slippers, and I know that it is only because of some sin I have committed; for otherwise, God would not have sent it against me', citing the example of the poet's words:'Were I from the [tribe of the great] Māzin, you would not have [dared] deem my camels yours for the slaughtering!'

He it is Who shows you, the lightning that is the flashes of the holy lights and the divine snatch, [inspiring] fear, that is, making you fearful of the speed with which it comes to an end and the long wait for its return, and hope, that is, making you hopeful of its remaining fixed or its quick return, and He produces, the clouds of the divine peace, that are heavy, with the rainwater of certain knowledge and true gnosis.

And the thunder that is the assault of the self-disclosures of the Majesty, proclaims His praise, in other words, it glorifies Him and sublimate Him above what is conceptualised by the intellect of the one visited by such self-disclosures as he becomes ecstatically conscious of what the intellect is unable to comprehend; and it praises Him as He ought to be praised by means of the perfection that is derived from that self-disclosure, a praising in actuality, so that the glorification of the thunder becomes the cause of that [perfection] itself; or [it is that] the assault glorifies by means of the very same self-disclosure which is exalted above that it should be comprehended by mental perception; and so too the angels, that is, the angelic realm of the spiritual faculties, [also proclaim His praise] out of awe of Him and of His Majesty. He unleashes, the thunderbolts that are the divine august glories by means of the self-disclosure of the real vanquishing that contains the universal grace and in this way strips the recipient of the self-disclosure of his existence and annihilates him from the remnants of his soul, as reported in the ḥadīth [qudsī]: 'God, exalted be He, has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. If He were to remove them, the august glories of His countenance would burn up every creature whose eyesight perceived Him'; and smites with them whom He will, of His beloved servants and those fervent lovers [of Him] that yearn [for Him]; yet they dispute about God, by reflecting on His attributes and by trying to affirm [the truth of] Him through rational consideration and what is incumbent on Him and what is impossible in His case, though He is great in might, the One with the power to eliminate [the usefulness of] rational devices for the purposes of comprehension and to obliterate the light of a person's insight by disclosing Himself and consuming him with the light of fervent love [of Him].

His is the call of truth: in other words, the truthful call that is not made in falsehood belongs to Him and not to anyone other than Him. He calls on Himself and He responds, as He says [elsewhere] Surely to God belongs pure religion [Q. 39:3], which is to say that pure religion is His religion only, which means that the truthful call that deserves to be answered is the call of the affirmer of the Oneness, the one who is annihilated from his soul and subsists through his Lord; likewise is pure religion, His religion. Callers who subsist by their own souls only call upon what they have conceptualised and sculpted in their imagination and so their call is not answered, except in so far as an inanimate thing responds when something is requested from it. By my life, only an affirmer of the Oneness calls upon God, whereas another calls upon the other, an illusory thing that has no power or existence and hence no response. Such [a caller] is one who has veiled his preparedness by the attributes of his soul and thus is not aware of what it [his preparedness] deserved and so his call is lost, and such a call can only be doomed [to failure]. Or [it is that] the call of truth, Majestic and Exalted, can only be for Him; or that the call of the one called, who is the Truth, is the call specific to His Essence, not made to any of His names or attributes. The describers (wāṣifūn) who call upon His names and attributes as opposed to His essence do not receive an answer from the thing that they have called upon except as the answer received by the one who calls upon water by gesturing [to it], [and that is] because they are veiled; and the call of, those who are veiled, [goes only] astray, lost.

To God prostrate themselves all in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly. In the tongue of commentary, the prostration of the unbeliever is an unwilling prostration, for he prostrates himself and shows humility at the time of tribulation in the state of hardship so as to repel harm from himself. Thus MuṣṬafā said to Ḥaṣīn Khuzāʿī,1 " How many gods do you wor- ship today? " He said, " Seven: one in heaven and six in the earth. " He said, " Which one of them do you look to on the day of your hope and fear? " He said, " The one in heaven. " According to these words, when someone prostrates himself to a god wanting to attract a benefit or repel a harm, that is a prostration of unwillingness, not a prostration of willingness. The willing prostration is the one done for the command alone and to venerate the Real's exaltedness. There is no taint of wanting, no hope for compensation, and no dread of tribulation. The individual is in prostration, the heart in finding, the spirit in witnessing; the individual is with loyalty, the heart with shame, and the spirit with limpidness. That chieftain of the Tariqah, Abū Yazīd BasṬāmī, was addressed in a dream: " 'O Abū Yazīd, Our storehouses are full of worship. Approach Us with brokenness and abasement.' In Our thresh- old, bowing and prostrating are of no use without brokenness of the heart and limpidness of the spirit, for the storehouses of Our exaltedness are already full of the bowing and prostrating of the lords of the heart. When you come to Our threshold, place the heart's pain in the spirit's cup and send it to the Presence of the Beloved, for the heart's pain has measure with Us. " The Pir of the Tariqah said, " The tawḤīd of the hearts of the faithful is in the measure of the heart's pain. The more a heart is burnt and the more complete its pain, the more it is familiar with tawḤīd and the closer it is to the Real. " Without the perfection of burning pain, don't mention religion's name. Without the beauty of yearning for union, don't lean on faith.

Say: 'Then have you taken beside Him, that is, anything other than Him, whoever it be, protectors, who have no power to benefit or harm themselvesḍ', for the Powerful and the Owner is God and none other.

He sends down from heaven water, and the wadis flow in their measure, and the flood carries a swelling scum. And from that which they kindle in fire, wanting ornament or ware, arises a scum the like of it. Thus does God strike truth and falsehood. As for the scum, it van- ishes as jetsam, and what profits people abides in the earth. Abū Bakr WāsiṬī said that this verse is the pivot of knowledge of the Haqiqah and recognition. " The meaning is that He revealed from on high to the hearts and ears of the prophets and He in- spired the intellects and insights of the wise. " The majestic Unity, through the attribute of mercy and clemency, sent down from heaven to the messengers the true message and the pure revelation. They heard it with their ears and they perceived it with their hearts. In the same way He inspired the friends and threw the light of wis- dom into their hearts. And the wadis flow in their measure, that is, He made the hearts see in the measure of their capacity, life, and illumination. The hearts of the prophets became clear and bright through the light of revelation and messengerhood, and the hearts of the friends with the lamp of wisdom and recognition. In their measure, that is, each person in his own measure, in degrees and grades-one higher, one middling, one lower-the relative preference and disparity being apparent to everyone. About the messengers He says, " We made some of the prophets more excellent than others " [17:55]. About the friends He says, " They are degrees with God " [3:163]. One has messengerhood in ad- dition to prophethood, another has prophethood in addition to wisdom, another has recognition in addition to knowledge, another has tasting the Reality in addition to faith and bearing witness, another has the knowledge of certainty along with explication, another has the truth of certainty along with face-to-face vision. He gave to each person what was fitting, and He placed within each heart that for which there was room. And the flood carries a swelling scum, that is, He caused loss to those hearts with erroneous views, lowly lapses, and the wishes that Satan casts, what he steals from memory, his casting of slips.

For those who respond to their Lord, by purifying [their] preparedness of the impurities of the attributes of the soul, there shall be the goodly reward, which is the perfection that is effused upon them at the moment of purity, expressed by His words, light upon light [Q. 24:35], and those who do not respond to Him, who have not purified themselves of human vices and the impurities of physical nature, will not be able to offer in redemption anything of what belongs in the lower aspect, such as property and those means to which they were attracted by means of love. They will have thus destroyed their souls because those [means] are the cause of increased distance [from God] and ruin, and so how can they constitute a means for their deliverance from those darknessesḍ Their declaring themselves innocent of such things will not avail them once the configurations of being attached to these things have become deeply rooted in their souls. For such there shall be an awful reckoning, for halting with the acts at the station of the soul, which is the station of divine justice, and so their questioning is inevitable at the Reckoning, and their abode shall be the Hell-fire, of the attributes of the soul and the fires of privation and evil configurations;

and who fear their Lord, upon the self-disclosure of the attributes at the station of the heart and thus witness the majesty of the attribute of Tremendousness, thereby becoming obliged to be in awe and fear;

such as patiently endure, as they wayfare upon His way, to stay away from familiars, desiring His satisfaction, and such as preoccupy themselves with self-cleansing by means of devotions through [the expending of] wealth and the body, repelling the vice of the soul with virtue; those, theirs shall be the sequel of the [heavenly] Abode, as they are returned to the primordial nature. Or [it refers to] those who endure patiently to stay away from the attributes of their souls, desiring the countenance of their Lord, in other words, out of love for the Essence and not out of love for the attributes; and who establish the prayer of the witnessing and expend of the stations, the states, the unveilings and the deeds which We have provided them with, secretly, by disengaging from the configurations of these and the configurations of finding rest with them and love for them, and [expend] openly, by avoiding them and not turning their attention to them, and who, with the good actualised by the self-disclosure of the divine attribute, repel the evil that is the attribute of the soul: those, theirs shall be the sequel of the [heavenly] Abode, that is, subsistence after annihilation.

Gardens of Eden, that is, all three of them: they enter the Garden of the Essence along with those that were righteous from among the fathers that are the spirits; and the Garden of the attributes with the hearts; and the Garden of the acts with the righteous from among the spouses of the souls and the descendants that are the faculties; and the angels, from among the inhabitants of the realm of divine power and the angelic realm, shall enter to them from every gate, of the gates of the attributes, bidding them peace and greeting them with the salutations of luminous irradiations and holy reinforcements, all of which is the result of their patience in staying away from sensory pleasures.

Say: 'Indeed God sends astray whomever He will: in other words, guidance and error are determined by the signs [sc. the verses of the QurÌān], for there is a sign in every thing and the signs sent down to the Messenger of God are more than sufficient [for those who want to be guided]; rather what determines these is the divine will, so that He sends astray whomever He will because of a lack of preparedness, or because of that person being veiled by dark coverings; and He guides to Him those who turn in penitence', by purifying their preparedness, from among [His] lovers. Since the folk who are sent astray are of two kinds, those who lack preparedness and those who have veiled theirs by the darkness intrinsic to mortal nature, so the guided folk are also of two types, beloved ones who are guided without their turning [to Him] in penitence (ināba), because of the potency of their preparedness, and beloved ones whom God guides after their turning [to Him] in penitence, as He has said God chooses for Himself whomever He will, and He guides to Himself whomever turns penitently [Q. 42:13];

Those who have faith and whose hearts are serene in the remembrance of God. The hearts of one group are serene in the remembrance of God, and the hearts of another group are serene in God's remembrance of them: And surely God's remembrance is greater [29:45]. In the tongue of the folk of allusion, this verse reports about two people, one the desirer and the other the desired. One keeps his hours immersed in the remembrance of the tongue, sometimes prayer, sometimes glorification, and sometimes recitation of the Qur'an. The other is joyful with the remembrance of the Real in the midst of the spirit because he is drowned in the ocean of face- to-face vision. He does not attend to the remembrance of the tongue, but keeps on saying, " O God, as long as I remember Your remembrance, my spirit laments at all remembrance. As long as my heart is happy with Your apparentness, the happiness of the two worlds is but wind. " The first travels on the road of the religion, kept in the bonds of his own remembrance, and it is said to him, " Preserve the remembrance and give ear to the commands and prohibitions. " The other is on the carpet of proximity, snatched away from causes and creation and singled out for the divine attraction, and it is said to the remembrance, " Give ear to him. " This is just like one group hop- ing for paradise, while paradise itself is hoping for another group. That is in the Prophet's words, " Surely the Garden yearns for four individuals: the one who fasts Ramadan, the one who recites the Qur'an, the one who protects the tongue, and the one who feeds the hungry. " It has also been narrated that the Garden yearns for Salmān. The desirer's eyes have come upon this: " Remember Me! " [2:152]. The desired has been shown this: " I will remember you " [2:152]. The desired is seeking remembrance, and remem- brance is seeking the desired. The desirer is seeking the present moment, and the present moment is seeking the desired. The desirer is seeking the heart, and the heart is seeking the desired. The field of the desirer's gaze is the world of setting forth in the wrap of createdness, and the field of the desired's gaze is the air of unity and the space of solitariness.

and, theirs shall be blessedness, by arriving at the primordial nature and the perfection of the attributes, and a fair resort, by admission into the Garden of the heart, the Garden of the attributes.

Is He Who stands over every soul what it has earnedḍ, that is, He stands over it [sustaining] it by bringing into existence all that is ascribed to it of things it has earned, being a Sustainer of it and [sustaining it] by means of its earnings. The term 'earned' is used here, even though these [earnings] come about by means of God's creation, exalted be He, because He has manifested these upon it by virtue of a preparedness in it to which He makes these [earnings] correspond and which it receives from God, exalted be He. Thus from the perspective of the reception [of these earnings] by the locus and its fitness to be a locus for the manifestation [of these earnings] and its very being a locus, these [things] are ascribed [to the soul] as things which it has earned, entailing them as it does, while at the same time the Truth, exalted be He, stands over it by bringing them into existence. Or [it means that] He stands over it in accordance with what it earns and with what that [earning] entails. In other words, in the measure that its earnings entail attributes and states which occur to its preparedness, He effuses upon it the [commensurate] recompense that is luminous perfective configurations, that reward it, or tarnished dark configurations that chastise it.

For every term there is a Book: for every time there is an affair that is prescribed and predetermined or ordained in that moment for creatures. Subsequently, divine precepts are designated by God in accordance with [specific] moments. For every moment there comes from Him a messenger bearing what is good for that [particular] time. Likewise is the case with all things that originate in time, such as signs and otherwise; and it was not for any messenger to bring, anything of the sort except by His leave and at the [appointed] time, since these [signs] are designated [certain] times at which they come into existence without being changed, substituted, brought forward or delayed.

He effaces whatsoever He will, and He affirms. Know that the highway of the Real's religion is three things: submission, the Sunnah, and self- purification. In submission be fearful, in the Sunnah be hopeful, and in self-purification be a lover. Submission has no escape from fear, the Sunnah must have hope, and self-purification is nothing but the foundation of the lover. To the fearful it is said, " Be afraid! " To the hopeful it is said, " Keep on seeking! " To the lover it is said, " Keep on burning! " In the end the address will come to the fearful, " Fear not! [41:30]. Do not fear, for the days of fear have come to an end. " To the hopeful will be said, " Grieve not! [41:30]. Have no sorrow, for your hope has been reached and the tree of joy has grown. " To the lovers will be said, " Rejoice! [41:30]. Be happy, for the night of separation has ended and the morning of union has come. " Each of these things has its own path of effacement and affirmation in the world. From the hearts of the fearful He erases eye-service and puts certainty, He erases stinginess and puts gen- erosity, He erases avarice and puts contentment, He erases envy and puts tenderness, He erases innovation and puts the Sunnah, He erases fright and puts security. From the hearts of the hopeful He erases free choice and deposits surrender, He erases disper- sion and deposits togetherness, He erases perplexity and deposits the precedent light. From the hearts of the lovers He erases the customs of human nature and deposits the marks bearing witness to the Haqiqah, He decreases the marks bearing witness to the servant and in- creases the marks bearing witness to Himself. Then, just as he was at first, so also he will be at last. The Pir of the Tariqah said, " O God, the majesty of Your exaltedness left no room for allu- sions. Your effacing and affirming took away the path of ascription-I lost all that I had in hand. O God, Yours kept on increasing and mine decreasing until at last there remained only what there was at first. " Tribulation lies only in the makeup of my water and clay.

Or is it that they have not seen how We visit the land, We seek out the land of the body at the moment of old age, diminishing it at its edgesḍ, by the [gradual] wearing away of its organs, the failure of its faculties and the weakening of its senses bit by bit until death. And God judges, in this way; there is none that can repel His judgement, none to avert or change His judgement. Or [it means that] We visit the land of the soul at the moment of wayfaring, diminishing it at its edges by annihilating its acts with Our acts first, as He has said, 'Through Me he hears and through Me he sees', then, second, by annihilating its attributes with Our attributes, as He has said, '[Until] I am his hearing with which he hears and his sight by which he sees', then by annihilating its essence by Our essence, as He has said to whom does Sovereignty belong on this dayḍ [Q. 40:16], responding Himself with His words To God, the One, the Vanquisher [Q. 40:16], since creation in its entirety will have been annihilated; thereupon there will be only God's judgement, judging as He will without any to repel His judgement since anything other than Him does not exist.

Alif lām rāÌ. A Book We have revealed to you that you may bring forth mankind, from the darkness of the multiplicity to the light of the unity; or, from the darkness of the attributes of origination to the light of primordial nature; or, form the darkness of the veils of acts and attributes to the light of essence, by the leave of their Lord, by His facilitation in depositing that light in them in the form of preparedness from the Holiest Effusion drawn from the World of the Divinity, and by His granting of success in preparing the means of its emergence into actuality from the Presence of the Lordliness. For His leave is the gift of preparedness and the preparation of the means: otherwise there would be no one to bring them out; to the path of the Mighty, the Strong who vanquishes the darkness of the multiplicity with the light of His unity, the One who is Praised, for the perfection of His Essence. According to the second meaning: the path of the Mighty who vanquishes the attributes of the soul by the light of the heart, the Praised one who bestows the graces of virtues and forms of knowledge when the primordial nature is pure. According to the third: the Mighty who by the august glories of His essence vanquishes the lights of His attributes and annihilates by the Reality of His He-ness all of His creatures, the Praised one who bestows the subsisting existence that is perfect, after the annihilation of vices and the one that is deficient by the existence of His essence and the beauty of His countenance.

God is He to whom belongs everything in the heavens and everything in the earth. WāsiṬī said, “The realm of being all belongs to Him. When someone seeks the realm of being, He is the Being-Bestower. When someone seeks the Real, he will find that He has subjected the realm of being to him along with everything within it.” Whenever someone gives himself over to the Being-Bestower and his heart busies itself with His companionship, the engendered beings and the newly arrived things will busy themselves entirely with serving him. He is saying, “My servant, the seven heavens, the seven earths, and all that is within them are My property and kingdom. All are My servants and servitors. If you bind your waist in loyalty to My covenant and, like serving-boys, bring your head into the collar of obedience, We will put the ring of serving you in the ear of all things and subject them to you. If you turn your head away from the circle of the command or busy your heart with others, We will set them all on their feet in antagonism toward you and We will make your standing place your prison. One day Solomon the prophet, with his high level and rank, was sitting on the throne of the kingdom. The carpet of the realm was spread and the jinn, mankind, and birds were lined up in ranks. He placed the crown of messengerhood on the head of his prophethood, and it occurred to his mind that today no one surpassed David's son in rank and elevation. Immediately the wind was commanded to take away the mantle from his head. Solomon's face darkened and he said to the wind in his anger, “Return my mantle to me!” The wind answered, “'Return to your heart!' O Solomon, bring your heart back to yourself so that I may bring your mantle back to you.”

those who prefer the, sensory, life of this world, over the rational once and the formal one over the spiritual one, by virtue of His description of being astray as being remote and by virtue of the fact that the world of the senses is the most distant of the levels from God, exalted be He.

And We have not sent any Messenger except with the tongue of his people, that is, with speech that corresponds with the state in which they are in, in accordance with their preparedness and commensurate with their intellects. For otherwise they would not understand, as that meaning would then be remote from their understanding and would not correspond with their station; and he would not be able to make clear for them the potential in their first preparedness in the way of perfection that befits it and what their ipseities entail according to primordial nature; God then sends astray whomever He will, because of the disappearance of that person's preparedness through dark configurations that have taken deep root [in him] and false beliefs that have settled [in him]; and He guides whomever He will, whomever has remained upon his preparedness, or in whom the veils of his configurations and the forms of his beliefs have not taken deep root; and He is the Mighty, the Strong whose will cannot be overcome and so He guides whomever He wishes to send astray and sends astray whomever He wishes to be guided; the Wise, who manages the affair of guiding the one to be guided by all manner of graces and the affair of the sending astray of the one to be sent astray by all manner of forsaking, as required by [His] ultimate wisdom.

And We sent Moses with our signs: “Bring thy people out from the darknesses into the light and remind them of the days of God.” “O My MuḤammad! I commanded Moses exactly as I command you. I said to all: 'Light up the lamp of the invitation, call people from the darknesses of doubt to the light of certainty, bring them from the shadow of ignorance to the brightness of knowledge, leave aside self-governance, see the Real's predetermination, do not set down or approve of innovation, and follow the path of the Sunnah and the congregation.'” Remind them of the days of God. These are the days when the servants were in the conceal- ment of nonexistence and the Real was saying with beginningless speech, “My servants!” “O MuḤammad, remind them of the days when you were not and I was there for you. Without you I took care of your work. I bound the compact of love and I wrote mercy against myself: Your Lord has written mercy against Himself [6:54].'” This is what the Pir of the Tariqah intimated in his whispered prayer: “O God, where will I find again the day when You belonged to me and I was not? Until I reach that day again, I will be in the midst of fire and smoke. If I find that day again in the two worlds, I will profit. If I find Your Being for myself, I will be pleased with my own nonbeing. “O God, where was I when You called me? I am not I when You remain for me. “O God, when You call someone, do not make manifest the offenses that You have concealed! “O God, You lifted us up and no one said, 'Lift up!' Now that You have lifted up, don't put down! Keep us in the shadow of Your gentleness! Entrust us to none but Your bounty and mercy!”

When your Lord proclaimed, “If you give thanks, I will surely increase you.” In other words: “If you give thanks for submission, I will increase you in faith. If you give thanks for faith, I will increase you in beautiful doing. If you give thanks for beautiful doing, I will in- crease you in recognition. If you give thanks for recognition, I will increase you in union. If you give thanks for union, I will increase you in contemplation. If you give thanks for the gifts that I bestow upon you, I will increase you in the encounter I have promised you.” It has been narrated that David said, “My Lord, how should I give thanks to You, for my giving thanks is a renewal of Your favor toward me.” He said, “O David, what you said now is giving thanks to Me.”

'Can there be doubt concerning God, despite the obviousness of Himḍ In other words, how can you doubt that to which we [the messengers] are calling you to when there is no room for doubt concerning Him on account of the extent of His manifestnessḍ Rather it is that it is necessary to clarify that which clarifies Him. He calls you so that He might forgive you your sins, so that He might shield by His light the darkness of the veils of your attributes so that you do not have any doubt concerning Him at the disclosure of certainty, and defer you to, a felicitous end entailed by your preparedness, since every individual has designated for him, in accordance with his first preparedness, a perfection which constitutes his spiritual term. Likewise for every person, in accordance with his first constitution, there is an end to his life that constitutes his natural term. And just as interfering terms severe life before arrival at that appointed end because of some particular cause, likewise calamities and impediments, which are the veils of preparedness, prevent a person from arriving at that designated perfection.

And they sally forth to God all together: there are three sallies for creatures. A sallying forth at the minor resurrection upon the death of the body; the sallying forth of every person from the veil of his body onto the open space of the Reckoning and the Recompense; and a sallying forth at the middle resurrection upon voluntary death to the veil of the attributes of the soul and the sallying forth to the open space of the heart at the return to primordial nature; and a sallying forth at the major resurrection upon pure annihilation from the veil of the ego to the space of the real unity, which is the sallying forth referred to in His saying and they sally forth to God, the One, the Vanquisher [Q. 14:48]. Those who belong to this [latter] resurrection, He will see them exteriorised (burūz), nothing of them being hidden to God. As for the manifestation of this resurrection for all and the exteriorisation of all before God and the incidence of the speech between the weak and the arrogant, that will be with the presence of the Messiah (mahdī), the one who subsists by [upholding] justice, the one who will discriminate between the inhabitants of the Garden and those of the Fire at the conclusion of the divine affair with the deliverance of the fortunate and the sending of the wretched to perdition.

And Satan says: the authority of the Truth triumphs over the Satan of illusion, whos is illumined by His light and so submits and complies, and becomes truthful, knowing that the definitive argument [truly] belongs to God in His calling of creation to the Truth and [belongs] not to him [Satan]; and his [Satan's] call to falsehood by seducing [them] with what is evanescent and adorning for them the life of this world is groundless and devoid of proof. So he [Satan] affirms that His promise, exalted be He, of subsistence after the decay of the body, and of reward and punishment at the sending forth [at the Resurrection] is [a promise of] truth which has been fulfilled; whereas my [Satan's] promise that there is only the life of this world is falsehood, which I invented, and those who deserve to be blamed are only those who accepted the call that was devoid of proof and responded to it and turned away from the call that was accompanied by evidence and did not respond to it: so do not blame me, but blame yourselves.

Those who have faith and do wholesome deeds were given entry into the Garden....Their greeting therein is “Peace!” The meaning is that tomorrow the faithful and the friends will be brought into paradise, the house of victory, subsistent bliss, and everlasting kingship. The outward meaning of the word were given entry is that this decree was issued on the first day at the Beginningless Covenant and that the faithful were brought into paradise on the day when the decree was issued. It is not a new want that He puts into effect; it is a beginningless deed that He makes appear. He does not caress them today, for He caressed them in the Beginningless and finished the work. The worshipper is always looking toward the Endless, fearing what will be done to him tomor- row. The recognizer is always looking toward the Beginningless, burning because of what may have been done to him then. He who looks toward the Endless sees only bowing and prostrating. He who looks toward the Beginningless sees only ecstasy and finding; absent from seeing himself, he sees neither self nor anything from himself. He sees only the Real and knows only the Real. He who looks at the Endless accepts what he is given and is content with it. He who looks at the Beginningless accepts nothing and is not content with any robe of honor. If he were adorned with every robe of honor in the two realms of being, he would be more naked with every robe. If the whole realm of being were made into a table placed before his heart, he would find no savor in the feast. Both realms of being were made a morsel and placed in Abū Yazīd's maw full of pain, but he gave no mark of surfeit. He kept on shouting out, “I am a captive of face-to-face vision, how can I be content with reports?! I am seeking hard cash, how can hope suffice me?!” Without You, O repose of my spirit, how can I live? If You are not in my embrace, how can I be happy? And those who have faith and do wholesome deeds were given entry into the Garden. They will be settled down tomorrow in the paradises. There is not just one paradise, for there are eight, and not just eight degrees but one hundred.

Hast thou not seen how God has struck a similitude? A goodly word is like a goodly tree. The pure words and true speech of a person of faith are like a pure tree that gives forth good fruit. A pure tree in fine soil and pleasing water gives forth only sweet fruit. This is why He says, “And the goodly land, its plants come forth by the leave of its Lord” [7:58]. The pure soil is the soul of the person of faith, the pure tree is the tree of recognition, the pleas- ing water is the water of regret, and the sweet fruit is the formula of tawḤīd. Just as a tree sends down roots into the earth, so also recognition and faith send down roots into the heart of the person of faith. Just as the branches bring forth fruit in the air, so also the tree of recognizing tawḤīd brings speech to the tongue and deeds to the limbs, and both rise up. This is why the Exalted Lord said, “To Him ascend the goodly words, and He uplifts the wholesome deed” [35:10]. A tree is sustained by three things: roots sent down into the earth, a trunk standing in place, and branches lifted in the air. The tree of recognition has three things perfectly: attesting in the heart, acting with the limbs, and speaking with the tongue. The Prophet said, “Faith is recognizing with the heart, assenting with the tongue, and acting with the body.” The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, the water of Your solicitude reached stone and the stone bore fruit. The stone grew a tree, and the tree gave fruit and produce-a tree whose fruit is all happiness, whose flavor is all intimacy, whose scent is all freedom; a tree whose roots are in the earth of loyalty, its branches in the air of approval, its fruit recognition and limpidness, its outcome vision and encounter.”

It gives its fruit every season by the leave of its Lord. Ibn ʿAbbās said, “The tree that the Exalted Lord used as a likeness for the faith of the faithful is a tree in paradise whose fruit is neither cut off nor finished: neither cut off nor withheld [56:33].” In the same way the subtleties of the hearts of the recognizers are among the fruits of the tree of faith, neither cut off nor withheld, and the hearts of the folk of the realities are not turned away from them or veiled. At every moment and breath the subtleties are freely bestowed and not veiled.

And the similitude of a bad, soul, is as a bad tree, like colocynth or solanaceae, uprooted from upon the earth, deracinated because of its inconstancy, perturbed belief and lack of stability regarding anything.

God confirms those who believe, with the faith of certainty by a real proof, in the, sensory, life, for their uprightness with regard to the divine law and for their wayfaring along the path of virtue and justice as they [seek to] secure livelihood, and in the Hereafter, in other words, [and in] the spiritual life, for their being guided by the light of the Truth in following the [Sufi] path, and for following an insight from God and a clear proof from their Lord as they [seek to] actualise gnoses; and God sends astray the evildoers, in both lives, because of the diminishing of their preparedness by the shares of the soul's attributes and their subsisting in bewilderment because of being veiled from the light of the Truth.

[Have you not seen those] who exchanged God's grace, which He bestowed upon them from pre-eternity in terms of original guidance and the light of preparedness which is the merchandise of salvation, for unthankfulness, that is, [in return] for veiledness and misguidance, as He has said, those are they who have bought error for guidance; so their commerce has not profited them, nor are they guided [Q. 2:16], having forfeited the subsisting light and exchanged it for transient sensory pleasure, remaining thus in everlasting darkness; and who caused their people, those of the faculties of their souls or those who follow their ways, emulate their example and imitate them in that, to take up residence in the Abode of Ruinḍ

And they have set up rivals to God, in the way of the enjoyments of this world, its wholesome and appetising things, loving these as they love God, since anything the love of which overwhelms becomes an object of worship. God, exalted be He, has said, Beautified for mankind is love of lusts - of women, children to the end [of the verse Q. 3:14], that they might lead [others] astray from His way, all those who look to them from among the juveniles who are prepared and those who follow their religion. Say: 'Enjoy!, go the whole way with that [error of yours] by the command of illusion, for your enjoyment shall be shortlived, quick to disappear, imminently evanescent and its consequence an evil one by ending up in the Fire.

God it is Who created, the heavens of the spirits and the earth of the body, and He sends down from, the heaven of the world of the Holy the water of knowledge, and with it He brings forth, from the earth of the soul, the fruits of wisdoms and virtues, as sustenance for you, and fortification for the heart. And He has disposed for you, rivers of knowledge by means of reasoning, inference, derivation and differentiation.

And He has disposed for you, the sun of the spirit and the moon of the heart, constant, in journeying through unveilings and witnessings, and He has disposed for you, the night that is the darkness of the soul's attributes and the day that is the light of the spirit in order to seek livelihood and [means to] the final return, as well as rest and illumination.

And He gives you of all that you ask of Him, by the tongues of your preparednesses, for every thing that asks of Him perfection by the tongue of its preparedness, He effuses upon it at the request without delay or languor, as He has said, All that is in the heavens and the earth implore Him. Every day He is upon some matter [Q. 55:29]. And if you were to enumerate God's grace, of those matters that precede your existence, effused from the Divine Presence, and of those [matters] that come to you in the way of the reinforcement of [spiritual] nurturing that arrives [to you] from the Lordly Presence, you could never number it, because of its endlessness, as affirmed by [His] wisdom. Lo! man is verily a wrong-doer, by placing the light of preparedness and the substratum of subsistence in the darkness of nature and the locus of annihilation and expending that [light] therein, or by diminishing what is due to God or what is due to his own soul by annulling his preparedness, and unthankful, for those graces, which cannot be enumerated, by using them for what they should not be used, and [unthankful] by being heedless of the One bestowing these graces on him and veiling himself from Him with these [graces].

And when Abraham said, “My Lord, make this land secure, and keep me and my sons away from worshiping idols.” In this verse Abraham asked two things from the Real: First, Mecca's security from mastery by enemies, and second, the heart's security from domination by the ruling power of caprice. He said, “Lord God, make this city of Mecca into a secure sanctuary far from the hand of any tyrant and free of fear for all the people.” The Lord of the Worlds responded to his supplication and made it into a blessed sanctuary and a place of security, as He says, “[And when We made the House] a place of gathering for the people, and a sanctuary” [2:125]. Never will the hand of any tyrant reach it; whoever goes into the sanctuary-whether Adamite or non-Adamite, wild prey or bird of the air-will have no fear. He asked for the heart's security in terms of allusion with his words, “Keep me and my sons away from worshiping idols.” Whenever something holds you back from the Real, that is your idol. Whenever your heart inclines and looks to something other than the Real, that is your caprice. The Exalted Lord says, “Hast thou seen him who has taken his caprice as his god?” [25:43]. One person looks to property and trade, another to wife and children, another to position and respect. One person has remained in the bonds of venerating piety and self-restraint and has not taken a step beyond that. Another has made obedience and worship his kiblah-looking at it and leaning on it have become the veil of his road. The Lord of the Worlds says, “And repent all together to God, O you who have faith! Perhaps you will prosper [24:31]. O you who have faith, if you want Me to make your hearts the sanctuary of My gaze and to keep you secure from the veil of severance, turn your faces totally to Me and turn away from everything else!” Sometimes He calls to His road with the tongue of the artifacts to make people realize familiarity. Sometimes He calls to Himself with the tongue of unveiling to confirm friendship. He is saying: “Turn away from yourself and totally to Him so as to recognize what is right- fully due to Him.

My Lord, truly they have led astray many of mankind, by causing them to be attached to these, being attracted to them and being veiled by them from the unity. So whoever follows me, in the wayfaring along the path of the affirmation of the Oneness, verily belongs with me, and whoever disobeys me, truly You are Forgiving, concealing for him that dark configuration by Your light, Merciful, to him by effusing upon him perfection after forgiveness.

Our Lord, indeed I have made some of, the seed of my faculties, to dwell in a valley where there is no sown land, that is to say, the valley of corporeal nature that is devoid of the sown land of perception, knowledge, gnosis and virtue, by Your Sacred House, which is the heart, our Lord, that they may establish, the prayer of communion and unveiling. So make some of the hearts, of the men of the senses, yearn towards them, so that they are provisioned with all types of sensations, reinforced with the capacity to perceive particulars and take their side to avoid contravention by inclining to the lower aspect and to corporeal pleasures. And provide them, with the fruits of gnoses and realities of universals, that they might be thankful, for Your grace and thus use those perceptions to seek perfection.

Our Lord, You know what we hide, of what is in us in potential, and what we proclaim, of what we have projected into actuality of perfections. And nothing is hidden from God, in the earth of preparedness or in the heaven of the spirit.

Praise be to God Who has given me, at the advanced age of perfection, Ishmael, the considerative rational faculty, and Isaac, the cognitive one. Lo! my Lord is indeed the Hearer of supplication, that is, [He is indeed] the Hearer of the supplication of the preparedness, as one [of them] said, 'Suffice it as my supplication [of Him] that He should have knowledge of my state'.

My Lord, make me an establisher, of the prayer of presential vision, and [also] of my seed, each one of them an establisher of a prayer specific to him. Our Lord! And accept my supplication, that is, my request for complete annihilation in You.

Our Lord, forgive me, with the light of Your essence the sin of my existence so that I might not become veiled in insolence, and my parents, and the causes of my existence in the way of recipient entities and agents, such that I do not see anything other than You and that I might not turn my attention to anything besides You, lest I be afflicted with deviating vision, and [forgive also] the believers of the spiritual faculties, on the day when, the reckoning of luminous spiritual configurations and ego-centric dark ones - depending on which is the preponderant - shall come to pass'.

The day when the earth will be changed to other than the earth: the earth of nature is changed to the earth of the soul upon the arrival at the station of the heart and the heaven of the heart [is changed] to the heaven of the mystery. Similarly, the earth of the soul is changed to the earth of the heart and the heaven of the mystery to the heaven of the spirit. Likewise is the case with every station which the wayfarer crosses: what is above it and what is below is changed, as with the changing of the heaven of trust, in the affirmation of the unity of the acts, to the heaven of satisfaction in the affirmation of the unity of the attributes, then the heaven of satisfaction to the heaven of the affirmation of Oneness upon the unveiling of the Essence, whereafter all is 'rolled up' and they (people) sally forth to God, the One, other than Whom there is no existent, the Vanquisher, by Whose self-disclosure all that is other than Him is annihilated.

And you shall see the sinners, those veiled by the attributes of the souls and the configurations of vices, coupled, in their places in the Sijjīn [cf. Q. 83:7-8] of nature and the Abyss [cf. Q. 101:9] of the vain desire of the soul in the chains that are the attachments to natural things and the halters that are the love of lowly things;

their shirts [made] of pitch, by virtue of the mastery acquired [over them] by the blackness of dark configurations from the attachments to substances that cast their darkness on them, and their faces are engulfed, by the fire of being vanquished, humiliated and veiled from the pleasure of perfection. Therein lies another mystery which is only unveiled to the folk of the resurrection, those who have witnessed the sending forth and the rising. But God knows best.

and of a manifest QurÌān, that is, [a QurÌān] that is comprehensive and manifesting of all things.

And verily We have placed, in the heaven of the intellect, constellations, stations and levels such as the intellect of primordial material, intellect by natural disposition, intellect in actuality and the acquired intellect (mustafād), and We have adorned it, with forms of knowledge and gnoses, for beholders, those who reflect upon Him;

and We have guarded them from every outcast devil, from false illusions,

except the one who listens by stealth, and snatches rational judgement by listening stealthily because of his proximity to the horizon of the intellect - he is pursued by a clear flame, that is, a clear proof, and so We banish him and annul his judgement.

And the earth of the soul, We have stretched it out, We have laid it out with the light that comes from the heart, and cast therein firm mountains, the virtues, and caused to grow therein every kind of, character perfections, voluntary acts, virtuous natural dispositions and sensory perceptibles [that is a], balanced thing, designated and determined according to a rational measure that is just and does not incline to either of the two sides of immoderation or excess, for each faculty according to [what] it [is].

And therein We placed for you livelihoods. The cause of each person's livelihood is different. The livelihood of the desirers is the auspicious- ness of turning toward Him, the livelihood of the recognizers is the gentleness of His beauty, and the livelihood of the tawḤīd-voicers is the unveiling of His majesty. Each is connected to his own state, and each has a portion of His bounteousness. But the Real is incomparable with beautifying Himself through His acts.

Naught is there but its storehouses are with Us. God's storehouses in the earth are the hearts of the recognizers. God has storehouses in the earth, and those storehouses are the hearts of the recognizers and the secret cores of the desirers. They have storehouses of night-brightening pearls and precious deposits and are adorned and decorated by them. Some are adorned by the subtleties of knowledge, and these are the hearts of the knowers. Some are decorated with the realities of intelligence, and these are the hearts of the worshipers. Some are polished with the marvels of the secret core, and these are the hearts of the recognizers. Then the seal of lordhood's love is placed upon them and they are put into the oyster shell of eternity, for “The hearts of the servants are between two fingers of the All-Merciful.” Someone may ask what the mark of this is. I would reply that its mark is the glitter of the rays of the pearl shining on the servant's bodily members such that he is always serving God. He stays up at night in worship and fasts during the daytime. His heart always inclines toward obedience, he hurries to the good, and he does not stoop to concessions. He stays pure of doubtful things, far from the forbidden, and renounces the permitted. He is pained about the past, thoughtful in the present moment, trembling about the rest of his life, and fleeing from hell. He is content with a morsel and a tattered cloak. He has put aside the world for the world's folk and busied himself with serving God. His body burns in yearning, his heart reaches for the Friend, and his spirit is laughing with the Friend. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, everyone destitute has a portion of Your munificence, everyone in pain has a physician from Your generosity. Everyone has a portion from the all-em- bracingness of Your mercy and all the needy have the raindrops of Your kindness. On the head of everyone with faith is a crown from You, in the heart of every lover a lamp from You. Everyone entranced has business with You and everyone waiting will have wine and vision at day's end.”

And We sent forth the winds as pollinators. At the time of spring when the Real's gaze falls on the earth and the world is joyful, He sends down the pollinating wind. He loosens the fastened bonds, and the veins of the trees open their mouths so that their branches may pull water by way of the veins and bring forth subtle fruit. In the same way, the Exalted Lord gazes on the heart of the faithful servant with affection and love and sends down the wind of solicitude, opening up the road of hearing and obeying. Then he may become worthy of accepting admonition and turn back to the Real by repentance and peni- tence: eager in service, occupied with worship, constant in remembering the Real, and persevering in severity toward the soul; the call of kindness always in his ears, the blossom of hope grown up, the fruit of wanting tied to the branch of bounty. Here you have the traces of the wind of solicitude, here you have the pollinators of the breeze of generosity! God says, “We sent forth the winds as pollinators.” When the winds of generosity blow on the secret cores of the recognizers, they are liberated from the fanciful notions of their souls, the frivolities of their natures, and the corruptions of their caprices and desires. The effects of generosity appear in their hearts, so they hold fast to God, depend on Him, and cut off from everything other than Him. The mark of the servant's felicity is that all at once the wind of solicitude blows from the direc- tion of success-giving and piles up the clouds of practice. Then the clouds go down to the ocean of the eye of certainty and pick up the water of regret. The lightning of remembrance flashes, the thunder of desire laments, the rain of reflective thought falls, and the desert of the heart comes to life through that rain. Such are His words, “He gives life to the earth after its death” [30:19]. The servant returns entirely to the Real, with a soul dead in itself, a heart alive through the Real, a tongue let loose in remembrance, and a spirit alive through love. Neither in the heart nor in the mind is any place empty for other than the Beloved. “You are my beloved, my want, my desire!” In Him I live, my pleasure goodly, And when illness descends into my heart, none other than He is my physician.

Surely We give life and We make die. We give the hearts of the recognizers life through contemplation, and We make their souls die through struggle. We bring the hearts of the recognizers to life with contemplation, and We make their bodies die through struggle. The soul is the veil of the heart. As long as the veil is before the heart, the heart is deprived of contemplation. When the soul is killed by struggle according to the Shariah, the life of the heart begins. Guidance arrives, contemplation joins. Those who struggle in Us, We will guide them on Our paths [29:69]. It has also been said, “We give the desirers life through remembering Us and We make the heedless die through separation from Us.”

We indeed know those of you who go forward and We indeed know those of you who fall behind. It has been said that those who go forward are those who hurry to good deeds, and those who fall behind are those who are lazy in good deeds. It has also been said that its meaning is “We have recognized those who are eager in Us and those who have turned away from Us.”

And it is indeed your Lord Who will gather them, together with the one whom they take as friend and [it is He] Who will bring them together with the one whom they love and incline towards in desire; lo! He is the Wise, [One] who manages their affair at the gathering in accordance with [the exigencies of] wisdom and depending on [the nature of] correspondence [between them], the Knower, of all that is in them of hidden inclinations, attraction and love and what their configurations and attributes entail and thus recompense them for their descriptions.

Surely We created man of a dried clay of fetid mud. It has been narrated that Ibn ʿUmar had taken up the sessions. Kaʿb said to a man among those sitting with him, “Ask Ibn ʿUmar from what God created Adam.” Ibn ʿUmar said, “He created Adam from five things: clay, water, fire, light, and wind.” At Ibn ʿUmar's response, Kaʿb said, “Sit with him, for surely he is a man of knowledge.” What is understood from this report is that the Exalted Lord created Adam from five things: clay, water, fire, light, and wind. The wisdom in this is that the Exalted Lord created every one of His creatures from one kind. He created the angels from light and He created the jinn from fire. These are the light of exaltedness and the fire of exaltedness, which is why Iblis swore by exaltedness [38:82], for he was created from the fire of exaltedness and the angels from the light of exaltedness. God created the birds from wind, He created the beasts and the crawling things of the earth from dust, and He created the creatures of the sea from water. He created each from one kind, but He created Adam from all of these kinds so as to honor him and make him eminent. Thus he would be superior to all the creatures of the world. All are subjected to him, and he is given ruling power over all. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says, “We indeed honored the children of Adam, and We carried them on land and sea, and We provided them with goodly things, and We made them much more excellent than many of those We created” [17:70].

And the jānn, that is, the origin of the jinn, which is the substance of the animal spirit from which are generated the faculties of estimation and imagination as well as others; We created beforehand out of the permeative fire, that is to say, from natural heat and the vaporousness and subtlety of mixtures that are transformed thereby. He says 'beforehand' because the effect of heat on composition by means of admixture and tempering comes beforehand and the effect of that vapour on the form of the organs, nay, on the active effective faculties comes before the composition in the first place. As for the signification of the angels' compliance and Iblīs's non-compliance, that has already been mentioned.

'Then be gone, from the Garden of the world of the holy that rises to His horizon, for you are indeed, accursed and banished therefrom since you are not disengaged from substratum.

And indeed, the curse of remoteness in terms of level, shall rest upon you until the Day, of the minor resurrection and the disengagement of the soul from the body by the severing of its attachment [to it], or [until the Day] of the major one upon annihilation in the affirmation of Oneness.

I shall adorn for them, passionate desires and pleasures in the lower aspect, and I shall lead them astray, all of them;

except those servants of Yours, that is, [except] those who are specific to You those whom You have rid of the blemishes of the attributes of the soul and whom You have purified of the filth of attachment to nature and caused to be disengaged, by [their] becoming oriented towards You, from the remnants of their attributes and essences; or those whom You have devoted their deeds sincerely to You without their being any share [in those deeds] for any other than You.

'This is a path, obligatory, for Me, to establish and take care of, that is straight, without crookedness, and it is that you shall have no warrant over those saved servants of Mine, except those who correspond to you in terms of deviation and remoteness from My path and follow you.

It [Hell] has seven gates, which are the five senses and lust and wrath - to each gate belongs an appointed portion of them, an organ specific to that [gate], or certain creatures who shall specifically enter through that [gate] because of their being overcome by the faculty of that gate.

Truly the God-fearing, who have cleansed themselves of the coverings of nature and disengaged from the attributes of humanity, shall be amidst gardens, of the meadows of the world of the holy, and springs', of the water of the life of knowledge, to whom it is said:

'Enter these, safe from the configurations of physical bodies and the diseases of the heart that prevent the arrival to this station, secure!, from the defects of the world of contrareity, the accidents of engendered existence (kawn), corruption, the changes of the states of times and substrata.

And We remove whatever rancour, that is, [whatever] firmly rooted malice or configuration that rises from the soul towards the aspect of the heart that is adjacent to it [that], may be in their breasts, by effusing light and the mastery of the faculty of the spirit and the reinforcement of the holy. Those are the ones whose darknesses have been overcome by their lights from among the folk of knowledge and certainty, and from whom, consequently, have been eliminated dark ego-centric configurations and the effects of enmity that are the concomitants of the falling down of the soul and its inclining to the world of contrareity, and in whom has radiated the faculty of primordial love by the mirroring of the holy rays and the lights of the affirmation of Oneness and certainty of some of them with [those of the] others such that they become brethren by virtue of the compact of faith and spiritual correspondence between them, upon couches, high levels, facing one another, because their degrees are the same, their levels near to one another and [because] they are not veiled.

No toil will touch them, because of the impossibility of there being [present] the causes of incompatibility and contrareity, nor will they be expelled from thence, because of the everlasting nature of their station and its transcending time and its vicissitudes. As for the modality of the angels' descent upon prophets and the embodiment of disengaged individuals, who are detached from corporeal configurations and who are holy, by the high spirits, that has been alluded to in sūrat Hūd.

And verily We have given you seven, that is to say, the seven attributes which are confirmed for God, exalted be He, and which are: life, knowledge, power, will, hearing, vision and speech, of the oft-repeated [verses], whose confirmation has been repeated and reiterated for you, first at the station of the heart's presence upon your assumption of His character traits and His descriptions, such that they are yours; and second, at the station of subsistence by means of existence bestowed by the Truth after annihilation in the affirmation of Oneness, and the great QurÌān, that is, the all-comprehensive Essence that combines all of the attributes. Seven were given to Muḥammad, blessings and peace be upon him, and nine to Moses, because he [the latter] was not given the great QurÌān, but his station was that of being spoken to, that is, the station of the unveiling of the attributes to the exclusion of the unveiling of the Essence and thus his were the seven together with the heart and the spirit.

So glorify [Him], by disengaging from the accidents of the attributes that are attached to substrata so that you might be an exalter of God, exalted be He, by the tongue of [your] state, praising of your Lord by assuming the attributes of perfection so that you might be a praiser of the graces of the self-disclosure of His attributes through your descriptions, and be of those who prostrate themselves, the prostration of annihilation in His Essence,

and worship your Lord, through the glorifications, praises and prostrations mentioned, until, the truth of, Certainty comes to you, and your worship comes to an end with the termination of your existence and He becomes both the Worshipper and the Worshipped One, there being none other than Him.

The command of God is coming, so do not seek to hurry it. God's command is many-colored, and obeying Him is many-hued. The servant's outwardness was commanded one thing, his inwardness something else. The outwardness was commanded to stay with tightened belt on the threshold of worship in the way station of service. The inwardness was commanded to stay quiet on the carpet of recognition with the quality of veneration. The heart was commanded to be constant in watchfulness. The secret core was commanded to seek limpidness in the station of recognition. And the spirit was commanded to cling to the Presence in contempla- tion itself. So do not seek to hurry it. Do not hurry to find what is desired and do not go beyond the measure of the command, for everyone truthful will one day reach what he desires, and everyone obedient to the Real has the promise of vision.

He sends down the angels with the spirit from His command upon whomsoever He will of His servants: “Give warning that there is no god but I, so be wary of Me.” The reality of the spirit is that within which is the life of the heart and the life of the religion. It is the beauty of the Qur'an's exaltedness, which reached MuṣṬafā from the Divine Presence with the attribute of the message by the emissary Gabriel. Give warning that there is no god but I, so be wary of Me: “Report to My servants that I am the One Lord, I am without peer in attributes, I am separate from anything's resemblance to Me, and I am loyal to My assurances. Whenever someone says these words bearing witness and places the seal of tawḤīd on his heart, he has entered into the pavilion of the submission's exaltedness.” But you should know that this pavilion of the submission is set up only on the plain of god- wariness, for He says, “There is no god but I, so be wary of Me.” The reality of godwariness is the heart's purity of everything other than the Real. Just as submission is obligatory for the world's creatures, so also godwariness is obligatory. When the foundation of the religion was put down, it was put down on godwariness, for everyone who be- came a possessor of friendship became so through godwariness. “Surely His friends are only the godwary” [8:34]. Tomorrow the friendship of the next world will be assigned to those who are called godwary: “The outcome belongs to the godwary” [7:128]. The first condition of godwariness is that you be the guardian of your own heart and do three things: You do not give yourself over to wishing, you avoid everything that is not approved, and you not be heedless of the Real for one moment. On the day when Abū Bakr was buying Bilāl, Bilāl said, “O chief of the sincerely truthful! If you are buying Bilāl for the sake of the business of this world, do not buy him. He can perform no service that you will approve, for Bilāl has dedicated himself to the business of the afterworld.” God's mercy be upon those chevaliers who do not turn away from serving the Real to serving the creatures! Every single part of each of them is busy with service, and all their moments are im- mersed in observing the rightful dues of the Real. None of their parts is free to serve the creatures, none of their moments is wasted in antagonism toward the creatures. A great man was asked, “Do you love God?” He said, “I do.” He was asked, “Do you hate his enemy Iblis?” He said, “I am too busy with love for the Real to occupy myself with enmity toward someone else.”

And in them is beauty for you when you bring home to rest and drive forth to pasture. Some people attach beauty to possessions, some to states. The wealthy find beauty when they bring home to rest and drive forth to pasture, and the poor busy themselves with their Patron when they wake in the morning and rest in the evening. The rich consider the perfection of their beauty to lie in possessions, and possessions are one of two: permitted or forbidden. If they are permitted, they are a tribulation, and if they are forbid- den, they are a curse. The poor consider their status and beauty to lie in union with the Patron and see perfect intimacy in companionship with the Patron. It is said that Rābiʿa ʿAdawiyya was cut off from a caravan and was wandering lost in the desert. She sat down under a thorn tree and put her head on the knees of remorse. She heard a call from the air of exaltedness, “You feel terrified when I am with you?” On the night of the miʿrāj all the beauty and wealth of jinn and men were offered as ransom for one footstep of the Master of the Children of Adam, but he did not glance at it. His boast was this: “Replete one day, I praise Thee; hungry one day, I thank Thee.”

It is for God to point out the path; and some [paths] deviate. The straight road and approved path is that which goes toward the Real and passes over the Real. That road can be traveled with three things: first knowledge, second state, and third eye. Knowl- edge cannot be put in place without teacher, state cannot be put straight without conformity, and the eye is alone and does not get along with attachment. In knowledge there is fear, in state there is hope, and in eye there is straightness. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “None of His friends traveled this road without first seeing three things together: release from the ruling power of his soul, a heart joined with the Patron, and a secret core adorned with awareness.”

He it is who sends down water from heaven.... Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect... signs for a people who use intellect... a sign for a people who remember. He is an allusion to the Essence, who is an intimation of the attributes, and sends down reports about the acts. Thus you will know that God has Essence, attributes, and acts. He is eternal in Essence, noble in attributes, wise in acts; without associate in Essence, without ambiguity in attri- butes, and without cause in acts. The servants gazes upon His artisanry, then flee from the artisanry to gaze upon the attributes, then flee from the attributes to gaze upon the Essence. These are the stations of the wayfarers' traveling and the degrees of the recognizers' recognition. One must have reflection in gazing upon the artisanry, knowledge in gazing on the attributes, and remembrance in gazing on the Essence. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says, “Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect.” Then, after that, He says, “signs for a people who use intel- lect.” Then, after that, He says “a sign for a people who remember.” In other words, recognition will be gained in this order: first reflection, then knowledge, then, at that point, he will remember through the continuity of knowledge. First he reflects, putting his gaze in its place. If no defect falls into his gaze, then inevitably he gains knowledge; and in reality there is no difference between intellect and knowledge. Then, after that, the gaze becomes continuous, and the continuity of the gaze is the remembering of which He speaks. It has been said that He says “signs for a people who use intellect” in the plural only because someone gains many knowledges in order to become a recognizer, and every part of knowledge is gained through a different sign and indicator. The knower has signs and indicators before he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, because the indicator for one question is different from the in- dicator for another question. With one indicator he knows the necessity of gazing on Him, with many indicators he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, and with one indicator he knows that it is necessary to remember the various sorts of his knowledge.

He it is who sends down water from heaven.... Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect... signs for a people who use intellect... a sign for a people who remember. He is an allusion to the Essence, who is an intimation of the attributes, and sends down reports about the acts. Thus you will know that God has Essence, attributes, and acts. He is eternal in Essence, noble in attributes, wise in acts; without associate in Essence, without ambiguity in attri- butes, and without cause in acts. The servants gazes upon His artisanry, then flee from the artisanry to gaze upon the attributes, then flee from the attributes to gaze upon the Essence. These are the stations of the wayfarers' traveling and the degrees of the recognizers' recognition. One must have reflection in gazing upon the artisanry, knowledge in gazing on the attributes, and remembrance in gazing on the Essence. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says, “Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect.” Then, after that, He says, “signs for a people who use intel- lect.” Then, after that, He says “a sign for a people who remember.” In other words, recognition will be gained in this order: first reflection, then knowledge, then, at that point, he will remember through the continuity of knowledge. First he reflects, putting his gaze in its place. If no defect falls into his gaze, then inevitably he gains knowledge; and in reality there is no difference between intellect and knowledge. Then, after that, the gaze becomes continuous, and the continuity of the gaze is the remembering of which He speaks. It has been said that He says “signs for a people who use intellect” in the plural only because someone gains many knowledges in order to become a recognizer, and every part of knowledge is gained through a different sign and indicator. The knower has signs and indicators before he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, because the indicator for one question is different from the in- dicator for another question. With one indicator he knows the necessity of gazing on Him, with many indicators he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, and with one indicator he knows that it is necessary to remember the various sorts of his knowledge.

He it is who sends down water from heaven.... Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect... signs for a people who use intellect... a sign for a people who remember. He is an allusion to the Essence, who is an intimation of the attributes, and sends down reports about the acts. Thus you will know that God has Essence, attributes, and acts. He is eternal in Essence, noble in attributes, wise in acts; without associate in Essence, without ambiguity in attri- butes, and without cause in acts. The servants gazes upon His artisanry, then flee from the artisanry to gaze upon the attributes, then flee from the attributes to gaze upon the Essence. These are the stations of the wayfarers' traveling and the degrees of the recognizers' recognition. One must have reflection in gazing upon the artisanry, knowledge in gazing on the attributes, and remembrance in gazing on the Essence. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says, “Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect.” Then, after that, He says, “signs for a people who use intel- lect.” Then, after that, He says “a sign for a people who remember.” In other words, recognition will be gained in this order: first reflection, then knowledge, then, at that point, he will remember through the continuity of knowledge. First he reflects, putting his gaze in its place. If no defect falls into his gaze, then inevitably he gains knowledge; and in reality there is no difference between intellect and knowledge. Then, after that, the gaze becomes continuous, and the continuity of the gaze is the remembering of which He speaks. It has been said that He says “signs for a people who use intellect” in the plural only because someone gains many knowledges in order to become a recognizer, and every part of knowledge is gained through a different sign and indicator. The knower has signs and indicators before he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, because the indicator for one question is different from the in- dicator for another question. With one indicator he knows the necessity of gazing on Him, with many indicators he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, and with one indicator he knows that it is necessary to remember the various sorts of his knowledge.

He it is who sends down water from heaven.... Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect... signs for a people who use intellect... a sign for a people who remember. He is an allusion to the Essence, who is an intimation of the attributes, and sends down reports about the acts. Thus you will know that God has Essence, attributes, and acts. He is eternal in Essence, noble in attributes, wise in acts; without associate in Essence, without ambiguity in attri- butes, and without cause in acts. The servants gazes upon His artisanry, then flee from the artisanry to gaze upon the attributes, then flee from the attributes to gaze upon the Essence. These are the stations of the wayfarers' traveling and the degrees of the recognizers' recognition. One must have reflection in gazing upon the artisanry, knowledge in gazing on the attributes, and remembrance in gazing on the Essence. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says, “Surely in that is a sign for a people who reflect.” Then, after that, He says, “signs for a people who use intel- lect.” Then, after that, He says “a sign for a people who remember.” In other words, recognition will be gained in this order: first reflection, then knowledge, then, at that point, he will remember through the continuity of knowledge. First he reflects, putting his gaze in its place. If no defect falls into his gaze, then inevitably he gains knowledge; and in reality there is no difference between intellect and knowledge. Then, after that, the gaze becomes continuous, and the continuity of the gaze is the remembering of which He speaks. It has been said that He says “signs for a people who use intellect” in the plural only because someone gains many knowledges in order to become a recognizer, and every part of knowledge is gained through a different sign and indicator. The knower has signs and indicators before he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, because the indicator for one question is different from the in- dicator for another question. With one indicator he knows the necessity of gazing on Him, with many indicators he becomes a recognizer of his Lord, and with one indicator he knows that it is necessary to remember the various sorts of his knowledge.

He it is who subjected the sea so that you may eat from it fresh flesh. Outwardly, He subjected the oceans of the earth to the creatures, ships running upon it and ben- efits appearing from it. Inwardly, He created oceans in the Adamic soul in which the Adamite is drowned: First is the ocean of preoccupation, second the ocean of sorrow, third the ocean of avarice, fourth the ocean of heedlessness, and fifth the ocean of dispersion. These oceans have ships. Whoever sits in the ship of trust on the ocean of preoccupation will reach the shore of detachment. Whoever sits in the ship of approval on the ocean of sorrow will reach the shore of security. Whoever sits in the ship of contentment on the ocean of avarice will reach the shore of renunciation. Whoever sits in the ship of remembrance on the ocean of heedlessness will reach the shore of wakefulness. Whoever sits in the ship of tawḤīd on the ocean of dispersion will reach the shore of togetherness.

Is He who creates like him who does not create? Will the created thing ever be like the Creator? Will the enacted thing ever be similar to the Enac- tor? In the seven heavens and seven earths, it is God who is one and unique. In Essence He is without similar, in measure without equal, in attributes without peer. Fancying that the Creator is like the created is an error, and the road of declaring similarity is disloyalty. But affirming at- tributes is not declaring similarity, and to declare holy by negating attributes is nothing but the position of Iblis. Declaring similarity does not come by way of saying that there is, but rather by saying that there is similarity. Whoever declares similarity is an unbeliever, just as whoever says that there is no similarity is an unbeliever. Whenever someone says that God is like himself has said that God has more than a thousand associates. Whoever declares God's attributes ineffectual has abased himself in the two worlds.

those whom the angels take [in death] while they are wronging their souls'. It has already been mentioned that the foremost affirmers of the Oneness are received [in death] by God, exalted be He, through His Essence, whereas the pious and the felicitous divide into two groups: as for those have risen from the station of the soul by disengaging and have arrived at the station of the heart by means of knowledge and virtues, they are received [in death] by the Angel of Death. As for those who are at the station of the soul from among the righteous, the pious renouncers and the followers of the law who have not disengaged from the attachments of the body by means of self-cleansing and adornment, they are received [in death] by the Angels of Mercy who give them the good tidings of the Garden, that is, the Garden of the soul which is the Garden of the acts and the effects. As for the evil ones, the wretched, they are received [in death] however they may be by the Angels of Retribution. For the angelic faculties that are conjoined to souls taken on the configurations of those souls. Thus if these [souls] are veiled and dark, then their configurations will be dark, shadowy and horrible, and so the angelic faculties that seize their souls will take on those configurations by correspondence. That is why it is said that the Angel of Death appears in the form of the character traits of the dying person: if these are vile and dark, then his [the Angel's] form will be dreadful and eerie. Fear and terror will overcome the one whom he [the Angel] is visiting and that [dying] person will submit meekly and relinquish his arrogance and will manifest incapacity and meekness. That is the significance of His words: Then they will offer submission, in other words, they will seek peace, pathetic, yielding and abandoning obduracy and rebelliousness and they will say: 'We were not doing any evil', and they will receive the response of their [the angels'] words: 'Nay! Surely God is Knower of what you used to do'.

So enter the gates of Hell-fire, of the acts. As for those who guard against acts of disobedience and things that are forbidden, those who halt at [the bounds delimited by] the stipulations of the Law, who acknowledge the affirmation of Oneness and the prophethood by way of imitation, but not by way of verification - for otherwise they would disengage from the attributes of the soul to the station of the heart by means of the knowledge of certainty - those they will be received [in death] by the angels while they are goodly [souls] in the form of their character traits and their beautiful goodly deeds, rejoicing and anticipating good tidings,

[with the angels] saying: 'Peace be on you!; Enter the Garden, that is, the Garden they are familiar with, which is the Garden of the souls from among the Gardens of the acts, because of what you used to do'.

And the idolaters say, 'Had God willed we would not have worshipped anything besides Him: they only say this out of obduracy and sinful disobedience in excessive ignorance and in order to force [the argument upon] the affirmers of Oneness on the basis of their beliefs. For had they said that out of knowledge or certainty, they would have been affirmers of the Oneness [too] and not idolaters by their attribution of will and effect to another. Because the one who knows that nothing can happen without the will of God, will [also] know that if every person in the entire world were to will something which God does not will that thing will not happen; and that person will acknowledge [His Oneness] by denying power and will to all that is other than God, exalted be He. Then he would no longer be an idolater: God, exalted be He, says Had God willed, they would not have been idolaters [Q. 6:107] - So did those before them, [do the same] by denying the messengers out of obstinacy.

All that We say to a thing, when We will it, is to say to it 'Be', and it is: the difference between God's will, exalted be He, and His knowledge and power can only be one of conceptual consideration (iʿtibāran) For God, exalted be He, knows every thing and knows that it will come to pass at a designated time by a designated cause in a designated manner. If we were to consider His knowledge of such [aspects], we would say that that is [taking place] by His being the Knower; if we were to consider His specification of a designated time and designated manner, we would say that it is by His will; and if we were to consider the necessity of His existence in relation to the existence of that whose existence is dependent on Him at that time and in that known manner, we would say that it is by His power. Thus all three refer back to [His] knowledge. Were our knowledge to entail the existence of a thing and were it not to change or require thought or resolve, except that it be a thing known, or [require] the movement of [our] instruments, it would be the same case with us.

Those who emigrate in God after they were wronged-We shall surely build for them something beautiful, and the wage of the next world will be greater. Anyone who emigrates from the homelands of heedlessness will be taken by the majesty of Unity to the witnessing places of union. When someone emigrates from the homelands of heedlessness, the majesty of Unity will con- vey him to the witnessing places of union. When someone emigrates from companionship with the created, the gentle favors of generosity will give him access to His companionship. When some- one emigrates from himself and is displeased with dwelling with himself, his heart will become the place where passion for the Haqiqah puts down its saddlebags. Today he will be delighted in the secluded solace of “I am the sitting companion of him who remembers Me,” and tomorrow he will take his ease on the carpet of the expansiveness of “The patient poor are the sitting companions of God on the Day of Resurrection.” This emigration has a beginning and an end. Its beginning is that his makeup becomes obe- dience itself, not from habit and not from wanting the reward, but rather from being drowned in contemplation itself. Thus it is recounted of the recognizer Sultan MaḤmūd that he never sat in a session of intimacy with any but Ayāz. The boon companions and special friends began to mutter. The sultan became aware of their jealousy, and he commanded that all the boon companions and special friends be present in a session. Then he had a goblet made of ruby-worth the taxes from one of his prov- inces-brought forth, along with an iron anvil, and put before him. He commanded the vizier to smash the goblet on the anvil. The vizier, “Protect me, O Sultan! Though the sultan's command is higher, I do not have the gall to be so bold.” In the same way, he commanded the other boon companions and special friends. All took off their hats, began to tremble, and did not have the gall to break it. Then he pointed at Ayāz. He said, “Slave, strike the goblet on the anvil and break it.” Ayāz struck the goblet on the anvil until it broke into tiny pieces. Then MaḤmūd said, “There are four thousand way stations between obeying the sultan's command and seclusion with him. When someone still avoids obeying MaḤmūd's command, how can he have the gall to talk of seclusion and seek companionship?” As for the end of emigration, it is three things: veneration in seclusion, being ashamed in service, and seeing nothing but shortcoming in oneself despite much obedience.

Ask the folk of remembrance if you do not know. This alludes to the fact that knowledge of the Shariah is to be learned and is not correct without an intermediary and teacher. Anyone who fancies that the intermediary is useless in knowledge of the Shariah has no portion of the religion. In short, know that knowledge is of three sorts: knowledge of the Shariah, knowledge of the Tariqah, and knowledge of the Haqiqah. The Shariah is to be learned, the Tariqah is to be prac- ticed, and the Haqiqah is to be found. Concerning knowledge of the Shariah He says, “Ask the folk of remembrance.” Concerning knowledge of the Tariqah He says, “Seek the means of approach to Him” [5:35]. Concerning knowledge of the Haqiqah He says, “We taught him knowledge from Us” [18:65]. He turned knowledge of the Shariah over to a teacher, He turned knowledge of the Tariqah over to a pir, and He turned knowledge of the Haqiqah over to Himself. When someone obtains these three knowledges, a light shines in his heart through which he recognizes the essence of prophethood. When he is given this recognition, he finds this eminence and special favor from the threshold of prophethood: “The men of knowledge are the heirs to the prophets.”

Or have they not observed what God has created of things, such as a created essence or reality, whatever created essence it may be, how their shadows incline, that is, [how] their frames and forms are embodied and imaginalised - for every thing has a reality which constitutes that thing's origin in the [dominion of the] angelic realm (malakūt) and which gives it its ipseity, as God, exalted be He, has said in Whose hand is the dominion (malakūt) of all things [Q. 36:83]; and [every thing has] a shadow which constitutes its attribute and its locus of manifestation, that is, its body by which that thing becomes manifest, to the right and to the left, that is, to the orientation of good and that of evil, prostrating to God, obedient to His command, fully compliant, not refusing what He wants from it. In other words, [have they not observed things] the frames of which move towards the orientations of good acts and evil ones by His command, and [how] they are subject, abased and humbled before His command, [totally] subjugatedḍ

And to God prostrates, [to Him] are obedient, whatever is in the heavens, in the world of spirits in the way of the inhabitants of the realm of invincibility and [those of] the angelic realm and [of] the disengaged holy spirits, and whatever is on the earth, in the world of bodies in the way of legged animals, humans, trees, and the entirety of earthly and heavenly souls and faculties, and they are not arrogant: they do not refrain from being obedient and humbled before His command.

They fear their Lord, that is, they are broken, effected and acted upon by Him in the way that a fearful person is acted upon [by the thing that causes in him fear], from above them, from His subjugation, influence and exaltedness over them, and they do what they are commanded, in obedience and compliance in such a way that they are unable to do anything else.

And God says, “And take not two gods. Surely He is only one God, so be in awe of Me.” This is an affirmation of tawḤīd. TawḤīd is the basis of the religion and the great pillar of the submission. Without tawḤīd obedience is not accepted, and along with associationism worship is useless. Know that the reality of tawḤīd is of two sorts: saying one and knowing one. Saying one is the beginning of all the sciences, the basis of all the recognitions, the foundation of the religion, and the partition between enemy and friend. It has three descriptions: first, testifying to God's oneness in Essence and His being pure of spouse, child, and peer. Next is testifying to God's oneness in attributes and to the fact that nothing is similar to or like Him. His attributes are not intelligible, nor is their howness understood, encompassed, or defined. They are outside imagination and no one knows how they are. Third is testifying to God's oneness in His true, beginningless names and the fact that for Him these names are realities and for others they are loaned and created. The names He has are His names in reality-eternal and beginningless as is fitting for Him. The names of the creatures are created and newly arrived as is fitting for them. “God” and “All-Merciful” are His names by which no one else is called. Dost thou know any named by His name? [19:65] As for knowing one, that is in service, practice, and aspiration. In service it is abandoning eye-service and observing self-purification. In practice it is to make the secret core limpid and to realize remembrance. In aspiration it is to lose everything other than Him and to be released through freedom of the heart from everything other than Him. Become free of everything in the realm of being- be that Heart-taker's “companion of the cave.” The Pir of the Tariqah said, “In all things expression is easy but finding is difficult. In tawḤīd finding is easy but expression is difficult. The expression of tawḤīd is outside of intellect, the es- sence of tawḤīd is safe against imagination, the newly arrived things are lost in the Beginningless. TawḤīd is that there is no more than one. There is the Recognized, but not the recognizer; there is the Intended, but not the intender.

[Then when He has rid you of the misfortune] behold, a group of you attribute partners to their Lord, by ascribing grace to other than Him and seeing that [grace as coming] from that [other]; likewise [they attribute partners to Him] by ascribing harm to another and referring the sin of that to that [other] and seeking the help of that [other] in removing it. God, exalted be He, said: 'I, the jinn and humanity constitute an awesome tiding: I create, yet other than Me is worshipped and I provide, yet other than Me is thanked'. That is [true] ingratitude for [His] graces and obliviousness to the Gracious one, both of which are alluded to in His statement:

in order to deny that which We have given them. So enjoy, for soon you shall know, the evil consequence of that belief for them. Or [it is that]: you shall know at the manifestation of [His] unity that nothing other than God has the power of effect over anything.

And they assign, to what they do not know, existence of what is besides Him, a portion of that which We have provided them with, and so they say: 'That one gave me such and such', and 'were that one not to give me [that thing] it would have been thus', or 'a particular individual provided me [with this] and helped be', in effect, assigning to others the power of effect with regard to that thing reaching him. Even if they were not to affirm an effective agency for that [individual] with regard to the coming into existence of that [thing], they would [nevertheless] assign him a portion of what God had provided them.

And surely in the cattle there is a lesson for you: We give you to drink of that which is in their bellies, between feces and blood, pure milk, delicious for the drinkers. Two impurities came together, one feces and the other blood. God with His power made pure milk appear between the two. In the same way, two drops came together in the womb. God's determi- nation and form-giving made a form of such beauty appear from the two! He formed you, so He made your forms beautiful [40:64]. He brings together two difficult tasks for the servant, one the burden of disobedience, the other shortcoming in obedience. Then God's bounty makes mercy and forgiveness appear between the two: He will make your deeds wholesome for you and forgive you your sins [33:71]. In what preceded all precedents and began all beginnings, the Pen wrote in the Tablet that the candle of the Shariah and the lamp of faith and certainty would light up in someone's breast. It does not matter if he falls asleep. When he wakes up he will see the lit candle next to his pillow. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, do You know what has made me happy? I did not fall to You by myself. You wanted-it was not I who wanted. I saw the Friend at my pillow when I woke up from sleep.” By way of allusion God is saying, “I took milk, which is your nourishment and your share, and passed it over feces and blood, preserving it from both. As for tawḤīd, it is My rightful due, so it is much more deserving of being preserved by Me. It will pass over this world and the afterworld and not receive any trace. Were the trace of this world or the afterworld to sit on tawḤīd, it would not be worthy of Me. TawḤīd is pure of this world and the afterworld. The light of tawḤīd is the destruction of water and dust. Turning the eye of the heart away from self is to perceive the finding of tawḤīd.”

And God has given more bounty in provision to some of you than others. The provision of the soul is one thing, the provision of the heart another, and the provision of the spirit still another. For some the provision of the soul is the success of obedience and for some it is abandonment to disobedience. For some the provision of the heart is the heart's presence with constant remembrance and for some it is the attribute of heedlessness with constant hardness. For some the provision of the spirit is the perfection of recognition and the limpidness of love and for some it is love for this world and occupation with attachments. Fuẓayl said, “The greatest thing provided to man is deeds that will lead him to rectitude and recognition that will bequeath on him contemplation of his Lord.” The Prophet said, “I spend the night at my Lord; He gives me to eat and drink.”

God strikes a similitude: for the disengaged one and the confined one, the idolater and the affirmer, a slave who is a chattel, lover of other than God, preferring him with his desire, for the one who is confined to something follows its religion and issues forth on the basis of its judgement and behaves according to its command and is thus its slave, since every person who loves something will obey it and if he obeys it he worships it. And so among them is he who worships Satan and another who worships passionate desire, while there is one who worships this world, or the dinar, or garments, as he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him: 'Wretched is the worshipper of the dinar. Wretched is the worshipper of the dirham. And wretched is the worshipper of the embroidered wool garment'. God, exalted be He, says Have you then seen him who has taken as his god his [own] vain desireḍ [Q. 45:23]; and if he were to worship that he would become its chattel and its bondman, having no power over anything, because the lover [of something] or the worshipper, his aspiration, his influence and the faculty of his soul does not rise above the object of his love or worship, for otherwise he would not be subjugated by that [thing] and captive in its fetters; nay he is diminished by [his worship of] that, while his very object of worship is powerless and possesses no effect, not even existence whether it be inanimate or animate, a human or whatever you like. Indeed, he is more powerless than that [worshipped thing] and more ignominious. That is why they say that this world is like a shadow, if you chase it, it eludes you and if you leave it, it pursues you. The pursuer of this world is more contemptible than this world and of less worth than it; this world has no power of effect and so how can it be the cause of actualising something for that personḍ Indeed this world is a fading shadow and so he [its pursuer] is thus the shadow of a shadow; but there can be no shadow for the shadow of a shadow. The shadow belongs to an essence and it [this world] possesses no essence and so he can enjoy neither possession nor power; and one on whom We have bestowed a fair provision from Us, and one who loves Us and turns to Us with his heart, who disengages from all that is other than Us and devotes himself exclusively to Us, We shall give him reinforcement, power and provide him with kingdom and wisdom, showering him with outward and inward graces, since he will have turned towards the Master of the Kingdom, the Gracious to all, the Invincible in strength and power, and who has thus earned for his soul faculty, effect and power from Him so that engendered beings and bodies are affected by him and the kingdom and the angelic realm obey him, in the same way that God, exalted be He, inspired to David, peace be upon him, [that He has commanded]: 'O world, serve him who serves Me and wear out him who serves you'.

Similarly, the idolater is like one who is dumb who never possessed in his creation a preparedness for speech since he [the idolater] was not prepared for perception or [for] the intellect, which is the specific quality of the human being, in order to perceive the necessity of the existence of the Truth, exalted be He, and His perfectedness or the contingency of the other and his deficiency, such that he could dissociate from what is other than Him and take refuge with Him instead of with the strength or might of his soul or those of another; having no power over anything, because of his incapacity and the failure of his faculty due to the deficiency that adheres to his [defective] preparedness, and who is a liability to his master, because of his inability by nature to actualise his need; and so he is naturally a slave [to him], needy and submissive before the other, lagging behind the level of everything since he is less than nothing as the contingent being which he worships is nothing, whether that [contigent thing] be a king, a celestial sphere, a planet or an intellect or otherwise; wherever he directs him, he does not bring any good, because of his lack of preparedness and his evilness by nature, such that he corresponds only to evil which is non-existence. How then can he bring any goodḍ Is he equal, to the affirmer of Oneness who subsists in God and who is annihilated to what is other than Him and even to his own soul, one who upholds the truth, treats creatures with justice and enjoins justiceḍ For justice is the shadow of the unity in the world of multiplicity. Thus wherever he upholds the unity of the Essence, the shadow of that [unity] falls upon all, and so he is always an enjoiner of justice, and follows a path that is straightḍ, that is, the path of God upon whom are His elect from among the folk of subsistence after annihilation, the one stretched out for the folk of the reality over the hellfire of nature and which they cross [as quickly] as a lightning flash.

And to God belongs the Unseen of the heavens and the earth: in other words, to God belongs the knowledge of what is hidden in the heavens and the earth pertaining to the matter of the major resurrection or the knowledge of the levels of the seven unseens to which we have referred, such as the unseen of the jinn, the soul, the heart, the mystery, the spirit, the hidden and the unseen of unseens, or what is unseen of the reality of both, namely, the dominion of the world of spirits and the world of bodies. And the matter, of the major resurrection in comparison with matters that belong in time, is but, as the closest time which the similitude of the twinkling of an eye expresses, or it is [even] nearer. This is [expressed] on the basis of simile, for [in reality] the matter of the Hour is not a temporal one and what is atemporal is perceived by the one who perceives it outside time. Truly God is has power over all things, with power to bring death, give life and reckon outside of time, as is witnessed by His folk and His elect.

Have they not observed the birds, the spiritual and ego-centric faculties such as reflection and the intellect, both the considerative and the practical, nay indeed, estimation and imagination, [how they are] made subservient in the air of heavenḍ, that is, [in] the space of the world of spirits. Nothing holds them, without attachment to substrata and without dependence on some heavy body, except God.

They recognize God's blessings, then they deny them. Some people say that this concerns the Muslims. For a time they occupy themselves with obedi- ence and undertake the path of discipline and struggle according to the Shariah. But in the end, self-admiration comes and ambushes them, destroying their obedience. Their self-admiration is that they consider their obedience and worship as service pleasing to God, and this brings them to exultation and happiness: “This is my attribute and my strength.” They remain heedless that it is God's blessings and bounty toward them. Then they do not fear the disappearance of the blessings and they go forth feeling secure. MuṣṬafā said, “A man's destruction lies in three things: One is niggardliness that he obeys, another is the soul's caprice that he follows, and the third is admiring himself.” One of the great ones of the religion said, “If I sleep all night and in the morning feel broken and fearful, I like that more than spending the night in prayer and admiring myself in the morning.” ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd said, “The destruction of a man's religion lies in two things: self- admiration and despair.” He said this because anyone who loses hope will stop seeking and be overcome by lassitude, so he will not worship. So also, anyone who admires himself will fancy that he does not need to seek, for his work is right and he has been forgiven.

And the day We shall raise up from every community a witness: that is, [when] We send forth their prophet in the maximum perfection which his community is able to arrive at or to draw close to and orient themselves toward by the possibility of their recognition of him and so they recognise him. That is why for every community there will be a witness other than the witness of the next community, so that every person who has fallen short or contravened his prophet by rejecting the perfection to which he calls and by halting with the bottommost pits of defeciency shall come to recognise his shortcoming and his veiledness. Thus he will have no argument and nothing to speak, remaining bewildered and full of anguish. That is the meaning of His words: then the disbelievers will not be given permission. Nor will he have any means of comprehending what has eluded him of his perfection, because of the lack of instrument; but nor will he be able to accept his state, because of the potency of his primordial preparedness to which he moulded and his original instinctive yearning for that [perfection]. Thus he remains in suppressed anger, neither being asked to make amends nor his satisfaction being sought.

And on that day they will offer to God submission, and obedience. Their denial has already been mentioned, as in where He says: the day when God will raise them all together, whereupon they will swear to Him just as they swear to you [now] [Q. 58:18]. That is according to the halting place [at the Resurrection]. The denial at that first halting is at the moment of the potency of the configurations of vice and the intensity of the unyieldingness of the soul in its devilishness and at its utmost remoteness from the divine light because of its being veiled with thick veils and dark coverings such that he is not even aware that he is inspecting and contemplating it, and [it is at the moment of] the extreme sulliedness of the light of preparedness such that he is even able to manifest the opposite of what it [that preparedness] entails. Submission at the second halting place takes place after the passage of several ages of the hours of that Day, 'whose span is fifty thousand years' [cf. Q. 70:4], when the configurations have dissipated and the natural inclination of the soul to vices has thinned and weakened, and [when] he has drawn close to the world of light because of the thinness of the veils and the flashing of the light of his first primordial nature, whereupon he will admit [the truth] and yield - that is if the submission and the denial are on the part of individual souls: submission then can be in the case of those in whom the configurations of their vices have not taken deep root, their veils have not become thick and the light of their preparedness has not been extinguished; while denial is in the case of those in whom the configurations have taken deep roots and have become potent, so that devilishness has overcome them and established itself [in them], their veil being dense and their preparedness having failed. But God knows best;

and We shall bring you as a witness against these: this has already been mentioned in sūrat al-NisāÌ. And We have revealed to you the Book, namely, the Discriminating Intellect after the existence that is bestowed by the Truth, as a clarification of all things, explaining and verifying the truth of all things, and as a guidance to his perfection for whoever submits and yields to the soundness of his primordial nature, and a mercy, for him by making him attain that perfection by means of [spiritual] nurturing and reinforcement, and as good tidings to him that he will subsist in that perfection forever beyond time in the three gardens.

Surely God commands justice and beautiful doing and giving to kinsmen, and He pro- hibits indecency, the improper, and rebelliousness. And He admonishes you, that perhaps you may remember. In this verse the Creator of the world and the world's folk, the lovingly kind Lord, brings together in succession the foundations of service and the guideposts of interaction. He makes the faithful aware of the pleasing character traits and He honors them by letting them recognize the causes of His approval. He instructs them in beautiful worship of Him and in living with His creatures. We have already explained some of this in the tongue of unveiling according to the Shariah. In terms of the Haqiqah and the tongue of allusion, it is that God commands the servant to have justice in interaction with the Real, in interaction with people, and in interaction with the soul. Interaction with the Real is through acknowledgment, interaction with people through justice, and interaction with the soul through opposition. One must have conformity with the Real, sincerity with the people, and opposition to the soul. The meaning of conformity is for the servant to welcome the Real's decree before it appears and to leave aside free choice, such that he recognizes all of it without having perceived it and loves it not having seen it. The meaning of sincerity is that he walk straight with the people in word, deed, aspiration, and resoluteness. He is fair to them, he does not place his burden on them, he conceals their faults, he does not take back his tenderness no matter what states he sees, he does not hold back his good from them, he lives with character, he respects elders, and he is tender toward young people and merciful toward children. This is the meaning of justice in interaction with people. As for the reality of justice in interaction with the soul, it is to hold back the soul from that in which its destruction lies. God says, “As for him who fears the standing place before his Lord and prohibits the soul its caprice, surely the Garden shall be the shelter” [79:40-41]. Ibrāhīm Adham said, “In my whole life in this world, my heart was happy three times, and in those three times I was happy because I acted with severity toward my own soul.

And fulfil God's covenant, which is the remembering of the former covenant and the renewing of it through the later pledge to remain upon His judgement in rejecting all that is other [than Him] and disengaging from impediments and attachments in orienting oneself to Him; when you made a covenant, that is, [when] you remembered Him by the rising of the light of the Prophet over you and his reminder to you [of Him].

What is with you runs out, but what is with God subsists. What is with you runs out is the attribute of this world, its annihilation; and what is with God sub- sists is the attribute of the afterworld and everlasting subsistence. Jesus was asked, “Why don't you make a house for yourself?” He said, “I have no stomach for busying myself with something that will not be my companion forever.” The Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī put a dinar in his hand and said, “'O yellow thing, make my face yellow. O white thing, make me white and delude other than me.' O world and O bliss of this world! Go, for you are an adorned bride, and you cannot break the claws of a lion with a bride's fingers. Go, delude someone else, for the son of Abū Ṭālib has no stomach for falling into the snare of your delusion.” The life of this world is nothing but the enjoyment of delusion [3:185]. What is with you runs out, but what is with God subsists. In other words, “What is with you, namely the yearning you have to encounter Me, is susceptible to disappearance and accepts cessa- tion. But My description of Myself subsists, namely in the tradition, 'Surely the yearning of the pi- ous to encounter Me has become protracted, but My yearning to encounter them is more intense.'” Whatever comes from the servant-obedience, service, affection, love-even if it is continu-ous, is susceptible to disappearance, for it is an attribute of newly arrived things, and annihilation has access to them. It is only the welcoming of the divine majesty and exaltation and the Lord's caressing of the servant that never finish and remain untouched by annihilation. Whatever comes from us is suited to us, infected by our own shares and described by dispersion. Whatever comes from God comes with the attribute of infinite exaltedness and majesty, for the reality of together- ness is that it is necessarily subsistent and permanent. These generous, gentle favors, infinite caresses, and lordly welcoming that set forth from the side of All-compellingness lodge only at the core of the friends' hearts. It is they whose life in this world is the goodly life and whose conduct and path are wholesome deeds along with faith; this is their attribute, for the Exalted Lord says,

Whoever does a wholesome deed, male or female, while having faith, We shall surely give him to live a goodly life. The wholesome deed is that which is worthy of acceptance, for it accords with the command. Then He says, while having faith, that is, assenting to the truth that his salvation is by God's bounty, not by his own deeds. He is saying that the goodly life is appropriate for him whose deeds are beautiful, whose conduct is pure, who has the togetherness of aspiration, and who believes that his salvation is by the divine bounty, not by the activity of servanthood. We shall surely give him to live a goodly life. Today there are the sweetness of obedience, the breeze of proximity, and the reminder of the Endless, and tomorrow there will be the Palisades of Holiness in the Presence of At-ness with blessedness, nearness, and the most beautiful.

And when you recite the QurÌān, seek refuge in God: rise from the station of the soul by ascending to the Side of the Holy, for the soul is the refuge of every impurity and the spring of every abomination, corresponding to the evil whisperings of Satan and disengaging them with its conversations. Once you rise above its abode, Satan has no power over you since he is unable to bear the light of the presence of the Truth and the presence of the heart, the landing place for His lights, the side of His holy attributes and the locus for His luminous self-disclosures. So seek refuge in these [luminous self-disclosures] and seek refuge with the light of God in them so that the edifice of your faith remains sturdy through certainty. For the faith alongside which there no longer remains the power of Satan - as God, exalted be He, says,

Indeed he has power over those who believe - its least degrees is cognitive certainty whose locus is the pure heart; but this certainty is not enough to preclude his [Satan's] power unless it is joined with the presential vision of the acts, which is the station of trust, as God, exalted be He, says: and who put their trust in their Lord. Annihilation in the acts is not possible while the attributes of the soul subsist, since the subsistence of its attributes necessitates [the subsistence of] its acts. That is why it is said that it is not possible to fulfil the due of a station, to certify it and consolidate it except after rising to the one above it. Thus by rising to the station of the attributes, the acts are annihilated and thus [the station of] trust becomes valid.

His [Satan's] power is only over those who choose him as [their] ally, at the station of the soul by virtue of the correspondence that is between them in terms of darkness and impurity, since the adoption of an ally is dictated by the genus-correspondence [between a person and his ally], and those who associate him [with God], by attributing power and effect to him, nay by obeying him and complying with his commands by virtue of the alliance mentioned [above].

Whoever disbelieves in God after [having affirmed] his faith, by virtue of the fact that darkness in his case is essential as per his first preparedness and the light accidental, and so he is in a creational veil from the light of faith. If he is touched by a holy ray [of light] from the prophet's soul or from the holy effusion, or if he is affected by the promise [of reward] or the threat [of punishment], or [if he is affected] by a word of truth while being summoned to the truth, in a state in which his heart is open [to it], and an ego-centric motivation urges him because there is some benefit to be actualised or some harm to be warded off relating to his property or reputation or [the actualisation of] some glory [for him] by means of submitting [to Islam], he manifests faith outwardly but his station and abode is [still] that of unbelief, then he has merited God's wrath since he is veiled, as per his preparedness, from the first of the levels of faith which is the presential vision of the acts by deducing the Creator from [His] handiwork; thus his punishment will issue from the acts and the attributes; but not him, who is compelled, to disbelief as a result of being warned and being made fearful, while his heart is at rest, firm, fixed and filled, with faith, by the luminosity of his primordial nature from origins and the fact that in his case light is something essential, as per his primordial nature, while disbelief and veiledness are accidental [in his case] precipitated by the exigencies of createdness, and the accidental veil has been removed - but he who opens up his breast to unbelief, that is, the one whose soul delights in it, is satisfied and reassured [by it] due to the fact that it constitutes that person's residence and original refuge, upon such shall be, terrible, wrath from God, and there is a great chastisement for them, for being veiled from all of the levels of light, such as the acts, the attributes and the essence: how thick is their veil and how awful is their chastisement!

That, opening up of the breast to unbelief and contentment with it, is because they have preferred the life of this world to the Hereafter, since it constitutes the limit and ultimate extent of their knowledge and their knowledge does not extend to the Hereafter because the insights of their hearts are blocked and their preparedness corresponds to the dark lower matters such as corporeal substrata and so they have come to love what they can sense and this suits their state, even though the love of this world is the source of every sin as that [love] necessitates the thick veil behind which and in the folds of which lies all sin, and because God does not guide the disbelieving folk, that is, those who are veiled by the thickest veils since it is impossible for them to receive guidance.

They are the ones on whose hearts God has set a seal, by virtue of the hardness and impurity of these [hearts] from the outset such that the paths of inspiration, understanding and unveiling are not open to them, and on their hearing and their sight, by the blocking the path of the desired meaning from their ears and the path of conceptual consideration from their eyes to their hearts such that none of the means to guidance have any effect on them, neither inwardly through the effusion of the spirit and the angelic casting and the rising of the light, nor outwardly through instruction and learning or conceptual consideration from the vestiges of the [divine] handiwork, and it is they who are heedless, in reality since they are completely inattentive and are utterly incapable of waking from the sleep of ignorance.

Without a doubt in the Hereafter they are the ones who will be the losers, those who have forsaken their life of this world by exhausting all their capacities in actualising it and destroying their lives in pursuit of it. There is nothing for them in the Hereafter except the chastisement of the configurations of attachment and the evil consequence of anguish.

Then surely thy Lord-toward those who emigrated after they were tormented, then struggled and were patient-surely thy Lord after that is forgiving, ever-merciful. The reality of emigration is that you emigrate from your own makeup, you abandon yourself and your desires, and you place the foot of nonbeing on top of your own attributes. Beginningless love may then lift the curtain and endless passion may show its beauty. How beautifully that chevalier spoke! Endless passion has nothing to do with a heart that stays firm in its own attributes. [DS 209] The paragon of the world and master of Adam's children, who was the goal of existent things and the center point in the circle of newly arrived things, always used to recite this supplication: “'O God, do not entrust us to our own souls for the blink of an eye, or less than that!' Lord God! Re- move from before us this makeup stamped by createdness and the relationships of opposition! Lift the burden of our souls away from us so that we may travel in the world of tawḤīd!” The command came, “O master, before you wanted, My want took care of your work and put aside the burden of you-ness from you. [Did We not] lift from thee thy burden? [94:2]. O MuḤammad! If anyone came by his own selfhood, you did not come by yourself, because I brought you: Who took His servant by night [17:1]. Nor did you come for yourself, because you came as a mercy for the world's folk: We sent thee only as a mercy to the worlds [21:107]. The state of Abraham was the same. Adam was still in the concealment of nonexistence when the Exalted Lord inscribed the stamp of bosom friendship on that paragon. He placed the fire of yearning for Him in his inwardness, and the beauty of beginningless passion toward him. He al- ludes to this with His words, “We gave Abraham his rectitude from before” [21:51]. Then, when he came into existence, on the day when he stood in the desert of bewilderment, his heart was lit up with love for the Eternal and his spirit was drunk with the wine of nonbeing. At the moment of the morning draft of the passionate, the shouting of the drunkards, and the uproar of the heart-lost, he was driven by craving the wine of nonbeing to say with the tongue of helplessness concerning whatever he looked upon, “This is my Lord” [6:76]. He saw himself consumed in witnessing the Real's majesty and beauty and was unaware of creation's being and his own being. Hence the Exalted Lord increased His caressing of him and counted him as one community:

And God strikes a similitude, of the prepared soul that is receptive and clear of impurities, draws on the effusion of the heart, remains firm along the path of earning virtues, is secure against the loss of these and their passing away and is reassured in its convictions: its provision, in the way of profitable forms of knowledge and praiseworthy virtues and noble lights, coming to it plenteously from every place, that is, from every aspect, [from] the coporeal paths, such as the senses which provide it with the nourishment of forms of particular knowledge, the limbs and the instruments which obey it in [the performance of] virtuous deeds and train it in qualities of excellence, if it is compliant with the heart and obedient to it, receptive of its effusion and subsisting in its conviction with regard to the truth by way of imitation, and from the aspect of the heart, such as the reinforcement of lights and configurations of excellence; but then it manifests itself in its attributes with arrogance and with vain pride in its ornament and perfection, inspecting its essence in its bliss and splendour so that it ends up becoming veiled by its evil attributes from those lights and inclines to base matters that pertain to the adornment of this world and sensory pleasures. The reinforcement of the heart is then cut off from it and the meanings that come to it by means of the senses are transformed into the dark configurations that are the forms of sensory objects to which it has become attracted; so God made it taste the garb of hunger and fear, by the cutting off of reinforcement in the way of meanings, qualities of excellence and lights from the heart and by making it fear the loss of its acquisitions in the way of [its] sensory lusts and familiars as well as the objects of its passionate desires, [all] because of what they used to do, in the way of ingratitude towards God's graces by using these to pursue sensory pleasures and worldly ornaments and because of its manifesting itself in its attributes and admiring its perfections and resting in peace with this world and its pleasures, and because of its mastery over the heart with its configurations and acts, veiling that person from its [the heart's] light and reinforcement by seeking its passionate desires - as the Commander of the Believers [ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, said: 'We seek refuge in God from going astray after having been guided' - in a town the attribute of which is that which has been mentioned.

And verily there came to them a messenger from among them, that is, of their own genus, being the faculty of reflection which belongs with the totality of the soul's faculties, with rational concepts and truthful opinions, but they denied him, by failing to be affected thereby and to obey its commands and prohibitions, both the rational ones and those of the Law, and by refraining from conducting themselves according to its requirements and by being little concerned therewith and not caring in the slightest to turn their attention away from that in which they were engrossed, and so, the chastisement of being veiled and deprived from the pleasure of perfection, seized them, while they were unjust and deviating from the path of virtue and failing to fulfill the dues of their companion [the messenger].

Surely Abraham was a community, devoted to God and unswerving, not among the associaters, grateful for His blessings. He chose him and guided him to a straight path. Abraham said, “O Lord, You were all [that I saw], and You are all.” So God said, “The community is you yourself. You are the togetherness of all, and that's it.” Indeed, “When someone belongs to God, God belongs to him.” Then He says, “grateful for His blessings.” Abraham discharged gratitude for blessings, for he recognized the Patron of Blessings. He accepted the decree without protest and he approved of whatever came forth without unwillingness. He chose him and guided him to a straight path. He saw the road of servanthood and he went straight in servanthood. He knew that he did not see that road by himself, for it was shown to him, nor did he reach it by the effort of servanthood, for he was made to reach it. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, do You know what has made me happy? I did not fall to You by myself. O God, You wanted-it was not I who wanted. I saw the Friend at my pillow when I woke up from sleep.” Her love came to me before I knew love- it came across a carefree heart and took possession.

Surely Abraham was a community, devoted to God and unswerving, not among the associaters, grateful for His blessings. He chose him and guided him to a straight path. Abraham said, “O Lord, You were all [that I saw], and You are all.” So God said, “The community is you yourself. You are the togetherness of all, and that's it.” Indeed, “When someone belongs to God, God belongs to him.” Then He says, “grateful for His blessings.” Abraham discharged gratitude for blessings, for he recognized the Patron of Blessings. He accepted the decree without protest and he approved of whatever came forth without unwillingness. He chose him and guided him to a straight path. He saw the road of servanthood and he went straight in servanthood. He knew that he did not see that road by himself, for it was shown to him, nor did he reach it by the effort of servanthood, for he was made to reach it. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, do You know what has made me happy? I did not fall to You by myself. O God, You wanted-it was not I who wanted. I saw the Friend at my pillow when I woke up from sleep.” Her love came to me before I knew love- it came across a carefree heart and took possession.

And We gave him in this world good, by allowing him to enjoy shares so that his soul might be strengthened for the establishing of the divine canons and the fulfilment of the dues of servanthood at the station of uprightness and to make it able to bear the burdens of the Message, and We gave him a mighty kingdom alongside prophethood, as He has said [elsewhere]: and We gave them [the house of Abraham] a mighty kingdom [Q. 4:54], so that he might be able to affirm the Law and apprise himself of the rules of the mission and fair remembrance, as He has said: and We assigned for them a worthy repute [one] that is lofty [Q. 19:50], and may blessings and peace be upon him, as He has said: And We left for him among posterity: Peace be upon Abraham [Q. 37:108-109]; and in the Hereafter, that is, in the world of spirits, he will indeed be among the righteous, those enjoying fixity at the station of uprightness by fulfilling the dues of every deserving one and making him attain his perfection and preserving him thereupon as long as possible.

Then We revealed to thee, “Follow the creed of Abraham, an unswerving man.” “O MuḤammad, go in the tracks of Abraham's creed.” Abraham's creed was upright character, generosity, largesse, and loyalty. So the Prophet followed him and surpassed him to the point that he gave away the two worlds in exchange for the Real. God says, “Surely thou hast a tremen- dous character” [68:4].

The Sabbath was only prescribed for those who differed concerning it, in other words, what was prescribed for you was prescribed for them and so you are not obliged to follow Moses in that respect, but to follow Abraham.

Invite to the path of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful admonition. In another place He says, “Say: 'This is my path. I invite to God upon insight, I and whosoever follows me'” [12:108]. Inviting to God's road is one thing, and inviting to God is something else. The former has an intermediary in the midst, and the latter has the Real as spokesman. The result of what He said with intermediary is obedience and abandoning opposition. The fruit of what He said without intermediary is solitariness and abandoning self-governance. Solitariness is to make the aspiration one-pointed in both remembrance and gazing. In remembrance it is that you want only Him in remembering Him and you fear none but Him in remembering Him. In gazing it is that at whatever you gaze you see Him and you put down your head before no one but Him. The secret of these words is that whenever He brings an intermediary on the path into the midst, of all His names He mentions Lord, for it is the portion of the common people, and its mean- ing is nurturing. Whenever the path has no intermediary, He says God-of Him the creatures have no portion, and in His beginningless majesty He is without need. O chevalier! Were it not for His intimacy with the spirits of the passionate, why did He dis- close the beauty of the name God in the unneediness of His majesty and exaltation to the spirits and hearts of the passionate? If not that it would be a salve for the pain of the burnt and a mercy on the weakness of the helpless, why did He say, “Invite to the path of thy Lord”? Yes, He calls and invites to see who is worthy to accept and answer the Real's call with heart and spirit. The world's folk are two groups: One group came forth and placed their own spirits and hearts like incense on the fire of love in the censer of recognition, and they burned. They are the ones who heard the Real's call, accepted and responded to the Messenger's invitation with spirit and heart, and came back to the loyalty of the day of Yes indeed [7:172]: They are loyal to God's covenant and do not break the compact [13:20].

And if you retaliate, to the end [of the verse]: in other words, adhere to the path of justice and virtuousness and do not overstep its bounds, for it constitutes the least of the degrees of your perfection. Thus if you have a precedence in chivalry and a vein deeply rooted in virtue, generosity and manliness, then shun [the desire for] victory and retaliation against one who has committed an act [of wrong] against you. Stand up to him instead with forgiveness, even as you are able [to retaliate], and endure patiently wrong [committed against you], for: verily that is better for the patient. Do you not see how He has emphasised this [fact] by [the use of] the oath and the lām in the response [to the oath] and moved from the covert [noun] to the overt such that He does not say, 'verily that is better for you', but rather, 'verily that is better for the patient', in order to put on record that they are being praised and extolled for the attribute of patienceḍ For the patient one has risen above the station of the soul and has responded to the act of the soul of his counterpart with the attribute of the heart and is not tarnished by the manifestation of the attribute of [his] soul and he has countered the darkness of the soul of his counterpart with the light of his heart. It often happens that the person is remorseful and bypasses the station of the soul and the vehemence of his wrath is broken so that he becomes righteous. If you are not at this noble station, then [at least] do not retaliate against the evildoer by the vehemence of [your] wrath with more than what was committed against you so that you end up being unjust or fall into the vilest and most indecent of vices and your state is corrupted and the evil consequences for you become the greater than those of the one who [initially] wronged [you].

So be patient, and your patience is only by [the help of] God: know that patience is of several types: patience for God, patience in God, patience with God, patience away from God and patience by God. Patience for God is one of the concomitants of faith and the first degree for the people of Islam. The Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him: 'Faith consists of two halves: half is patience and half is gratitude'. This [kind of patience] is to restrain the soul from anxiety when a desired thing has eluded [it] or when something undesirable has befallen [it], and this is one of the most excellent of character traits bestowed [as gift] from the bounty of God for the folk of His religion and His obedience, and is [the patience] that entails the plenteous reward. Patience in God is to remain firm in wayfaring along the path of the Truth and to habituate the soul to spiritual struggle voluntarily and to refraining from familiars and pleasures and to [train it to] endure afflictions and [to exercise] strong resolve in orienting itself to the source of perfections, and this is a station belonging to the wayfarers which God bestows [as gift] upon whomever He will from among the people of the [spiritual] path out of His bounty. Patience with God is for the people of the Presence and the Unveiling upon [their] disengagement from the garments of the acts and the attributes and [upon their] exposure to the self-disclosures of the Beauty and the Majesty and the flow of the inrushes of intimacy and awe - thus this [type of patience] comes with presence of the heart, for the one who has a heart and with guarding against forgetfulness and absence during variegations resulting from the manifestation of the soul, which is more exacting upon the soul than being beaten on the head, even if it be extremely pleasurable. Patience away from God is for the people of crudeness and of the veil, whether it be luminous or dark, and this [type] is very loathsome and the person in question is deservedly blameworthy; and the more that he exercises this [kind of] patience the worse and the more remote that his state becomes, and the more that he is vehement therein the more blameworthy and the cruder he is; or it is for the people of the eyewitnessing and the witnessing from among the fervent lovers and the yearners who are turned about between the various stages of the self-disclosure and the self-concealment and who shun the human realm and are illumined by the light of the divine realm, subsisting without a heart and without a description.

Surely God is with those who are godwary and those who are beautiful-doers. This is one of the all-comprehensive verses of the Qur'an. All of God's caresses of His servant in the two worlds, the rewards and the generous gifts, are included in what He says: “Surely God is with.” Every sort of service, every type of obedience, and all the roots of worship that the servant performs for God come under godwary. All that is rightfully due to people from each other in the various sorts of interactions come under beautiful-doers. In reality the godwary and the beautiful-doers are such that the scent of love's breeze comes from the dust beneath their feet. If the tears of their eyes were to fall on the ground, the narcissus of desire would bloom. If the disclosure of their present moment were to fall on a stone, it would turn into a carnelian. If it fell on water, it would become wine. If the fire of their yearning were to flame up, the world would burn. If the light of their recognition were to shine, the universe would be radiant. They have no station in the cities, no ease with the people. The common people have two festivals in the year, but they have a festival with every breath. The common people have festivals because of seeing the moon, but they have their festival because of contemplating God. The common people have festivals because of the turning of the year, but they have their festival because of the bounteousness of the Possessor of Majesty. For thousands of years the moon-faced beauties of Firdaws and the houris of paradise have been standing in wait in that busy bazaar: When will they convey the fortunate procession of the godwary and beautiful- doers to High Chambers so that they, as hangers-on, may step into the pageant of good fortune in a seat of truthfulness, at an Omnipotent King [54:55].

Glory be to Him who took His servant by night from the Holy Mosque to the Farthest Mosque. At the beginning of this surah He praised Himself, then He disclosed the nobility of MuṣṬafā and uncovered his eminence over the creatures. First He testified to His own faultlessness and men- tioned His own purity. He Himself praised Himself and showed the creatures His perfect power. He turned over the Messenger's miʿrāj to His own act, not the Messenger's act, so that the faithful will not fall into uncertainty and there would be an argument against the deniers. Thus the faithful will know that the marvels of power have no limit and that this state is not strange given the perfect power of the Powerful. Another meaning is to display the nobility of MuṣṬafā and his eminence over the creatures of the world. Then the world's folk will know that his station is that of those snatched away on the carpet of companionship, not that of the travelers in the way stations of service. He who is snatched away is being pulled by the Real, but the traveler is traveling by himself. When someone is being pulled by the Real, he is in the way station of whispered secrets and joy and is fitting for generous bestowal and exaltation. But when someone is himself traveling, he keeps on wanting to gain access to the thresh- old of service and seeking for a rank to appear for himself. The former is the station of MuḤammad, the Real's beloved, and the latter is the station of Moses, the Real's speaking-companion. Do you not see that He said about Moses, “Moses came to Our appointed time” [7:143], but He said about MuṣṬafā, “who took His servant by night.” Moses was a comer, traveling by himself. MuḤammad was taken, snatched away from himself. He who walks with His feet is not like him who walks toward Him, and he to whose secret core revelation comes is not like him who is called to Him. The one who was traveling was absent through distance, so after separation he found union. The one who was taken was in the elevation of union at the outset, and he received the robe of bounty at the end. Then He says, “His servant by night.

And We gave Moses the Book, and We made it a guidance for the Children of Israel. God's many mentions of Moses in the Qur'an are among the signs of His honoring him and the marks of His love for him. When someone loves someone, he often mentions him. MuṣṬafā said, “When someone loves something, he mentions it much”: When someone loves something he is always mentioning its name and remembering it. Do you not see that the Lord of the world, the lovingly kind Enactor, said to Moses, “I cast upon thee love from Me” [20:39]. Hence you should look at how many times He mentioned Moses in the Qur'an: the promised time of Moses, the Mount of Moses, the promise to Moses, the exile of Moses, the whispered prayer of Moses, the brother of Moses, the sister of Moses, the mother of Moses, the traveling companion of Moses, the sea of Moses, the Pharaoh of Moses, the suffering of Moses, the caressing of Moses. He did not leave anything of the states and character traits of Moses without mentioning it in the Qur'an and making the faithful happy by hearing about it. Thus you will know that much mention is the fruit of the tree of friendship and the mark of the road of friendship.

[They were] descendants of those whom We carried with Noah, the intellect, in the Ark of divine law and practical wisdom. Indeed he was a grateful servant, by virtue of his acknowledgement of God's graces and using them in the way in which they ought to be [used].

And We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Book: “You will surely work corruption in the earth twice and you will become high with great height.” “We ruled and decreed, bringing the work out from the Unseen, so as to show the creatures that all of that was We, and all are We. In the Beginningless were We, in the Endless are We. Good and bad are by Our desire, profit and loss are by Our predetermination, the engendered beings and the newly arrived things are ruled over by Our prescribing and subjugated by Our determin- ing. From the beginningless to the everlasting Our knowledge goes everywhere and We rule and command everything. The existence and nonexistence of you, who are creatures, are the same for the threshold of Our Majesty. We do not benefit from your existence nor are We harmed by your nonexistence. The perfection of Our exaltedness has no need for your obedience.”

So when the time for the first of the two [prophecies] came, that is, the time of the evil sequel for the first of the two, We roused against you servants of Ours, from among the attributes of the heart and the lights of the angelic realm and intellectual opinions, of great might, possessing authority and [power of] subjugation, who ransacked, the habitations of your abodes and loci, slaying some of you through repression and subjugation and enslaving the offspring of corporeal configurations and ego-centric vices and plundering the substance of sensory objects of perception and bestial and predatorial pleasures, and it was a promise, from God, that would come to pass, since He has deposited the potential for perfection and the demand for it in your preparedness and has centred the proofs of the intellect in your primordial nature.

Then We gave you back, the turn [of power] by virtue of your illumination by the light of the heart and your turning to the breast and your turning your attention to the requirements of the intellect's consideration and opinion, and We aided you with wealth, of beneficial knowledge and rational wisdoms and those of the divine law as well as gnoses of the heart, and children, in the way of excellent qualities in character traits and luminous configurations, and made you greater in number, by virtue of the great number of virtues, excellent natural dispositions and virtuous character traits.

If you do the beautiful, you will have done the beautiful for your own souls, and if you do the ugly, it will be against them. If you do the beautiful, you will earn your reward, and if you do the ugly, you will attract your punishment. The Real is more exalted than that ornament or stain should go back to Him from the acts of the servant. The exalted majesty of the Unity and the perfection of the Self-Sufficiency is more exalted and purer than that it should be adorned by the obedience of the obedient or stained by the disobedience of the disobedient. If you come as a good man, you yourself will profit, and if you come as a bad man, you will bring harm upon yourself. He is saying, “For the majesty of Our Unity, the beauty of Our Self-Sufficiency is enough.” Her own face had itself as a moon, her own eye had itself as collyrium. If you do the beautiful, you will have done the beautiful for your own souls. This is the degree of the generality of the faithful in their deeds. As for the degree of the elect in their deeds and states, it is as was said by Abū Yazīd concerning the allusion of this verse: “He who acts for his own soul does not act for God, and he who acts for God does not act for his own soul, nor does he see it.” Abū Sulaymān Dārānī said, “In this world the doers act in various ways, each of them seeking his own share in his deeds. Thus an ignorant person acts in heedlessness, a doer acts out of habit, a fearful man acts in fear, a trusting person acts while detached, a renunciant acts in seclusion, and a sincerely truthful man acts with love. Those who act in God are fewer than the few.”

Perhaps your Lord will have mercy upon you. And if you return, We will return. This verse is a strong handhold and a beautiful caress for the hopeful. In other words, “Perhaps He who nurtures you and feeds you with His bounty will have mercy upon you. There is hope that the Lord who created you gratis out of His bounty, who nourished you with His blessings, who kept you in His guarding and solicitude with His gentleness, and who preserved you from blights and disliked things will have mercy on you in the end and finish the work that He Himself began with bounty.” And if you return, We will return. Sahl ibn ʿAbdallāh said, “If you return to fleeing from Us, We will return to taking the path against you so that you will return to Us.” This is just like what MuṣṬafā said, recounting from God: “When I know that occupation with Me has overpowered My servant's heart, I put My servant's appetite into asking from Me and whispering to Me. When My servant is like that and he desires to be negligent of Me, I come between him and his negligence of Me.”

Truly this QurÌān guides to that which is straightest, in other words, it elucidates the states of the three groups, those who are foremost, the people of the right and the people of the left. It guides to the way of affirming the Oneness which is the straightest way for those who are foremost, and gives good tidings to the believers, from among the people of the right, those who have faith by pure imitation or by cognitive verification and who maintain the performance of acts of self-cleansing and righteous adornment because it is by these that perfection is arrived at, that there is a great reward for them, in the way of the bliss of the gardens of the acts and the attributes in the worlds of the kingdom, the angelic realm and the realm of divine power.

And that those who do not believe, from among the people of the left, in the Hereafter, by virtue of their being corporeal folk, veiled from the world of light and imprisoned in the darknesses of physical nature, We have prepared for them a painful chastisement, in the pit of the dungeon of physical nature, fettered in the chains of the love of lower things and in the shackles of attachments, in the fires of privation from pleasures and passionate desires, chastised by the scorpions and snakes of the configurations of darkness.

Man supplicates for evil just as he supplicates for good. Sahl said, “The safest of supplications is remembrance and the abandonment of choice in supplica- tion and asking, for in remembrance there is sufficiency, and perchance man will supplicate and ask for that within which is his destruction, while he is not aware. Do you not see that God says, 'Man supplicates for evil just as he supplicates for good.'” When someone remembers constantly and abandons choice in supplicating and asking, the best of his wishes will be freely given to him and the blights of asking and choice will fall away from him. The Prophet said, recounting from his Lord, “When someone's remembrance of Me keeps him too busy to ask from Me, I will give him the best of what I give to the askers.”

And We made, the night of engendered being and the darkness of the body and the day of origination [from nothing] and the light of the spirit means by which and by knowledge of which one arrives at the spiritual knowledge of the Essence and the attributes. Then We effaced the sign of the night, through corruption and annihilation, and made the sign of the day, a clear sign that subsists forever, light-giving by virtue of its perfectedness and by virtue of whose light realities are perceived, that you may seek bounty from your Lord, that is, your perfection, for which you prepare yourselves, and that you may know the number of, [spiritual] levels and stations, in other words, that you may count them from the first state of your beginning to the advanced age of your end by rising through them and that you may reckon your deeds, your character traits and your states so that whenever you find an evil deed your expunge it with a good one that is its counterpart from the same genus [of action], or [whenever you find] a vice amongst your character traits you expunge it by its opposite virtue or [if it should be] a sin of one of your states you expunge it by returning repentant to the Side of the Truth; and everything, in the way of forms of knowledge and wisdoms, We have detailed, by the light of your intellects at the point of perfectedness and the descent of the Discriminating Intellect, very distinctly, that is, as differentiated knowledge that is present, as opposed to undifferentiated [knowledge] of which you are unaware, as is the case with the Discriminating Intellect at the beginning.

And every man, We have fastened his omen to his neck. And We shall bring forth for him, on the Day of Resurrection, a book he will meet wide open. What is appropriate for each person was fastened to his neck and written out for him in the Begin- ningless. One had the crown of felicity placed on his head, the tree of his hope filled with fruit, the bounties brought out, the night of separation taken away, the day of union brought forth. By the decree of wretchedness another had the blanket of ill fortune pulled over his head and he was wounded by the sword of deprivation and fastened down with the spikes of rejection. Yes, this ap- portioning happened in the Beginningless; nothing will be increased and nothing decreased. What can be done, for the Greatest Judge wanted it this way. The poor Adamite who has no awareness of his own Beginningless, and who sits heedless of his own Endless! Between what was and what will be, he has been taken by the sleep of heedlessness. He will awake from the sleep of heedless- ness on the day when he is handed the book of his deeds. And We shall bring forth for him, on the Day of Resurrection, a book he will meet wide open, a book whose pen is his tongue, whose ink is his saliva, whose paper is his bodily parts and joints, and which he himself has dictated from beginning to end. The angels are the scribes and the wit-nesses against him, and not one letter will be added or subtracted. It will be said to him,

Read thy book! Thy soul suffices thee today as a reckoner against thee. “Read your book and see your own deeds.” If you deny one letter of it, that very bodily member from which that deed went forth will testify against you, as God says: “On the day when their tongues, their hands, and their feet bear witness against them concerning what they were doing” [24:24]. This is why He says, “Thy soul suffices thee today as a reckoner against thee,” that is, as a witness of what came from you against you. It has been said that the books are two: One is written by the angel against the servant, and that is his words and deeds; the other is written by the Real against Himself, and that is His pardon and mercy toward the servant. If the beginningless solicitude takes the servant by the hand, His reckoning with him will be from the book of His own mercy, not the book of the servant's deeds. This is just like what has come in the traditions: When the servant's book is placed in his hands, it is said, “Read thy book!” The servant looks into the book and sees written on the first page, “In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.” He says, “Lord God, first dis-charge for me the account for this one line and issue its decree for me.” God says, “My servant! I have taken account of it and I have forgiven you through My bounty and mercy. In the Beginningless, I wrote mercy for you and said about Myself, 'Forgiver of sins and Accepter of repentance' [40:3].” Thy soul suffices thee today as a reckoner against thee. ʿUmar KhaṬṬāb said, “Take an account- ing of yourselves before you are brought to account, weigh your deeds before they are weighed, and prepare for the Greatest Exposure.” Anyone who is aware of the Tribunal of Wrongdoing and the calling to account at the resurrection, who has found a whiff of the recognition of the states and terrors of that day, should know that whatever was his companion during his days-little and much, spots and specks-its talk will be asked from him tomorrow and he will be called to account for it. Hence today he should lift the veil of heedlessness away from his road and keep his deeds and words straight in keeping with the yardstick of the Shariah.

No burdened soul shall bear the burden of another, because of the deep-rootedness in it of the configuration of what it has done and because of its [this configuration] becoming a disposition that adheres to it, to the exclusion of what one other than it has done and of which nothing has affected it. The one who is chastised is only chastised for the configurations which are in him and not because of anything external to him. And We never chastise until We have sent a messenger, the messenger of the intellect to make the definitive proof binding [upon his audience] and to discriminate between truth and falsehood. Do you not see that a [pre-pubescent] boy and a mentally deficient person are not legally obligated; or [until We have sent] the messenger of the Law due to the fact that whatever good or evil in [that] preparedness or felicity or wretchedness will have become manifest because of that [Law] and because he will have been responded to either with affirmation or denial. For, as regards the one who is prepared for perfection, what is in him by way of potential begins to stir when he hears the [messenger's] call and so he begins to yearn and seeks it receptively, affirming and accepting what he [the messenger] is calling him to, by virtue of his correspondence and proximity to him. As for the one who lacks preparedness, he denies and rejects obstinately by virtue of his incompatibility with what he [the messenger] is calling him to and his distance from it.

And when We desire to destroy a town, to the end [of this verse]: to everything in this world there comes elimination and this elimination comes as a result of a preparedness that entails it. Just as the elimination of the body, by the elimination of moderation and the actualisation of deviance, makes a thing distant from the shadow of the Oneness, which is the cause of the subsistence and firm existence of everything, so too is the case when it comes to the destruction of a town and its elimination because of the occurrence of a deviation in it from the straight path, which is the path of God, that is, the [divine] Law that preserves [the cosmic] order. So when the time comes for the destruction of a town it will have undoubtedly become deserving of destruction, and that will be as a result of some wickedness or refusal to obey God. Thus when His will pertains to its destruction there precedes necessarily the wicked acts of its affluent inhabitants, those wealthy and comfortable folk who were arrogant and insolent with God's graces, using them in other than the way in which they ought to be [used]: that [comes] by a command of God and a determining by Him, because of a wretchedness that had adhered to their preparednesses and upon which their destruction became necessary.

Whoever desires the hasty [world], because of the impurity of his preparedness and his being overcome by his vain desires and nature, We hasten for him therein whatever We will, for whom We please: that is, We do not give him more [purely] out of his own volition, no more than what We had determined for him in the way of [his] share in the [Preserved] Tablet. That is why He has made this [hastening] conditional upon His will and again [conditional] with His words 'for whom We please'. In other words, if We had not determined any of what he desired, We would not have made it [possible] for him to exact it: We only give what We please to whom We please. Then We appoint for him Hellfire, that is, the bottommost pit of dark physical nature, because of his attraction, by his own desire, to the lower aspect and his inclination to it, to which he will be exposed, by means of the fires of privation, condemned, by the people of this world and those of the Hereafter, and rejected, from the Side of Mercy and Beatitude, under the wrath of God and His vanquishing.

And whoever desires the Hereafter, by the purity of his preparedness and the soundness of his primordial nature and has fulfilled the preconditions of what he desires in the way of having faith and performing righteous deeds, his striving shall receive gratitude in the form of the actualisation of what he desired, as has been said, 'He who seeks shall find'. For the true seeking and sincere desire can only come about upon the actualisation of the preparedness of the thing sought. When that preparedness - which is the indication that the thing sought has been actualised for him in potentiality and that there has been determined for him in the [Preserved] Tablet the [very] causes for the emergence into actuality of what is being sought and [the causes for] its projection from the Unseen to the visible, which is the striving required for that [thing] and what constitutes a duty upon him to strive for, in the way meant by His words: and strives for it with the necessary effort, that is, the striving required for it [of him] - is combined with the precondition of faith in the Unseen that enjoys certitude, then that [thing which he desires] will necessarily be actualised for him.

Each We supply [to] these and [to] those, in other words, We supply all of the seekers of this world and the seekers of the Hereafter from Our bounty, and it is not [supplied] simply because of their desires or striving [for it]. Rather their desire and striving are indicators and tokens of the bounty which We have determined for them. And your Lord's bounty is not restricted, prohibited to anyone, neither to the obedient folk nor to the disobedient ones.

See how We have given preference to some of them over others, in this world, in accordance with what Our will and wisdom entails. And truly the Hereafter is greater in degrees, since in the measure that the spirit outweighs the body [in worth] so the degrees of the Hereafter outweigh those of this world and in the measure that they vary in excellence so their [respective] degrees vary.

Do not set up another god besides God, by anticipating bounty from that [other god] and taking this [other] to be the cause of something reaching you which God has not determined for you so that you end up, blameworthy, for the vice of idolatrous association and doubt in the eyes of God and His folk, forsaken, by God who will then leave you [in false] reliance on that [other god] and assist you not: but if He forsakes you, then who is there who can help you after Himḍ [Q. 3:160]. The Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, said: 'If the [Muslim] community were to come together to profit you in some way they shall not profit you except with what God has [already] determined for you. And if they were to come together to harm you in some way they shall not harm you except with what God has [already] determined for you. The [heavenly] pens have been put down and the [heavenly] scrolls have dried [of their ink]'. God, glorious and exalted be He, has joined kindness to parents to the affirmation of [His] Oneness, singling out as a form of worship [of Him] since it is one of the requirements of the affirmation of [His] Oneness, as the two [parents] correspond to the Divine Presence in terms of their causality for your existence and to the Lordly Presence in terms of their nurture of you while you were incapable, young and weak without strength or [even] movement. They are also the first locus for the manifestation of the effects of God's attributes, exalted be He, in terms of existentiation, nurturing, mercy and compassion for you. Despite [all of] that they need to have what is due to them fulfilled, while God has no need [whatsoever] of that. Thus the most important of duties after the affirmation of Oneness is kindness to them and the fulfilling of their dues as far as possible.

And your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him, and beautiful doing toward your parents. In this verse the wise Lord, the eternal Enactor, the lovingly kind and generous Beautiful-Doer commands the servants to servanthood. Servanthood is three things: seeing favor, striving in service, and fear of the end. Seeing favor belongs to Abraham the bosom friend, who said, “Who created me, so He is guiding me” [26:78]. Striving in service belongs to MuḤammad the beloved, to whom it was said, “We did not send down the Qur'an upon thee for thee to be wretched” [20:2]. Fear of the end belongs to Joseph the sincerely truthful, who said, “Receive me as a submitter” [12:101]. When someone stands in the field of servanthood in the row of service and sets his feet in the clay of what he desires, making the Exalted Presence the Kaabah of his wishes, God will put the folk of the empire into his service and will take care of his work in the two worlds without him. This is why MuṣṬafā said, “When someone belongs to God, God belongs to him.” When- ever someone has no watchfulness in servanthood, he will have no contemplation on the carpet of proximity. Know also that the wayfarers in the road of servanthood are three men: One is the worshiper, whose soul is subjugated by the fear of punishment. One is the recognizer, whose heart is subju- gated by the forcefulness of proximity. One is the lover, whose spirit is subjugated by the unveil- ing of the Haqiqah. Whenever the worshiper wants to lift away the bond of struggle from his days, at once he looks at the title-page of the Real's rebuke and throws down his head in the station of shame. Whenever the recognizer wants to make manifest the banner of happiness and expansiveness by virtue of proximity, at once the ruling power of the Real's awesomeness appears and he falls into the lowland of confoundedness. Whenever the lover gazes at majesty, at once he melts in awe, seeing only bewilderment in bewilderment. Whenever he gazes at beauty, he delights in happiness and revelry, seeing only light and joy. In the tongue of his state he says, “Your beauty is my pleasure, Your approval my delight, and among all the religions Your love is my religion.

The seven heavens proclaim His praise, to the end of this [verse]: everything has a specific quality which another does not have. And since what is other than him does not concern him, he yearns for it and seeks it when it is not actualised for him and he preserves it and loves when it is actualised [for him]. By manifesting his specific quality he exalts God as transcending partnership, for otherwise he would not be the exclusive possessor of that [specific quality], and so it is as though he were saying by the tongue of his state, 'I declare Him to be One for having made me unique'. And by seeking his perfection he is exalting Him as transcending the attributes of deficiency as though he were saying 'O Perfect One make me perfect'. And by manifesting his perfection he is saying 'The Perfect Perfecter has made me perfect'. On the basis of such analogy then even a lioness, for example, when it is compassionate towards its young she is [in effect] saying, 'The Gentle One has made me gentle', and 'The Merciful has made me merciful'. And by seeking provision, [one is likewise calling upon] 'the Provider'. Hence the seven heavens glorify Him for [His] everlastingness, perfection, exaltedness, [His] power of effect and that of existentiation and lordship, and for that every day He is upon some matter [Q. 55:29]. And the earth [glorifies Him] for [His] permanence, firmness, power of creation, power of provision, nurture, compassion and mercy and [His] acceptance of acts of obedience and gratitude [performed] upon it by rewarding [these acts] and sundry examples the like thereof. And the angels [glorify Him] for [His] knowledge and power, and those disengaged essences among them [glorify Him] for being disengaged from matter and also for the necessity [of His existence] in addition to all of that, for as well as glorifying Him they sanctify Him, but you do not understand their glorification, because of the inadequacy with which you consider and reflect on the [divine] dominion of things and [your] lack of heedfulness of these. The only one who understands is him who has a heart or gives ear in [full] witness [Q. 50:37]. Lo! He is Forbearing, [towards you] by not hastening to demand your perfections or the manifesting of your specific qualities when you abandon the proclamation of His praise, for one of your specific qualities is to [be able to] understand their glorification and to declare Him One as they declare Him One, Forgiving, you your moments of heedlessness and neglectfulness.

[And when you recite the QurÌān] We place between you and those who do not believe in the Hereafter, because of the failure of their [faculty of] consideration to perceive spiritual realities and the confinement of their aspirations to corporeal things, a hidden barrier, [made of] ignorance and blindness of the heart so that they are unable to see the reality of the reciter, for otherwise they would have been believers. But they do not perceive [the truth of] you because they reckon you to be merely this human form since they are given to corporeal things, immersed as they are in the sea of primordial matter and veiled by coverings of physical nature and the garments of ego-centric attributes from the Truth and His attributes and His acts. For had they recognised the Truth they would have recognised you, and had they recognised His attributes they would have recognised His speech and there would not have been veils of natural coverings and corporeal configurations over their hearts.

[And We place upon their hearts veils] lest they should understand it, for had they recognised His acts they would have known the recitation [of this QurÌān] and there would not have been a deafness in their ears because of the deep rootedness of the dirt of attachments. [And when you mention your Lord alone in the QurÌān] they turn their backs in aversion, because of the scattered nature of their vain desires and the dispersed nature of their aspirations in their devotion to their objects of worship such as the idols that are those corporeal things and those passionate desires. Thus their inner realities do not correspond to the meaning of the [divine] unity, familiar as they are with multiplicity and their veiledness therewith.

The day He calls you, you will respond with His praise: that is to say, [the day when] His will pertains to sending you forth [from the graves] and so you are sent forth quicker than the blink of an eye, praising Him by your very life, knowledge, power and desire with a [great] praise that entails your attributing to Him perfection by manifesting these perfections [of yours]; and you will think that you have remained only a little, that is, [that you remained only a little] in your graves or sleeping places because you become oblivious to that period of time, as is mentioned in the story of the people of the cave [Q. 18]. Or [that you have remained only a little time] in the first life because you deem it so short in comparison to the life of the Hereafter. Thus the lexical expression can be extended to subsume all three resurrections, except that the preceding verse gives greater weight to [that the reference is to] the minor one.

And say to My servants that they should say what is more beautiful. “O MuḤammad, say to My servants that the words they speak should be more beautiful, more true, and more pleasing. That is remembering and lauding God, mentioning Him on the tongue, and keeping His remembrance in the heart.” The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O You who open the tongues of those who whisper in prayer, who increase the intimacy of the seclusions of the rememberers, and who are present in the souls of the keepers of the mystery! I have no traveling companion but the mention of You, no supplies but keeping Your remembrance, no guidepost and no one to show the road to You but You. O God, look upon the need of someone who has nothing other than one need!” It has also been said, “The most beautiful word of sinners is attesting to offenses, and the most beautiful word of recognizers is attesting to the incapacity to recognize. The Prophet said, 'I do not number Thy laudations: Thou art as Thou hast lauded Thyself.'” The most beautiful words that a sinful man may say is to attest to his own offense and ac- knowledge his own sin so that the Exalted Lord may bestow on him the success of repentance and complete the work of his repentance for him by forgiving his sins, for that is the promise He has given: “And others who have acknowledged their sins. They mixed a wholesome deed with another, an ugly deed. Perhaps God will turn toward them” [9:102]. And the most beautiful word that a recognizing man may say is to attest to his own incapacity to recognize the Real. He knows that no one recognizes Him, nor can anyone do so, as is worthy of Him in the reality of His rightful due and the limits of His exaltedness. This is why Abū Bakr ṣiddīq said, “Glory be to Him who made no path for the creatures to recognize Him save the incapacity to recognize Him!” Pure and faultless is the Lord, who considers the servant's incapacity to recognize Him as recognition! Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq said, “O God, he who recognizes You has not recognized You. What then about the state of him who in fact has not recognized You?!” Naṣrābādī and Shāh [Kirmānī] disagreed with each other.

And We made some of the prophets more excellent than others. The prophets have the generous gifts of states and the specific characteristics of proximity. One of them has chosenness [Adam], another bosom friendship [Abraham], another speaking with God [Moses], and still another the miʿrāj, intercession, and vision. Then He made some of them su- perior to others in specific characteristics. He made the prophets superior to the world's folk, He made the messengers superior to the prophets, He made the Possessors of Resoluteness superior to the messengers, and He made MuṣṬafā superior to the Possessors of Resoluteness. The furthest limits of the stations of all of them are the beginning of the station of MuṣṬafā; the furthest limits of their stations is apparent, but the end of his station is not apparent. He is aware of the secret core of all of them, but no one other than the Real is aware of his secret core. That is why he said, “'I am the master of the children of Adam, without boasting.' How should I boast of that? For I am separate from them in my state and I stand with the Real in beautiful courtesy. Were I to boast, I would boast of the Real, proximity, and closeness, for He says, 'Then He drew close, so He came down' [53:8]. If I do not boast about the place of closeness and proximity, how could I boast about being the master of all the races?” That paragon of the world was a sun whose eastern horizon was Mecca and whose western horizon was Yathrib. Its eclipse was in the cave, but that was an eclipse within which a hundred thousand deposits of gentle favor were unveiled. On his forehead was the splendor of By thy life [15:72], on the sleeve of his covenant the exalted embroidery of MuḤammad is God's mes- senger [48:29], on the door of the pavilion of his secret core this flag of rulership: Surely We have opened up for thee a clear opening [48:1]. The rug of that paragon's messengerhood was thrown from the east of the world to the west of the world, the carpet of his prophethood was spread from Qāf to Qāf, the shadowy banners of unbelief were overthrown with his appearance, the seat of his secret core's joy was set up higher than the throne of Ursa Major.

And tempt, to the end of this [verse]: Satan's ability to lead servants astray divides into several aspects, because preparednesses [themselves] vary. And so he whose preparedness is weak, he [Satan] tempts, that is, he fools him with his voice: it is sufficient for him [Satan] to insinuate [to him] with evil whisperings, murmurings and the occasional evil thought. As for the one whose preparedness is strong, if he purifies his preparedness of the taints of ego-centric attributes or if God, exalted be He, has purified him of the taints of otherness, then he [Satan] has no power to lead them astray whatsoever, as He Himself says:

'Truly in the case of My servants, over them you shall have no power'. Otherwise, if the person [in question] is immersed in sensory preoccupations with his head buried deep in the affairs of this world, he [Satan] will share with him in his wealth and children by goading him to share his love of them with [his love of] God, loving them as he loves God. And he will entice him to enjoy these, to multiply them and to be proud of their existence and he will fill him with false desires and adorn for him empty hopes. If the person is not immersed [so] and if he is aware and perceptive of his [Satan's] enticements, he [Satan] will rally against that person his cavalry and his infantry, in other words, he will scheme to deceive him with all manner of devices and plot against him with different kinds of temptations; and he will pronounce for him that the actualisation of all manner of ephemeral things [of this world] and pleasures is part [and parcel] of the welfare pertaining to [one's] livelihood; and he will delude him [with notions of grandeur] through knowledge and fill him with vanity and similar acts until that person becomes among those 'whom God has led astray knowingly' [cf. Q. 45:23]. If that person were not to be a person of knowledge but a devoted worshipper, of piety, he will lead him astray by making promises [to him] and filling him with desires, deceiving him with acts of obedience and self-purification in the easiest possible way. And your Lord suffices as a guardian: in other words, My elect servants entrust their affairs to God alone, neither to Satan nor to any other - and He shall indeed suffice them in managing their affairs - and they trust only in Him by witnessing His acts and His attributes.

We indeed honored the children of Adam, and We carried them on land and sea, and We provided them with goodly things, and We made them much more excellent than many of those We created. It was a great felicitation, a complete bestowal of eminence, and a tremendous honor that God gave to the faithful children of Adam. On the Day of the Compact, at the outset of the work and the com- mencement of existence, He gave them a place in the grasp of His attributes and addressed them with the quality of gentleness, binding them to the covenant and compact of friendship. Then, when they came into this world, He gave them a beautiful form, a lovely shape, and a complete robe of honor, adorning them with knowledge, intellect, speech, understanding, and ex- cellence. He did not hold them back from the outward success of struggle or the inner realization of contemplation and recognition. He opened the door of His mercy and generosity to them, and He kept them on the carpet of whispered prayer. Whenever they want, they call upon Him, ask from Him, and tell Him their secrets. It has been transmitted in one of the traditions that God said, “My servants, confide your secrets in Me. If you will not, then whisper and speak to Me. If you will not, then listen to Me. If you will not, then gaze upon Me. If you will not, then be at My door and lift up your needs before Me, for I am the most generous of the generous.” Part of the honor is that He bestowed before they asked and He forgave before they begged forgiveness, as has come in the report: “I bestowed upon you before you asked from Me, and I forgave you before you asked Me to forgive you.” Part of the honor is that among all the created things, He specified them for affection and love. That which He did not bestow on the angels and did not say about the cherubim and the spirituals of heaven, He said about them: “He loves them, and they love Him [5:54]. God approves of them and they approve of Him [9:100]. Those who have faith are more intense in love for God [2:165]. So remember Me; I will remember you [2:152]. ” Remember Me is the rivulet of your remembrance, and I will remember you is the ocean of the Real's remembrance. When the rivulet of the servant's remembrance reaches the ocean of the Real's remembrance, the water of the ocean of I will remember you enters the rivulet of Remember Me and all of it becomes the ocean's water. Nothing remains of the rivulet. This is exactly what the Pir of the Tariqah said: “When someone falls into the Real's grasp, he burns, and then the Real is his successor.” O God, You are the meaning of the call of the truthful, You light up the souls of the friends, You are the repose of the hearts of the exiles! You are present in the midst of the spirit, so it is with my lost heart that I say, “Where are You?” You are the life of the spirit and the mirror of the tongue. You Yourself are the spokesman for Yourself. By Your rightful due against Yourself, do not seat us in the shadow of delusion! Convey us to union with You! He said, “We indeed honored the children of Adam.” He did not say “the faithful,” or “the worshipers,” or “the strugglers.” Thus He declared this honoring pure of being the counterpart of activity, or being caused by a conformity with something, or being the result of a worthiness in some respect. The reason He did not tie His generosity and gentleness toward the servants to their deeds or struggle is so that you would know that His caressing has no cause and His honoring is not a com- pensation. He caresses because He wants to, not because of the servants' obedience. He bestows because of His bounty, not because of their effort. The servant who finds the Real's generosity does not find it because of his obedience. Rather, he has obedience because he has found the Real's generosity. It is not the servant's supplication that led to the response of the Real; rather, it is the Real's response that has led the servant to supplicate. The servant who finds the Real does not find from seeking; rather, he finds seeking from finding. Being carried is the act of him who was not; carrying is the bounty of Him who always was. And We carried them on land and sea. The mounts of the common people on land and sea are one thing, and the mounts of the elect something else.

The day when We shall summon, to the end of this [verse], that is [the day when] We bring present, every, party of [every] community together with their witness who is present with them and to whom they orient themselves in terms of their perfection and whom they know, whether he be in the form of a prophet in whom they believed, as mentioned in the interpretation of His words So how shall it be when We bring forward from every community a witness [Q. 4:41], or [in the form of] an imam whose example they followed, or a religion or a book or whatever you will, provided that the [particle] bi is taken to mean 'with'. Or [it is that] We attribute them to their imam and summon them by his name, since he prevails over them and over their affair, their love of whom stands high over their love of anything else. And whoever is given his book in his right hand, that is, from the side of the intellect, which is the stronger of the person's sides, and is sent forth in the form of the felicitous, those will read their book, unlike others, by virtue of their preparedness for reading and understanding, since the one who is given his book in his left hand, that is, from the side of the soul, which is the weaker of the two sides, will not be able to read his book, even if it is readable, because his mind is lost and is utterly bewildered, and they will not be wronged, that is, they will not have anything of the forms of their deeds, their perfections and character traits diminished, not [even] by a small amount.

And whoever has been in this blind, to being guided to the Truth, will be, likewise, in the Hereafter, and [even] further astray, [then] from the here and now, since in this life he enjoys [use of] various instruments, tools and means by which he is able to find the right way while he is at the station of earning with his preparedness intact, if there is one; but there [in the Hereafter] none of that remains.

And indeed they were about to beguile you, to the end [of the verse]: this pertains to those variegations which affect those of the hearts when the soul manifests itself and [affect] those of presential vision and annihilation when the heart remains present. For he [Muḥammad], peace be upon him, because of his desperate desire and eagerness that they [his people] believe, with the presence of [his] heart almost inclined to [comply with] a request of theirs and be satisfied with what contravened his law and to impute to God what is not of Him in his desire for the correspondence which he expected to come about between him and them as a result of that and so that they would come to love him - as He says and then they would have taken you as a friend - and that they might accept his words and be guided by him, and as a way of placating their hearts and making them incline that perhaps they might be mollified and relinquish their severe denial [of his message] so that their veil softens and their hearts are illumined. But he was rebuked and made upright [once again] by God, which is why ʿĀÌisha, may God, exalted be He, be pleased with her, once said that his character trait was [shaped by] the QurÌān, meaning that with him, blessings and peace upon him, whenever his soul manifested itself and aspired to what was not meritorious, he was alerted [to that] by God and was made firm by the sending down of a verse that would make him rectify him and return him to uprightness until he attained the station of fixity. This and many instances the like of it are indicated by His words, exalted be He: It is not for any prophet to have prisoners [Q. 8:67]; and [by] His words: May God pardon you! Why did you give them leave�ḍ [Q. 9:43]; and [by] His words: and you feared people, though God is worthier that you should fear Him [Q. 33:37]; and [by] His words: He frowned and turned away [Q. 80:1], all of which indicates that the greater part of his wayfaring in God was after his arrival, during the period of prophethood and the period of revelation.

Then We would have surely made you taste, that is, had you drawn near to their temptation and been on the verge of according with them, We would have made you taste a doubled chastisement in this life and a doubled chastisement in death, for the severity of chastisement depends on the sublimity of [one's] level and the potency of [one's] preparedness, since the deficiency that necessitates chastisement is proportional to the perfection that necessitates pleasure. So the more complete the preparedness and the more potent the [faculty of] perception the more potent the level of perfection, felicity and pleasure; likewise is the corresponding deficiency and wretchedness, which are more remote and lowlier and the pain more intense.

Establish prayer from the sun's decline. Know that prayer is of five types: the prayer of intimate connection and tender talk at the station of hiddenness, the prayer of presention vision at the station of the spirit, the prayer of intimate communion at the station of secret, the prayer of presence at the station of the heart and the prayer of obedience and yielding at the station of the soul. Thus the sun's decline is the indication of the setting of the sun of unity from its even presiding upon the existence of the servant by means of pure annihilation. For there is no [obligation of] prayer in the state of this presiding [of the sun of unity], as prayer is a deed that requires existence and in this case the servant has no existence until he engages in prayer, as is mentioned in the interpretation of His words and worship your Lord until Certainty comes to you [Q. 15:99]. Do you not see that the lawgiver [Muḥammad], peace be upon him, forbade prayer during the time of [the sun's] even presiding [in the sky]. But at the point of [the sun's] decline, if there falls a shadow of the servant's existence, whether it be upon his becoming veiled by creation at the point of separation after the union or upon subsistence at the point of separation after union, then prayer becomes obligatory, until the dark, of the night of the soul, and the recital [of the QurÌān], at the dawn of the heart. Thus the first prayer and the most subtle is the prayer of intimate connection and tender talk, and the most excellent one is the prayer of presential vision of the spirit, the one alluded to by [the words] 'the afternoon prayer', as is understood from 'the middle prayer', meaning the most excellent prayer, where He says, exalted be He: Maintain the prayers and the middle prayer [Q. 2:238]. The most revelatory and the lightest is the secret prayer through intimate communion at the first moment of being veiled by means of the manifestation of the heart, [and that is] because of the speed with which the moment for it passes. That is why it is preferred that one lightens the recitation [of QurÌānic passages] during the sunset prayer and others, since it is an indication of that [veilingḍ].

And for a part of the night, keep vigil therewith, in other words, single out some part of the night for vigil devotion, as a supererogatory [devotion] for you, as an addition to what has been specifically prescribed in your case, since that constitutes the indicator of the station of the soul and for that reason it is recommended that this [station] is singled out for additional acts of obedience since this station is in extra need of prayer when compared with all of the other stations, as he [the Prophet] himself acknowledged: 'All the more reason for me to be a thankful servant!' It may be that your Lord will raise you to a praiseworthy station, that is, to a station which everyone is obliged to praise, which is the station of the sealing of sanctity upon the appearance of the Mahdī. For the seal of prophethood is a praiseworthy station from one aspect, namely, the fact that it is the sealing of prophethood; but it is also no praiseworthy from another aspect which is that of the seal of sanctity - from this [latter] perspective, he [the Prophet] is at the station of praising: when the sealing of sanctity is complete, then will he be at a station that is praiseworthy from every aspect.

And say: 'My Lord, make me enter, into the presence of the unity at the source of the union, with a veritable entrance, an entrance that is virtuous and pleasing [to You], [one] without the defect of the deviating eye that turns its attention to another, or the insolence of the manifestation of I-ness or the blemish of duality; and bring me out, into the multiplicity upon the return to differentiation by means of the existence that is bestowed by [You] the Truth, with a veritable departure, a departure that is virtuous and pleasing [to You], [one] without the defect of variegation through inclination to the soul or the attributes of such [variegation], or misguidance after right guidance by swerving from the road of uprightness and deviating from the customary practices of equity towards injustice such as the temptation of David [cf. 38:24]. And grant me from Yourself a favourable authority', a definitive argument that brings victory, by making [me] steadfast and [granting me] fixity in such a way that I become in [all] things through You during the state of subsistence after annihilation and not through my soul, as he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, once said: '[O God] do not entrust me to my soul, not even for a blink of an eye'. Or [it means grant me from Yourself] might and power that is vanquishing through You by which I might fortify Your religion and make it prevail over all other religions.

And say: 'The Truth has come, that is to say, the firm necessary existence that belongs to [God] the Truth, the one which cannot be changed or substituted, and falsehood has vanished away, that is to say, the contingent human existence that is subject to annihilation, change and disappearance. Truly falsehood, that is, contigent existence, is ever bound, to perish from the outset and [is] not something that is fixed and is exposed [by chance] to annihilation and thus perishes. Rather, what is evanescent is evanescent from pre-eternity and what is ever-subsisting is ever-subsisting and does not disappear. It is that we have veiled ourselves by a false and corrupt illusion which has been removed.

And We reveal, of the Gathering QurÌānic Intellect in stages, the stars of the differentiations of the Discriminating Intellect, one star at a time, [revealing these] to the existence that derives from [Him] the Truth in accordance with the manifestation of the attributes. In other words, We detail what in your essence is undifferentiated and hidden into manifest exteriorised differentiations as a cure for the ailments of the hearts of those who are prepared, those who have faith in the Unseen from among your community, [ailments] such as ignorance, doubt, hypocrisy, blindness of the heart, rancour, spite, envy and their like and thus cleanse them, and as a mercy that will procure for them perfections and virtues and adorn them with wisdoms and gnoses; though it only increases the evildoers, those who have diminished their preparednesses with vices and evil veils, who have defrauded their shares of perfections by means of corporeal configurations and ego-centric attributes, in loss, by increasing the manifestation of their souls through their attributes, as [is the case] with [their] denial, obduracy, arrogance, unyieldingness, pretence for show and hypocrisy, [all of] which is added to their doubt, ignorance, blindness and erring.

And when We are gracious to man, with a manifest grace, he is disregardful, since he halts with his soul and his body and because corporeal faculties are finite and as such do not contemplate affairs that are infinite that can occur by means of a grace or the rejecting of it when it is not forthcoming and all else; and he only sees what is immediate and waxes in arrogance because his soul has gained mastery over his heart and because he has manifested himself in his I-ness and his pharaonic insolence. Thus he becomes distant from the Truth [as he stands] on the side of the soul and he turns himself away, rejective. Likewise [he acts] on the side of evil when despair afflicts him, since he is veiled from the Powerful and His power. Were he to perceive with the eye of insight, he would witness God's power, exalted be He, in both situations and would become certain in the first situation that gratitude is what binds [one] to graces, and in the second [situation] that patience is what averts misfortunes and he would then give thanks and be patient and would come to realise that it is the Gracious One who has determined [things either way] and he would not, out of arrogance or insolence, be disregardful upon [receiving] a grace, out of fear that it might disappear, but [he would be] regardful of the Gracious One and would not despair in misfortune out of anxiety and exasperation, fully hopeful that it will be lifted, mindful as he would then be of the Trier.

Say: “Each acts according to his own manner.” What comes from the Adamite other than disloyalty? What comes from water and clay other than error? What will be seen from the Lord's generosity other than loyalty? In the whole Qur'an, no verse offers more hope than this. He is saying, “Everyone does what comes from him, and from everyone comes what is worthy of him. The servant returns to sin and the Lord returns to forgiveness.” One of revealed books tells us that God said, “O child of Adam! You keep on returning to sins, and I keep on returning to forgiveness.” It was said to the abandoned one of the empire, the despairing Iblis, “Prostrate yourself before Adam!” He said, “I will not, for Adam is from dust, and I am from fire.” It was said to him, “O unlucky one! No doubt everyone does what is worthy of him, and from everyone comes what is inside him. When fire dies down, it becomes ashes, which can never be renewed. Dust, even if it is old, is renewed by sprinkling water on it. O Iblis, O you who are of fire, you left aside one command, so you will die and never come to life! O Adam, O you who are of dust, you let one tear of remorse fall from your eyes, so I have forgiven your sins and will caress you. O Iblis, what you did comes from fire. O Adam, what you saw is born of dust. Say: 'Each acts according to his own manner.'”

They ask thee about the spirit. Man is body, heart, and spirit. The body is the place of the Trust, the heart is the threshold of be- ing addressed, and the spirit is the center point of contemplation. All blessings are largesse for the body; its nourishment is food and drink. All favors are gifts for the heart; its nutriment is remem- bering and mentioning the Friend. All vision and contemplation are the portion of the spirit; its nourishment is seeing the Friend. The body is under the severity of power, the heart in the grasp of the attributes, and the spirit in the embrace of exaltedness-the carpet of intimacy spread, the candle of compassion lit, the beginningless Friend having lifted the veil.

And if We willed We could take away what We have revealed to you, by means of obliteration at the locus of annihilation or veiling after unveiling through variegation. Then you would not find in respect thereof any guardian for yourself against Us, to act as guardian [for you] against Us by returning [what We take away],

[it is] only, simply a tremendous mercy specific to you from Our extreme solicitude [of you], that which is the highest of the levels of the Merciful's mercy, charged by God, exalted be He, with the effusion of complete perfection upon him [the Prophet]. In other words, were We to disclose Ourself in Our Essence, you would not find revelation, nor your essence, unless We disclosed Ourself in the attribute of Mercy and Our Name the Merciful, in which case it [your existence] would be and you would find revelation. Likewise if We were to disclose Ourself in the attribute of Majesty, you would be veiled from revelation and gnosis. Truly His favour, through revelation and Lordly instruction after the bestowal of existence derived from [Him] the Truth, is ever great to you, from pre-eternity.

Say: 'Verily, should mankind and jinn come together to produce the like of this QurÌān, they could not produce the like thereof, since the perfect preparedness that bears it is specific to you and you are the pole of the world: what overflows from you is sprinkled over them and so they are unable to produce the like thereof, nor are they capable of bearing it.

It is because of this meaning that most people refuse all except, disbelief, and [why] they requested physical signs that correspond to their preparednesses and [capacities of] perception, such as the causing of springs to gush forth from the ground, or [the request of] a garden of date-palms and vines, or the causing of the heaven to fall upon them in pieces or [for him to] ascend into it and to bring angels [down] or any of the impossibilities that can be imagined. They received the response of His words:

Say: 'Had there been in the earth angels, walking [and living] secure: in other words, it is not possible for the angels to descend into the earth when they are disengaged souls with angelic configurations. Indeed, were they to descend they would only do so in embodied forms, as He has said And had We appointed him an angel, We would assuredly have made him a man, and We would have assuredly confused for them what they are [already] confusing [Q. 6:9]. For otherwise, you would not be able to perceive them and would remain upon your repudiation [of the Messenger]. And if they were embodied, you would not believe them to be angels. In other words, with you, in both situations, it is repudiation, nay [it is the same with you] whatever the situation, just as a bat will [always] repudiate the light of the sun.

And he whom God guides, as entailed by the pre-eternal solicitude in the original primordial nature, with His light, he is rightly guided, specifically, to the exclusion of all others, and he whom He sends astray, by withholding that light from him - you will not find for them, [any] helpers to guide him, besides Him, or to preserve him against His vanquishing. And We shall assemble them on the Day of Resurrection on their faces, that is, with their head lowered in humiliation, because of their attraction to the lower aspect; or [We shall assemble them] according to the existences and essences upon which they had been in this world, as in when he [the Prophet] said, 'As you lived you shall die and as you died you shall be resurrected'. For the face represents the essence when it exists together with all of its accidents and concomitants. In other words [you shall be assembled] in [your] original condition, without anything additional or anything diminished, blind, to guidance, just as they were in the first life, dumb, [unable] to speak the truth because of their failure to perceive the meaning intended by speech, since they do not possess hearts with which to understand or comprehend. So how can what has not been understood be expressedḍ and deaf, [unable] to hear anything rational, also because of their lack of understanding. Thus the necessitating factor for guidance has no effect on them, neither by way of understanding from God, exalted be He, through inspiration, nor by means of hearing the speech of people, nor by way of insight through taking heed; [their abode shall be Hell] - whenever it abates, We shall intensify for them the blaze: this is similar to His words as often as their skins are consumed, We shall replace them with other skins [Q. 4:56], nay it is rhetorically more powerful. The reason for that [intensification] is their veiling of themselves from Our attributes, specifically, [from] Our power to resurrect [them] and because of their denial of that [power]: they denied [it] instead of inferring [that] power from the creation of the heavens and the earth.

Say: 'If you possessed the treasuries of my Lord's mercy, you would surely withhold [them], because of your halting with the attributes of your souls, [attributes] one of the concomitants of which is innate avarice, since their [faculty of] perception is confined to what is perceived through the sense of restricted material matters and [because] these [souls] are veiled from the endless blessings and the all-embracing unceasing mercy, which can only be perceived when the [eye of] insight is adorned with the light of guidance such that one fears that it should come to an end or be cut off.

[And verily We gave Moses] nine manifest signs: allusion has been made to these in sūrat al-Ḥijr [Q. 15:87].

With the truth have We revealed it: in other words, We only revealed the QurÌān after the total elimination of the Prophet's humanness, blessings and peace be upon him, at the station of annihilation and extinction of temporally originated beings from the face of eternity, and [only after] the scattering of the darkness of contingency from the august glories of the Necessary Subsisting Face at the second separation so that there might be an existential locus for it [the QurÌān]. Hence its revelation was only the manifestation of the judgements of differentiations from the source of union upon the differentiated locus of manifestation. Thus its revelation was with the truth from the Truth upon the Truth. Its revelation with the truth, according to this interpretation, is like when they say 'it came down to [stop over at] such and such [a place]' meaning 'he stopped over there', provided that the second [preposition] bi is adverbial, as when you say 'I stopped over in Baghdad', with the first [bi] being a circumstantial qualifier, in other words, that [it was revealed] fully garbed in the truth, meaning one of two things: either with the truth, as in the opposite of falsehood, that is to say, with the facts [of reality] and wisdom, or with the Truth who is God, exalted be He; in other words, that it was revealed with His attribute, which is the truth;

And [it is] a QurÌān that We have divided, according to the manifestation of the preparednesses of manifestation loci that entail the reception of it in a way commensurate with states, welfares and attributes, as we have mentioned with regard to His words and if We had not made you stand firm [Q. 17:74].

Say: “Have faith in it, or do not have faith.” Surely those who were given knowledge before it, when it is recited to them, fall down on their faces in prostration. The side of Unity, the exalted Majesty, is alluding to the fact that He has never had and will never have any need for an obedience that was not and then came into being. He is saying, “You have no worth, for nothing is worthy of Me. If you want, have faith, and if you do not want, do not. I have no need for your faith. Beginningless majesty and beauty gain no adornment from the obedi- ence of newly arrived things. I had still not written out existence for any existent thing when My majesty was contemplating My beauty and I was pleased with Myself in Myself. Today that I have created the creatures, I am what I was. I have no need in Myself for any causes and no need in My perfection for any seeking.”

They fall down on their faces weeping. Weeping is the state of the beginners and the attribute of the travelers-everyone according to his own state and every traveler in the measure of his own deeds. The repenter looks upon his own sin and weeps in fear of punishment. The obedient person looks upon his own lax obedience and weeps in fear of shortcoming. The worshiper weeps in fear of the outcome: “What will be done with me tomorrow?” The recognizer looks at the beginningless precedent and weeps: “What was done to me and decreed for me in the Beginningless?” All this happens to travelers on the path and is a mark of the weakness of their state. As for those who have been snatched away from themselves, the folk of stability, for them weeping is an imperfection and defect in their road. Thus it is related that Junayd was sitting with his wife and Shiblī entered. The wife wanted to cover herself, but Junayd said to her, “Shiblī is not aware of you, so sit.” Junayd kept speaking to her, and then Shiblī wept. When Shiblī began to weep, Junayd said to his wife, “Cover yourself, for Shiblī has come back from absence to awareness.”

Say: 'Invoke God, to annihilation in the Essence that comprehends all attributes, or invoke the Compassionate One, to annihilation in the attribute which is the mother of all attributes: whichever, of these two stations you seek, you are not an existent there, nor do you have any remnant or name or entity or vestige, since [the name] the Compassionate One (al-Raḥmān) is a name that is valid only for that Essence and that attribute, namely, the Mercy of the Compassionate One (al-Raḥmān) cannot be established for any other than that [Essence] and so it does not require the existence of a remnant, which is distinct from all of the other names and attributes; to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names', all of them in these two stations and not to you. And do not be loud, in the prayer of presential vision by manifesting the attribute of prayer from your soul so that then insolence and I-ness are called to manifest themselves; nor be silent, totally so that the call for obliteration is then made in the locus of annihilation without the return to the station of subsistence in which case no one will be able to follow your example; but seek between that a way: [this is] an indication of [the necessity for] uprightness and [for] adhering to a conduct full of equity in the world of multiplicity and cleaving to the straight path through the Truth.

And say: 'Praise be to God: in other words, manifest the divine perfections and the attributes of the Compassionate One which can only belong to the Essence of the [exclusive] Unity, Who has neither taken a son, [Who] in other words has never been a cause for an existent of His genus since the effect [of that cause] would necessarily be in need of Him, contingent in essence and non-existent in reality: how then can such be of the same genus as One who is Existent in truth and who is Necessary by His very Essence from every aspect; nor has He, anyone equal to Him in terms of the power of His subjugation and [His] kingdom, such as a partner in sovereignty, for otherwise they would share in the necessity of existence and [that] of reality, in which case each one of them would necessarily have to be distinguished from the other but in a matter other than the necessity of reality and so they would have to be composite, in which case they would both be contingent and not necessary [beings]. In addition, if neither of them enjoyed effective agency independent of the other, then neither of them would be a god. But if one of them possessed independence to the exclusion of the other, then that one would be the god and not the other, and he would thus have no partner. If they both possessed that independence, then two independent causative factors would have combined in one effect if they were to act simultaneously [which is absurd]: otherwise, one of the two would be the god but not the other, whether the one is satisfied with the act of the other or not; nor has He [taken] any ally out of weakness', that is to say, He does not have any assistant, whether [functioning] as a cause or a partial cause that might empower Him or help Him against the weakness of reaction and non-existence, or else He would not be a Necessary God, but rather a contingent: so that you might be a lover who subsists through Him and not through your soul. And magnify Him, above that He should be confined to one attribute instead of another or one form as opposed to another or that any of these deficiencies should attach themselves to Him and restrict Him to a specific existence: blessed and exalted be He above that greatly, with magnifications. His might cannot be estimated nor His quintessence be fathomed since there is nothing other than Him that surpasses Him or can be attributed to Him, nay, nothing of all that can be conceptualised or rationally understood. None other than Him can be magnified in this way and God the Truth is the One who grants success [to correct knowledge].

Praise belongs to God who sent down the Book to His servant and placed no crookedness therein. Praise belongs to God. He praised Himself by Himself since He knew the incapacity of creatures to reach His praise. The majestic Lord, the perfectly powerful, the fount of bounteous bestowal, the one worthy of His own laudation, the one who gives thanks for His own giving-He Himself praises Himself and He Himself lauds Himself, for He Himself recognizes His exaltedness and He Himself knows His tremendousness and all-compellingness. He is exalted through His own majesty, holy through His own perfection, magnificent through His own magnificence. How will water and dust ever reach His description? How can that which was not, then came to be, know His measure? How can the attributes of newly arrived things match His attributes? That which was not, then came to be, is not. How can the recognition of that which is come from that which is not? The Exalted Lord brought the creatures into existence with His bounty and generosity. He clothed them in the garment of creation, nurtured them and preserved them from trials, accepted their obedience with all its shortcoming, and concealed their iniquity and disloyalty in the curtain of bounty. He gave them the success of obedience and adorned their hearts with faith and recogni- tion. Since He knew that the servants were incapable of discharging gratitude for these blessings, He uncovered His bounty and generosity, made the tongue of gentleness a deputy for the indigent and incapable, and praised Himself. He said “Praise belongs to God.” In the road of love it is a stipulation of friendship to act as deputy for friends. He said, “All those blessings that I gave I gave without you and I apportioned without you. Just as I apportioned without you, so also I praised without you. By virtue of friendship I acted as your deputy so as to complete My beautiful doing and beneficence toward you.” Who sent down the Book to His servant. Who is an allusion. Sent down the Book to His servant is an expression. Allusions are the portion of the spirits, and expressions are the portion of the [bodily] semblances. The spirits, on hearing who, were elated and came into revelry. The semblances, on hearing sent down the Book to His servant, began to struggle and took to the road of seeking.

They shall have a beautiful wage, remaining therein endlessly. It gives this warning to the strangers:

They shall have a beautiful wage, remaining therein endlessly. It gives this warning to the strangers:

They say nothing but a lie.

Perhaps thou art consuming thyself with grief in their tracks that they do not have faith in this talk. “O MuḤammad! Do not busy your secret core with their opposition. It is only for you to deliver the message; guidance comes from Us to whomsoever We will.”

Surely We have made all that is on the earth an adornment for it. The folk who recognize God, love Him, and yearn for Him are the adornment of the earth: its stars, moons, and suns. When the lights of tawḤīd shine in the secret cores of the tawḤīd-voicers, all of the horizons become radiant with their brightness. The adornment of the earth is the friends of God. The cosmos is decorated with them and the world painted with them. Their hearts are lit by the light of recognition, their secret cores are given access to the presence of proximity by the mediation of wisdom, their faces are turned toward the presence of proximity by the well-trodden path of rectitude, and the avenue of the Tariqah and the Sunnah has been placed before them. They are the signposts of the religion and the Pegs of the earth, the lamps of the world and the keys to the Gardens. They lay down the foundations of friendship and prop up the portico of truthfulness. God's gentleness toward the creatures comes through them and the goal in the creation of the realm of being is they. In name and mark they are the poor, and in reality they are the kings of the earth-kings in tatters. Anyone who wants to know their conduct and adornment should recite the story of the Companions of the Cave, for God displays them in the Qur'an:

And indeed We shall turn, by means of Our self-disclosure and the self-disclosure of Our attributes, all that is therein, in the way of its attributes, lifeless, like a level land without vegetation. In other words, We shall annihilate it and its attributes through real death or through natural death and We shall not be concerned thereby. Nay:

or did you think that the Companions of the Cave and the Inscription were a [unique] marvel from among Our signsḍ In other words, if you have witnessed such origination and annihilation, then the state of the Companions of the Cave is not a marvel from among Our signs. Rather this [origination and annihilation] is more marvelous. Know that the Companions of the Cave are the perfect seven, those who always uphold the command of the Truth, the ones through whom the world is sustained and of whom no age is [ever] devoid. [Their number] is the same as and corresponds to the number of the planets, the seven orbiting ones. And just as God, exalted be He, has disposed these to manage the order of the world of form, as alluded to in His words, By those that race forward, and by those that direct the affair [Q. 79:4-5], according to some commentaries, so He delegated [the management of] the order of the world of meaning and the perfecting of the order of [the world of] form to seven souls from among the former [generations], each one of whom is related, in accordance with formal existence, to one of these [planets]. The pole (quṭb) belongs to the sun; the Cave is the inner aspect of the body, while al-Raqīm ('inscription') is its outer aspect, which has been engraved with the forms of the senses and organs - if it is to be explained as [referring to] the [Preserved] Tablet wherein their names have been inscribed (ruqqimat); or [al-Raqīm is] the corporeal world, if [al-Raqīm is] taken to be the name of the valley wherein lies the mountain and [its] cave; or [it represents] the animal soul, if [al-Raqīm is] taken to be the name of the dog; or [it represents] the upper world, if [al-Raqīm is] takent to be the name of the town from which they came, [all of these interpretations] being in accordance with the varying opinions of the commentaries. Among these [seven souls] are the seven well-known prophets that were sent during the [various] generations and eras, even though each of these prophets followed a [separate] Remembrance. They are Adam, Enoch (Idrīs), Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus as well as Muḥammad, blessings and peace be upon them, since he [Muḥammad] is the seventh one, the one designated for the miracle of the splitting of the moon [cf.

When the chevaliers took refuge in the cave and said, “Our Lord, give us mercy from Thee and furnish us with right conduct in our affair.” It was said to them, “Go into this cave and sleep sweetly. Put down your heads on the pillow of security, for We will take sleep from you in place of the worship of the world's folk.” Listen to a beautiful, subtle point: The Exalted Lord made a cave appear to them in that moun- tain, and when the faithful servants leave this world He makes the four walls of the grave their cave. Just as He gave them security from enemies in that cave, so also He will give the faithful servants security from Satan in the grave, saying, “Fear not and grieve not” [41:30]. In that cave He showed mercy to them: Your Lord will unfold for you of His mercy [18:16]. In the same way, He will show mercy to the faithful in this cave of the grave: Repose and ease and a garden of bliss [56:89]. Just as He made that cave vast for them, for He says, “while they were in a broad space in it” [18:17], so also He will make this grave vast for the faithful servant with wholesome deeds. He says, “Whoever does wholesome deeds-for their own souls they are making provision” [30:44]. And a sound report has come, “His grave will be made spacious for him.” Just as He opened up the top of the cave for them so that fresh air and the breeze of the morning wind would not be cut off from them, so also He will open up a door from paradise to the faithful servants' garden-plots so that a sweet-smelling breeze will pass over them from the direction of the Gardens of Eden and keep their beds sweet.

So We smote their ears, that is, We put them to sleep the sleep of obliviousness to their world and their perfection, a heavy sleep from which neither a sentry's whistle nor the call of a summoner with news arouses them, in the Cave of the body, for years, numerous, that is, many [years] or a [specific] number [of years], that is to say, a few, being the period of their immersion in the governing of the body and their being engulfed in the sea of physical nature, preoccupied with it, oblivious to what lies beyond it of their world until the time [arrives] of the attaining of true maturity and of voluntary or natural death, as has been said, 'Mankind are asleep: at death, they awaken'.

Then We sent them forth, We aroused them from the sleep of obliviousness by their rising from the lying-place of the body and by their knowledge of God and their disengaged souls, that We might know, that is, so that Our knowledge might become manifest in them as loci of manifestation or in the loci of manifestation of others from among all people [as to], which of the two parties, that differed regarding the duration of their tarrying [in the Cave] and [regarding] the calculating of its end, whether those who specified the period of time or those who left the knowledge of that to God [were the better of the two]. For people differ over the period of occultation (ghayba). Some say that one of them emerges every one thousand years, which amounts to a year with God, because of His statement: And truly a day with your Lord is like a thousand years of your counting [Q. 22:47]. Some say every seven hundred years or every one hundred years, which is part of a day, as they said: we have tarried a day, or part of day [Q. 18:19]. But the verifiers, who are correct, are the ones who leave the knowledge thereof to God, like those who said Your Lord knows best how long you have tarried [Q. 18:19], which is why the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, did not specify the moment of the appearance of the Mahdī, peace be upon him, and said, 'They are liars, those who [are given to] specify the moment [of his appearance]'.

We recount to thee their story in truth. Surely they were chevaliers who had faith in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance. Here we have great eminence, complete honor, and infinite caresses placed on these Companions of the Cave by the Lord of the Worlds, for He called them “chevaliers.” He said, “Surely they were chevaliers.” He bestowed on them the same honor that He gave to His bosom friend Abra- ham, whom He called a chevalier: “They said, 'We heard a chevalier mention them; he is called Abraham'” [21:60]. And concerning Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn He said, “When Moses said to his chevalier” [18:60]. About Joseph the sincerely truthful He said, “The governor's wife has been trying to se- duce her chevalier” [12:30]. The conduct and Tariqah of the chevaliers is what MuṣṬafā said to ʿAlī: “O ʿAlī, the chevalier is straight-speaking, loyal, discharger of trusts, ever-merciful in the heart, protector of the poor, full of bestowal, caresser of guests, beautiful-doer, and possessor of shame.” It has been said that the chief of all the chevaliers was Joseph the sincerely truthful, who saw from his brothers the various trials that he saw, but, when he had them in his own hand, he said to them, “No reproof is upon you today” [12:92]. It has been reported that the Messenger was seated when someone got up and asked for help. The Messenger turned toward his companions and said, “Be a chevalier toward him.” ʿAlī got up and went. When he returned, he had one dinar, five dirhams, and a loaf of bread. The Messenger said, “O ʿAlī, what is this state?” He said, “O Messenger of God! When the questioner asked, it occurred to my heart to give him a loaf. Then it came into my heart that I should give him five dirhams. Then it passed through my mind that I should give him one dinar. Now I do not consider it permissible not to do what has come into my mind and passed into my heart.” The Messenger said, “There is no chevalier but ʿAlī!” And We increased them in guidance. When there is a robe of honor built on the perfect good fortune of love, within which is the explication of beginningless solicitude, it should not be less than what was said about those chevaliers: “And We increased them in guidance.”

And We placed a tie on their hearts when they stood up and said, “Our Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth.” “We bound them with the tie of sinlessness, kept them on the carpet of recognition, and firmed them up with the cord of love. We lit the candle of kind favor for them in the streambed of solicitude. We taught them the courtesy of companionship in the grammar school of the Beginningless and they set forth in holiness itself, busying themselves in the cave with the mystery of the Haqiqah.” Whenever something has an exaltedness, it is masked by the veils of exaltedness so that not just any non-privy may gaze upon it and not just any drudge may reach it. Those chevaliers were precious in the Threshold of Unity, for they were lit up by the light of faith and the limpidness of tawḤīd, but the eyes of the folk of those days were tainted with the ooze of unbelief and associa- tionism. The jealousy of the religion took them into the veil of the cave so that those eyes tainted by ooze would not see them. The command came from the side of all-compellingness,

These, our people: an allusion to the commanding soul and its faculties. For every people have a deity whom they worship, [that deity] being what they desire and seek, and the soul worships vain desire, as in where He says: Have you then seen him who has taken as his god his [own] vain desire [Q. 45:23]. Or [it is an allusion] to the people who lived at the time when each of them had gone forth summoning to God, since whoever cleaves to something which he desires then he worships it. Why [if what they claim is true] do they not bring regarding them, that is, regarding their worship of them, their divinity, their effect and their existence, some clear warrantḍ, some clear proof: this is an indication of the corrupted nature of [their] practice and a rebuke to the effect that to establish a proof for the divinity of something other than God or for the effect and existence of such [a thing] is impossible, as He Himself has said: These are nothing but names which you have named, you and your fathers. God has not revealed any warrant for them [Q. 53:23]. In other words, these [things] are mere names without objects named [by those names], since they are nothing [in reality].

Take refuge in the cave. Your Lord will unfold for you of His mercy and furnish you with kindliness in your affair. “Go into this cave of jealousy in the shade of solicitude, the embrace of friendship, and the world of protection. Your Lord will unfold for you of His mercy and keep you in the curtain of sinlessness, clothing you in the garment of mercy, giving you a place in the embrace of exaltedness.” What a lovely day when someone is walking on a road and all at once the one entrusted with this talk comes down and throws the lasso of seeking around his neck and pulls! He fastened to them the word of godwariness [48:26]. “You are Mine and I am yours: 'Be for Me as you always were, and I will be for you as I always have been.'”

Thou wouldst have seen the sun, when it rose, turning aside from their cave to the right. When the lights of the beginningless secrets show their faces to someone's inwardness, how can the light of the sun of form have the gall to throw its rays upon him or exercise its ruling authority over him? The sun of form is for brightening creation, and the lights of the secret cores are for rec- ognizing the Real. The former is the light of form and the latter is the light of the secret core. The former is the world-brightening sun and the latter the heart-brightening light. The former keeps the world bright so that the creatures may gaze upon it, and the latter keeps the hearts of the friends bright so that the Real may gaze upon them. The lights of the secret cores of those chevaliers in the cave gave out the glittering rays of the lights of the secrets, and the shining sun rolled up its skirt, for it was turning aside from their cave to the right [18:17]. When someone's breast is made the place of the lights of the unseen secrets, his attribute is what the Exalted Lord said concerning these chevaliers:

Thou wouldst have thought them awake, but they were sleeping. And We turned them now to the right, now to the left. And their dog was stretching its paws at the doorstep. Hadst thou looked down upon them, surely thou wouldst have turned away from them fleeing, and thou wouldst have been filled with terror from them. When you look at their outwardness, you see them busy in the playing field of deeds. When you look at their secret cores, you see them detached in the garden of the gentleness of the Possessor of Majesty. Outwardly active, inwardly they gaze on the gentleness of the Beginningless. With Thee alone we worship [1:5] they have bound the belt of struggle, and with And Thee alone we ask for help [1:5] they have placed the crown of contemplation on their heads. On the inside they wear the undershirt of surrender, and on the outside they have covered themselves with the caftan of deeds. Their activity conforms to the command, and their vision conforms to the decree. A pir was asked, “Faith without deeds is incomplete, but the Companions of the Cave had no deeds, for when they began to travel, they immediately slept.” The pir answered, “Which deed is greater than what the Exalted Lord said about them-when they stood up [18:14]?” In the tongue of the folk of allusion the meaning is that they stood back from themselves. The outcome of the servants from their deeds comes down to their standing back from themselves. When they stand back from themselves, they reach the Real. The intermediary disappears and He exercises His determination over them, doing their work Himself, as He said concerning the cheva- liers, “And We turned them now to the right, now to the left.” In other words, “We turned them be- tween the states of annihilation and subsistence, unveiling and veiling, disclosure and curtaining.” The Pir of the Tariqah spoke a few words alluding to the levels of these states and the intima-tions of these realities: “O God, how much will You be hidden, how much apparent? For my heart is bewildered, the spirit distracted. How long this curtaining and self-disclosing? When at last will there be the everlasting self-disclosure? O God, how long will You call and drive away? I have melted in wanting the day in which You stay.

Now send one of you forth with this silver of yours to the city, and let him see which of them has the purest food. Here there are two allusions: One is that every faithful servant, though he may have reached the furthest limit in the Haqiqah, will be held to guarding the rulings of the Shariah, for any reality in which the outward Shariah is not witnessed is the deception and delusion of Satan. The root in this is that the chevaliers sent one of themselves to buy some food for them, and they commanded him to investigate and scrutinize its situation so that heedlessness would not make him fall into something forbidden. The second is what was said by Yūsuf ibn al-Ḥusayn to one of his companions when he took something to the poor or to the folk of recognition, or when he bought food for them: “Let it be the most goodly and the most subtle of things, for when someone reaches recognition, only subtle things conform with him and only delicate things become his intimate. The root here is His words, 'and let him see which of them has the purest food.'” Then he said, “When you buy for the renun- ciants and the worshipers, buy whatever you find, for they are still busy with abasing their own souls and holding them back from appetites.”

For indeed if they should come to prevail over, that is, to overwhelm, you, they will [either] stone you, with the rocks of caprice and the exigencies of anger and passionate desire and the pursuit of pleasure and thus slaughter you by preventing you from your perfections; or make you return to their creed, by the prevailing [over you] of estimation and the victory of satan and the inclination to vain desire and the worship of graven images. According to the former interpretation then, [this means] the prevailing of the commonalty and the dominance of the veiled imitators and the exaggerating traditionists, as well as that of the engrained followers of falsehood. As for their stoning of the people of the truth and their call to these [latter] to their own [false] creed, that is apparent just as it had been during the time of God's Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace.

And so it was that We disclosed them: that is, in the very same way as that arousing and putting to sleep did We disclose their state to the prepared who are receptive to the guidance therein and to gnosis of their realities; that they might know, by means of their companionship and their guidance, that God's promise, of resurrection and recompense, is true; and that, as for the Hour, there is no doubt concerning it. Behold they were disputing among themselves their affair: that is, when the prepared seekers were disputing among themselves the matter of one's appointed final return, some of them were saying that resurrection specifically concerns disengaged spirits and not bodies. Some were saying that it concerns both spirits and bodies together; but when they observed them and came to know them, they realised that it [the final return] will be in both body and spirit and that the corporeal [resurrection of the] final return is true, so they said, 'Build over them a building, that is, when they [the sleepers] passed into death, they [the observers] said that, in the same manner that lodges (khānqāh), tombs (mashhad) and pilgrimage sites (mazār) are constructed over the perfected ones, those who enjoy [spiritual] propinquity to prophets and saints, such as Abraham, Muḥammad, ʿAlī and all of the other prophets and saints, may God bless them all and grant them peace. Their Lord knows them best': these are the words of their followers from among their communities and those who follow their example. In other words, those [sleepers of the cave] are too eminent and too illustrious for anyone to know them other than those who die in God and who achieve spiritual realisation through Him, for He is most knowledgeable about them, as He has said, exalted be He: �My friends reside beneath my domes, and none knows them except Me�. Those who prevailed regarding their affair, from among their companions and those who followed their affair seeking blessedness through them and through their site, 'We will verily set up over them, a place of worship', in which prayers can be performed.

They will say, namely, the exotericists from among the People of the Book and the Muslims, those who have no [real] knowledge of [such] truths - and His saying 'guessing at random' (rajman bi'l-ghayb) means: throwing random guesses at what is unseen to them, in other words, out of speculation completely devoid of certainty, after where they say 'Three; their dog the fourth of them', and 'Five; their dog the sixth of them': the interpositioning of the wāw ('and') that indicates that the adjectival qualification combines inseparably with the qualified [noun] and that there is no [possible] number beyond between His words, And they will say, 'Seven, and their dog the eighth of them', and His words and none knows them except a few' afterwards is proof that the true [number] was seven and nothing else. The 'few' are the verifiers whose opinion is that [they were seven]. If we were to interpret them as representing the spiritual faculties, then they will be the following: 1) The twin faculty of reason, the considerative and the cognitive; 2) reflection; 3) estimation; 4) imagination; 5) memory; 6) the sensus communis, called 'fantasia'; and 7) the dog representing the soul and the spirit in both interpretations. That explains what has been related from the Commander of the Believers [ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, where he said, 'They were seven, three [seated] to the right of the king and three [seated] to his left, with the seventh being the shepherd, the very owner of the dog'. If this report is sound, then that King was Decius, representing the [evil-] commanding soul; the three [seated] to his right with whom he would consult were the two rational faculties in addition to [the faculty of] reflection; the three [seated] to his left to whom he would delegate affairs (istawzara) were the imagination, estimation and memory; the shepherd was 'fantasia' the owner of the sheep of the senses. As for those who said that they [the sleepers] had been three, they intended the heart and the two rational faculties. As for those who said that they had been five, added to these [three] the faculties of reflection and estimation and left out the [faculty that is the] perceiver of forms and that of memory on account of their lack of [the power of] free disposal (taṣarruf) and each of the two functioning as a storage place.

Say not of anything, “I will do it tomorrow,” but only, “If God wills.” And remember thy Lord when thou forgettest. When someone recognizes God, his free choice drops away before His will, and his decrees are enveloped by the witnessing of his Lord's decree. When someone sets foot in the street of recognizing God and comes to know that the creatures are all captive to His power in the prison of the Will on the passageway of the decree and the mea- suring out, he will no longer choose and will not prepare his own work, nor will he make his own rulings. He will throw his own work entirely over to God's will and not mix his own self-exertion with what God has taken care of. With the tongue of the state he will say, “O God, O He who was, is, and will be! I know not Your measure and am incapable of what is worthy of You. I wander in my misery, day by day in loss. How then is someone like me?! But such am I. I lament at gaz- ing into the darkness-will anything remain of me? I do not know. My eyes look to a day when You remain and I am not. Who will be like me if I see that day? And if I see it, I will sacrifice my spirit to it.” And remember thy Lord when thou forgettest. It has been said, “When you forget yourself, remember your Lord, and when you forget the creatures, remember the Creator.” He is saying, “Once you have brought your soul's caprice underfoot and removed your status with people from your heart, remember Me and make your spirit happy with this pure remem- brance.” The caprice of the soul is an idol and status with people is a sash of unbelief. As long as you have not disowned the idol, you will not become a tawḤīd-voicer, and as long as you have not undone the sash, you will not be a Muslim. There was a worshiper by the name of Abū Bakr Ishtanjī who had a great status. He feared that he would destroy the status. He got up and set off on a journey during the month of Ramadan and broke the fast in keeping with the ruling of the Shariah.

Say not of anything, “I will do it tomorrow,” but only, “If God wills.” And remember thy Lord when thou forgettest. When someone recognizes God, his free choice drops away before His will, and his decrees are enveloped by the witnessing of his Lord's decree. When someone sets foot in the street of recognizing God and comes to know that the creatures are all captive to His power in the prison of the Will on the passageway of the decree and the mea- suring out, he will no longer choose and will not prepare his own work, nor will he make his own rulings. He will throw his own work entirely over to God's will and not mix his own self-exertion with what God has taken care of. With the tongue of the state he will say, “O God, O He who was, is, and will be! I know not Your measure and am incapable of what is worthy of You. I wander in my misery, day by day in loss. How then is someone like me?! But such am I. I lament at gaz- ing into the darkness-will anything remain of me? I do not know. My eyes look to a day when You remain and I am not. Who will be like me if I see that day? And if I see it, I will sacrifice my spirit to it.” And remember thy Lord when thou forgettest. It has been said, “When you forget yourself, remember your Lord, and when you forget the creatures, remember the Creator.” He is saying, “Once you have brought your soul's caprice underfoot and removed your status with people from your heart, remember Me and make your spirit happy with this pure remem- brance.” The caprice of the soul is an idol and status with people is a sash of unbelief. As long as you have not disowned the idol, you will not become a tawḤīd-voicer, and as long as you have not undone the sash, you will not be a Muslim. There was a worshiper by the name of Abū Bakr Ishtanjī who had a great status. He feared that he would destroy the status. He got up and set off on a journey during the month of Ramadan and broke the fast in keeping with the ruling of the Shariah.

And they tarried in the Cave three hundred years, of the kind based on the lunar cycles, so that every year represents one month, the total being twenty five years, which was the time of their alertness and vigilance, and remained there in addition another nine, which is the duration of a pregnancy [ḍ]. Within the verse a delightful detail is taken into account, which is that He did not say [and they tarried in the cave] thalāthamiÌata sanatin wa-tisʿan or thalāthamiÌatin wa-tisʿata sinīna, because sana is conventionally used [to denote] the time of the descent of revelation during a solar cycle and not a lunar one. And thus He mentioned the [total] number collectively [without differentiation] but then clarified it with His [other] words, so that it is possible that the specific [unit] is something other than that, such as a month, for example. He then made it clear that the [total] period was an ambiguous and unspecified number of years. For if it had been said thalāthamiÌata shahrin, sinīna, whereby sinīna substitutes for the total number, the sentence would have been sound, the intended meaning being 'such a number of years', namely twenty five. This is supported by His words afterwards:

Say: 'God is more knowledgeable of how long they tarried. Qatāda said, 'These are the words spoken by the People of the Book and completing where they had said They will say � [Q. 18:22]. And His words Say: 'God is more knowledgeable�' is a refutation of them. In the codex (muṣḥaf) of ʿAbd Allāh [b. Masʿūd] it is: And they said that they had tarried (wa-qālū labithū), that is because there is no verifiable or unvarying certainty [regarding the exact duration].

And recite that which has been revealed to you of the Book of your Lord: it is possible that the min ('of the Book') denotes inceptiveness of purpose, such that the Book is First Tablet that comprehends all forms of knowledge from which revelation was given to those to whom it was revealed. Or it [the min] could be an explication of what has been revealed, with the Book denoting the Discriminating Intellect in both cases. There is none who can change His words, which are the principles of religion such as the affirmation of oneness and justice and various other such [principles]. And you will not find, besides Him, any refuge, to incline to, since such a thing cannot exist.

And restrain yourself: a command to exercise patience with God and His folk and not to turn your attention to other than Him - this patience is the kind indicative of uprightness and fixity and can only be [realised] through God - along with those who call upon their Lord at morning and evening, in other words, continuously, being the affirmers of His oneness the disengaged indigent ones who seek nothing other than God and have no want of either this world or the Hereafter and who do halt with any acts or attributes, desiring His Countenance, namely, only His essence, calling on Him and not being veiled from Him by other than Him at the moment of the manifestation this [essence] at the daybreak of annihilation or at the moment of Its being veiled by them at subsistence. And so patience with them is patience with God, and the overlooking of them with the eye, which is forbidden, constitutes the turning of one's attention to what is other [than God].

Indeed We have prepared for the wrongdoers, namely, those who associate [others with God] the ones veiled from the Truth, on account of His words [elsewhere]: Idolatry is truly a tremendous wrong [Q. 31:13], a, tremendous, Fire, and they will be surrounded by its pavilion, of levels of engendered existence (akwān), such as the elemental natures, and the material species forms that comprehend hylic individuals; with water like molten copper, such as pus (ghassāq) [cf. Q:38:57] and vile excretions (ghislīn) [Q. 69:36], that is to say, the putrid fluids that are secreted by the bodies of the inhabitants of the Fire, darkened and containing fat with which they are succoured; or, [they are succoured with] their filthy slops; or, [they are succoured] burning torments and anxieties.

Truly those who believe, by affirming the Oneness of the Essence, being the opposites of the idolaters, and who perform righteous deeds, in the way of acts that are sought for their own sake at the station of uprightness - indeed We do not leave to go to waste, their reward: the replacement of a pronominalisation with an overt noun is intended to indicate that 'reward' is merited by acts to the exclusion of knowledge, since it is on this basis that an advance in degree and level is merited.

[Those, for them there shall be] Gardens of Eden, in the way of the three Gardens; therein they shall be adorned with bracelets of gold: that is, they shall be made ornate therein with different kinds of adornments in the way of the realities of the affirmation of the oneness of the Essence and the meanings of the entified self-disclosures of the Exclusive Unity (aḥadiyya). For, the gold adornments constitute the entifications, whereas the silver ones constitute the luminous ones of the [divine] attributes, as in where He says: and they will be adorned with bracelets of silver [Q. 76:21]; and they shall wear green garments: they shall resplendent, virtuous and radiant attributes that shall necessarily bring about joy; of fine silk: of states and bestowals, since these are subtler; and [heavy] silk brocade: of character traits and earnings, since these are denser, reclining therein on, the couches that are the divine names, which are the points of origin for His acts, on account of their having assumed His attributes and of the fact that the attribute together with the Essence is precisely what that [divine] name is supported by in the Garden of attributes and acts. How excellent a reward, and how fair a resting-place!, in contrast with How evil a drink and how ill a resting-place [Q. 18:29].

And the day when the mountains shall be set in motion: that is, [the day when] We remove the mountains that are the organs [of the body] by crumbling them and making them as 'scattered dust' [Q. 25:23]; and you will see the earth, that is the body, exposed, manifest, even and flat, simple as it had [once] been without form or compound, pure dust. And We shall gather them: the pronoun ['them'] either refers to the aforementioned faculties or to individual human beings, such that We will not leave out anyone of them, ungathered.

And they shall be presented before your Lord, at resurrection, in ranks, that is to say, standing in rows, standing according to different rank, none veiling another, each in his own rank. 'Verily you have come to Us: We say to them on that Day, 'you have come to Us, barefoot, naked, uncircumcised and each on his own, in other words, just as We created you the first time; rather you claimed, by your denial of the resurrection, that We would not appoint for you a tryst', a moment for the fulfilment of what you were promised by the tongues of prophets in the way of a sending forth [after death] and a resurrection.

And the Book shall be set in place, that is, the Book of the mould that corresponds to what their souls contain of configurations of acts deeply-rooted in them. And you will see the guilty apprehensive of what is in it, because they found in it what they had forgotten about; and they will say: 'O woe to us!: they call for the destruction by which they perished that was the [resulting] effect of corrupt beliefs and evil acts. What is it with this Book that it leaves out neither small nor great, but [instead it] has counted itḍ', and that is because the effects of their motions and their works, be they great or small, all remain in their souls, fixed in the celestial tablets of the souls, that is, accounted for therein, and these [effects] become manifest on them in differentiation at the second re-creation, and they have no way of escaping them; that is the signification of His words: And they shall find all that they did present. And your Lord does not wrong anyone.

The signification of the prostration of the angels and Iblīs's refusal has already been mentioned. As for His words, He [Iblīs] was one of the jinn, [syntactically] constitutes incipient speech, as though someone had said, 'What was wrong with Iblīs that he did not prostrate himselfḍ', to which the reply is, 'He was one of the jinn', that is, [he was] one of those corporeal faculties that are concealed in matter, and that is why he transgressed, against his Lord's command, in other words, on account of his veiling himself with matter and its appendages.

When Moses said to his chevalier, “I will continue on until I reach the meeting place of the two seas.” Moses had four journeys: One was the journey of flight, as God says recounting from Moses, “So I fled from you when I was afraid of you” [26:21]. The second was the journey of seeking on the night of the fire. That is His words, “He was called from the right bank of the watercourse” [28:30]. Third was the journey of revelry: “When Moses came to Our appointed time” [7:143]. Fourth was the journey of toil: “We have certainly met with weariness on this journey of ours” [18:62]. His journey of flight was at the beginning of the work. He fled from the enemy and turned his face toward Midian, having killed the Egyptian man, as the Exalted Lord says: “So Moses struck him and gave him the decree” [28:15]. When there is solicitude, how can prosperity and victory be ended? Since God had solicitude toward Moses' work, He excused him for that killing. He said, “Moses struck him and My decree reached him.” Then He said, “Moses had no sin in that. The sin belonged to the devil and the act was from the devil: He said, 'This is the work of Satan' [28:15].” In the same way, He will excuse the faithful servant with His bounty and convey His pardon to him. He says, “Satan made them slip for something they had earned, but God has surely pardoned them” [3:155]. God overlooked their sin. It was Satanic disquiet and the devil's work. The second was the journey of seeking on the night of the fire. Moses set out seeking fire. What sort of fire was it, for it placed the whole world on fire! Wherever talk of Moses' fire goes, the whole world takes on the scent of passion because of its turmoil. Moses set off in search of fire and found light. These chevaliers set off in search of light and find fire. If the sweetness of listen- ing to the Real's speech without intermediary reached Moses, what wonder is it that His friends catch a scent of that? If the fire of Moses was apparent, the fire of these chevaliers is hidden. If the fire of Moses was in a tree, the fire of these chevaliers is in the spirit.

So when they reached a juncture between the two, in the all-comprehensive present form, they forgot their fish, which is the fish that swallowed Dhū'l-Nūn, may peace be upon him, as a type and not as that individual [fish], because their breakfast was before their arrival at this form externally from that fish which he had been commanded to take as a provision for the journey at the moment of resolve; and so it made its way, into the sea of the body alive as it had been at the first instance, by burrowing, a wide tunnel, as is related. Its [tunnelled] path to the sea remained open and was not covered over by the [waters of the] sea.

And when they had made the traverse, the place of the separation from the fish and fatigue and hunger befell Moses, whereas he had not become fatigued during his journeying and had not become hungry before that, according to what has been narrated, he remembered the fish and the nourishment it could provide and so he asked his lad [to bring them] the breakfast. He said, 'Bring us our breakfast, because his [spiritual] state then was that of the daytime in relation to what comes before in the womb. We have certainly encountered on this journey of ours much fatigue', which is the fatigue and hardship of being born.

He said, 'Do you seeḍ, what is it that has left me nude [as a child], when we sheltered at the rock, at the chest to suckle; indeed I forgot the fish, when we had no need for it - and none but Satan made me forget to mention it, that is to say, it was Satan that made me forget to remember it, substituting an adhkurahu for the [suffixed] pronoun [hu in ansānī-hu]. Moses had been asleep when the fish made its way into the sea in the way related, while the lad-the-Soul had been awake, and so Satan-the-Estimation, the one who had adorned the tree for Adam [cf. Q. 2:35-6], made Moses forget to remember the soul-the-Fish, since the state was one of distraction (dhuhūl). The 'way' that caused amazement was the aforementioned burrowing [made by the fish].

Said he, 'That, in other words, that escape of the fish and its making its way in accordance with its innate disposition (jibilla), is what we have been, seeking. Because there can be found the juncture of the two seas where Moses had been promised that he would find someone more knowledgeable than him. For the ascent to perfection by close pursuit of the holy intellect can only be at such a station. So they turned back, retracing their footsteps, in rising to the station of the first primordial nature (fiṭra ūlā) as they had initially been retracing their footsteps at the descent from the ascent to perfection until they found the holy intellect which is one of God's servants singled out for the privilege of [divine] solicitude and mercy.

And We taught him knowledge from Us. “When someone is able to sacrifice his attributes to the holy Shariah, We will engrave the secrets of the knowledges of the Haqiqah on his heart: And We taught him knowledge from Us.” The one who speaks of this knowledge is the realizer, who speaks from finding. Light is apparent from his words, familiarity on his face, and servanthood in his conduct. A lightning flash of the Greatest Light has shone in his heart, the lamp of his recognition has been lit, and the unseen secrets have been unveiled to him. Such was Khiẓr in the work of the ship, the boy, and the wall. Take care not to have the opinion that Khiẓr was greater than Moses the Speaking Companion, even if Moses was sent to Khiẓr's grammar school. No, of course not, for in the Court of Inac- cessibility, after MuṣṬafā no prophet has the same joyful expansiveness and proximity as Moses. Nonetheless, He made Khiẓr the furnace of Moses' discipline. Thus, when someone wants to take silver to pureness, he puts it in a fiery furnace. This is because of the superiority of silver over the fiery furnace, not because of the superiority of fire and furnace over silver. Then there are Khiẓr's words,

As for his words, 'May I follow you, this is the manifestation of the [spiritual] desire for wayfaring and the ascent to perfection.

“Surely thou wilt not be able to bear patiently with me.” The meaning according to true understanding is this allusion: “O Moses, the secret core of your disposition has so much expansiveness from the marks giving witness to the Divinity that you say, 'Show me, that I may gaze upon Thee!' [7:143]. I who am Khiẓr do not have the power and strength to pass these words over my heart or to busy my thoughts with them. Your ruling author- ity will not be able to put up with the grief of my deprivation. Surely thou wilt not be able to bear patiently with me.” As for the breaking the ship in the sea, killing the boy, and repairing the wall, each of these, in keeping with the understanding of the Folk of Findings, alludes to a great principle. It is said that the sea is the sea of recognition. Each of the one hundred twenty-some thousand center points of sinlessness dove into that sea with his community and people in the hope that from that sea they would gather the pearls of tawḤīd in the skirt of seeking, for “He who recognizes himself has rec- ognized his Lord.” The ship is the ship of human nature. Khiẓr wanted to ruin and break that ship with the hand of tenderness, for the owners of the ship were “indigent” [miskīn], and their attribute was “tranquil- ity” [sakīna]. The Court of Eternity had addressed them with these words: “He it is who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the faithful” [48:4]. When MuṣṬafā saw the Real's self-disclosure of Majesty to the hearts of the indigent, he said, “O God, give me life as an indigent, give me death as an indigent, and muster me among the indigent!” When Khiẓr ruined the ship of mortal nature with the hand of tenderness, Moses saw that outwardly it was adorned and flourishing with the ornament of the Shariah and the Tariqah. He said, “Have you made a hole in it to drown its folk?” [18:71]. Khiẓr responded, “And behind them was a king [18:79]: Behind its flourishing was a king, a Satan who had prepared the ambush of severity in the neighborhood of the ship so that he might take the ship with his severity and deception and travel in it by night and day, for 'Satan runs in the children of Adam like blood.

And how can you bear with that whereof you have never been informedḍ'

He said, 'You will find me, God willing, patient, because of the power of my preparedness and my steadfastness in staying the path, and I will not disobey you in any matter', on account of my orientation towards you and my acceptance of your command because of my purity and the sincerity of my [spiritual] desire. All of [these] negotiations are taking place by the tongue of the state.

'If you follow me, in the wayfaring along the path of perfection, then do not question me concerning anything, in other words, you must follow [my] lead and persevere along the journey with works, acts of self-discipline, [noble] character traits and exertions, and not demand realities or significations, until, the moment for that comes along and then, I [myself] make mention of it, that is, of that knowledge, to you', and inform you about the Unseen realities upon your disengagement through interactions belonging to the mould and to the heart.

So they set off until when they embarked, on the ship of the body that has reached the limit of self-discipline, when it is good for servanthood, [travelling] to the world of holiness across the sea of primordial matter as it journeys to God, he made a hole in it, that is, he diminished it by means of [spiritual] discipline, by decreasing [his intake of] food, weakening its workings, upsetting its regulation and enervating it. Said [Moses], 'Did you make a hole in it to drown its peopleḍ, that is, did you break it in order to drown in the sea of primordial matter the animal and vegetative faculties that are in it so that it might be perishḍ You have certainly done a dreadful thing': this denunciation is an expression of the manifestation of the soul with its attributes and the inclining of the heart to it and the dissatisfaction with being deprived of its shares during the act of [spiritual] disciplining and its lack of contentment with its duties.

He said, 'Did I not say [that] you would not be able to bear with meḍ': a spiritual warning and a holy incitement to the effect that resolve during the wayfaring should be stronger than that.

He said, 'Do not take me to task on account of that which I forgot, to the end [of the verse]: an apology at the station of the self-reproaching soul.

So they set off until, when they met a boy: this is the soul, which manifests itself with its attributes and thus veils the heart accordingly becomes an evil-commanding soul. The slaying of him is the extinguishing of anger, passionate desire and all of the [other] attributes. 'Have you slain an innocent soul: an objection [arising] from the heart's affection for the soul.

And [the statement]: 'Did I not say to you, is a reminder and a spiritual expression.

And [the statement]: 'If I ask you about anything, to the end [of the verse] is an apology and an affirmation of guilt and an admission, all of which constitute variegations at the engendering of the self-reproaching soul.

So they set off, until, when they came to the folk of a [certain] town, [folk] being the corporeal faculties. Their asking of them for food is a demand for spiritual nourishment from them, that is, by means of them, as when universal significations are extracted from the particular perceptibles of these. They refused to extend them hospitality, even though they had given them nourishment before that, because their nourishment at that point came from above them from the holy lights and from the self-disclosures of the Beauty and the Majesty and [from] the divine gnoses and the significations belonging to the Unseen, and not from below their feet as had been the case before the holing of the ship and the slaying of the boy by means of spiritual discipline, when the faculties and the senses prevented that and were not facilitating it. Nay, these only become configured after they have become somnolent and quiet, as when Moses said to his family, 'Wait [here]' [cf. Q. 20:10]. As for the wall which was: about to collapse, this is the reassured soul. It is referred to by the [expression] 'wall' because it originated after the slaying of the evil-commanding soul and [after] its [the latter's] death by means of spiritual disciplining, and so it became like a thing that is inanimate, unable to move by itself and by its own desire and because of the extent of it feebleness it nearly perished. Thus its state was depicted as one 'desiring to collapse'. As for his straightening of it, that is the setting of it in order by means of the perfections of character traits and the beautiful qualities of excellence by the light of the rational-speech faculty until the qualities of excellence came to replace its attributes of vice. As for Moses' words, Had you wished, you could have taken a wage for it, is a variegation of the heart, not of the soul, which is the demand for wage and reward by the acquisition of qualities of excellence and by the use of acts of spiritual discipline, which is why the other responded to him with the words:

'This is the parting between me and you: in other words, this is the separate reality of my station and yours and the difference between them and the separation between my state and yours. For the cultivation of the soul through spiritual discipline and the assumption of praiseworthy character traits are not intended in anticipation of reward or wage. Otherwise, these would not be qualities of excellence or perfections, since a meritorious quality is to assume the character traits of the divine such that the acts that issue from that person are intended for their own sake and not for some other purpose. What is [done] for some other purpose is [in reality] a veil, a vice and not a quality of excellence. What one ought to do is to throw off the veil and to remove of the cover of the soul's attributes and to become projected into the world of light in order to receive the significations of the Unseen, nay to become qualified by the divine attributes, nay to be realised in God after being annihilated in Him, and not for the sake of reward, as you [Moses] claim. I will inform you the interpretation of that which you were not able to endure with patience: in other words, when the soul is reassured and the faculties have become stable, you will be able to accept [Unseen] significations and to receive the Unseen which I had forbidden you to inquire about 'until I had made mention to it of you'. Now I shall make mention [of things] to you and I shall inform you of the interpretation of these matters if you are prepared for the reception of meanings and gnoses:

As for the ship, it belonged to poor people, in the sea of primordial matter, that is [it belonged to] the corporeal faculties such as the external sensoria and the natural vegetative faculties. He referred to these [faculties] as masākīn ('poor') because of their constant stillness (sukūn) and their adhering to the dust of the body and their ineffectualness in contravening the heart during wayfaring and conquering it, as with all of the animal faculties. It is related that these [poor] were ten brothers, five of whom were chronically ill with the other five working at sea, which is itself an allusion to the [five] external sensoria and the internal ones; and I wanted to make it defective, by means of spiritual disciplining lest the-king-the-evil-commanding-soul should seize it by force. This was the king who was behind them, that is, infront of them, seizing every ship by force, by taking possession of it and using it for his own vain desires and pursuits.

And as for the boy, his parents, who were the spirit and physical nature, were believers, affirmers of the Oneness by virtue of their yielding as they wayfare in obedience of God, submit to God's command and comply with what God desires from them; and We feared lest he should overwhelm them, totally cover them, with insolence, towards them by manifesting himself in his I-ness at the presential vision of the spirit, and ingratitude, towards the grace of having them by his disobedience and evil action; or with ingratitude for the veil so that he ends up spoiling for them their affair and their religion and invalidating [for them] their servanthood of God.

So We desired that their Lord should give them in exchange one better than him in purity, as He did by giving them in [his] place the reassured soul which is better than him in purity and unblemishedness, and closer to mercy, to being loving and merciful since it [the reassured soul] is more affectionate towards the soul and the body and more beneficial to both and more compassionate towards them. It is possible that by 'parents' is meant that the grandfather and the father, and so they figuratively stand for the spirit and the heart, in which case his [the boy's] being 'closer to mercy', means that he is more suitable for them and more intensely affectionate [to them].

And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys [who lived] in the city: that is, the twin rational faculty of the considerative and the practical that are severed from their parent, who is the holy spirit, because they have veiled themselves from him by means of corporeal coverings, or [he is] the heart that has died or was slain before perfection by the soul's conquest of the city-the-body. And beneath it there was a treasure belonging to them, that is, the treasure of gnosis which is only actualised through these two [faculties] at the station of the heart on account of the fact that all of the universals and the particulars are able to come together in it [the heart] in actuality at the moment of perfection, which is the state of coming of age and the extraction of that treasure. Some exoteric commentators relate that the treasure was scrolls in which there was [certain] knowledge. Their father had been - [this is valid] in the case of both interpretations - a righteous man: it is also said that he was a father from 'above' to them and God preserved them for him, in which case, he can only be the holy spirit.The story of DhūÌl-Qarnayn is well-known. He was a Greek (rūmī) who lived in times not long ago. The [spiritual] correspondence [for this story] is as follows: DhūÌl-Qarnayn in this existence represents the heart which took possession of his two horns (qarnān), that is, his two setting points, the East and the West.

Indeed We established him, throughout the land of the body by empowering him and giving him the fixity to be able to gather wealth from universal and particular meanings, and to [be able to] journey to whichever region of the East and West he wishes; and We gave him to everything, that he desired, in the way of perfections, a road, that is, by which to arrive thereat.

And he followed, a path of attachment to the body and heading in the direction of the lower world,

until, when he reached the setting of the sun, that is, the setting of the sun of the spirit, he found it setting in a muddy spring, namely, one that was mixed with mud, which is the corporeal matter, an admixture of dark bodies, similar to where He says from a drop of mixed fluid [Q. 76:2]; and he found by it a folk, namely, the egocentric faculties, the corporeal and the spiritual. We said, 'O DhūÌl-Qarnayn - either chastise, by means of spiritual discipline, subjugation and bringing to death, or treat them kindly', by setting them straight and fulfilling their share.

He said, 'As for him who does wrong, by being immoderate, and neither submitting or yielding, like passionate desire, anger, estimation and imagination, we shall chastise him, with spiritual discipline. Then he shall be returned to his Lord, at the minor resurrection, and He shall chastise him, by casting him into the Fire of nature, with an awful chastisement, that is, a terrible one that is more severe than mine; or [he shall be returned to his Lord] at the major resurrection, and He shall chastise him with the chastisement of subjugation and annihilation.

But as for him who believes, by means of knowledge and gnosis, like the two rational faculties, as well as reflection and the external sensoria, and acts righteously, by hastening to acquire qualities of excellence and by yielding and being obedient, he shall have, as a reward, the fairest thing, in the way of the Garden of the attributes and the self-disclosures of Its lights along with Its rivers of knowledge; and we shall speak to him mildly in our command', that is to say, a gentle speech by the actualisation of excellent habitus (malaka).

Then he followed, a path, the path of ascent and wayfaring to God by means of disengagement and purification,

until, when he reached the rising of the sun, that is, the rising of the sun of the spirit, he found it rising on a folk, namely, the two rational faculties, reflection, intuition and the holy faculty, for whom We had not provided against it any [form of] cover, that is, any veil, on account of their being illumined by its [the spirit's] light and their perceiving of the universal meanings.

So [it was], that is, his affair was as We have described it; and We encompassed in knowledge whatever pertained to him, in the way of forms of knowledge, gnoses, perfections and qualities of excellence. The meaning of this is that none other than Us encompassed [him thus], since it was the Presence that combines the two worlds, and there is no one in existence that can comprehend the things which He knows except God [Himself]. And for some reason it is called God's Throne.

Then he followed, a path by wayfaring in God,

until, when he reached between the two barriers, that is, the two engendered existences - that was his rank and original station, between the two sides of the two mountains of God; the marching east and west represent two journeys, one a descent and one an ascent - he found on this side of them a folk, namely, the natural faculties, the corporeal and the external sensoria, that could scarcely comprehend speech, on account of their being unable to perceive meanings or utter them.

They said, by the tongue of [their] state, 'Truly Gog, the exigencies and estimative murmurings, and Magog, the whisperings and imaginative tendencies, are causing corruption in the land, of the body by inciting to vices and passionate desires that violate order and [by] urging to works that result in its impairment and the ruining of the rules that regulate good-doing and the bases of wisdom and [result] in the bringing about of vicissitudes, temptations, vain desires, and innovations [all of] which conflict with justice and necessarily bring about the corruption of crops and offspring. So shall we pay you a tribute, by reinforcing you with our perfections and the forms of our perceptibles, on condition that you build between us and them a damḍ, which they cannot traverse and a barrier which they cannot scale, being the legal limit and the veil of the heart in terms of practical wisdom.

He said, 'That wherewith my Lord has empowered me, in the way of universal and particular meanings that are actualised through experience and journeying east and west, is better; so help me with strength, that is, [with] work and obedience, and I will build between you and them a rampart, namely, practical wisdom and the canon of the Law.

Bring me ingots of iron!', in the way of practical forms and the conventions of works. Until, when he had levelled up [the gap] between the two flanks, by setting [things] right and ordaining, he said, to the animal faculties, 'Blow!', into these forms the blowing of particular meanings and egocentric configurations in the way of excellent character traits, until when he had made it a fire, that is, a form of knowledge in its own right, from among the totality of forms of knowledge, which contains an explanation of the modality of works, he said, 'Bring me molten copper, intention and purpose, to pour over it', which comes halfway between knowledge and works and by which the spirit of knowledge is united with the body of work, like the animal spirit that is halfway between the human spirit and the body. There then was actualised a barrier, that is, a base and an edifice constructed from the ingots of works and the blow of forms of knowledge and character traits and the molten liquid of resolves and intentions, and the soul was reassured by it and it became governed and so it became faithful.

And so they were not able to scale it, and climb over it because of the stature of its affair and its being comprehensive of forms of knowledge and arguments which they could neither repel nor take possession of; nor could they pierce it, on account of its becoming sturdy through habitus, works and invocations.

Said he, 'This, barrier, that is, [this] canon, is a mercy from my Lord, to His servants, [one] which will necessarily bring about security and subsistence for them. But when the promise of my Lord, of the minor resurrection, comes to pass, He will level it, [making it] invalid and collapsed on account of the impossibility of using it at the point of death and [because of] the disintegration of the body's instruments [then].

And on that day, We shall let some of them surge against others, tumultuously mixing. In other words, We shall leave them to mix on account of their coming together in the spirit without separation, and the Trumpet shall be blown, for the sending forth [from death] at the second creation, and We shall gather them a [single] gathering: or at the major resurrection, in the state of annihilation. The manifestation of the Truth which levels it because of the high stature of knowledge and wisdom there. The manifestation of the signification of the dissolution and licitness [granted by God] is by the self-disclosure of the divine acts and the nonexistence of the other and His act And on that day, We shall let some of them surge against others bewildered mixing as one thing without movement. And the Trumpet shall be blown by the existentiation through the existence of [God] the Truth at the state of subsistence and We shall gather them a [single] gathering in the [reality of the] Oneness, uprightness and fixity, and in the fact that they will be in God and not in themselves.

And on that day We shall present Hell to the disbelievers: that is, on the day of the minor resurrection those veiled from the Truth shall be chastised with all sorts of chastisements and fires, as mentioned in sūrat al-Anʿām; or [it is] at that presential vision when their chastisement in the fire of Hell is manifested to the one experiencing the major resurrection;

those [disbelievers] whose eyes were masked from My remembrance, that is, veiled from My signs and [from] the self-disclosures of My attributes that necessarily entail My remembrance.

[wherein they will abide] with no desire to be removed from them, [with no desire for] any self-transmutation (taḥawwul) since they will have attained perfection which their preparedness had entailed and so there will be no yearning for what might be beyond these [Gardens], even if there should be [another] perfection beyond that since they will have no perception thereof, and so neither tasting nor yearning [will they have beyond the Gardens]. The fact that they are the opposite of the polytheists who are veiled from the Truth by the other and the fact that their Gardens are the Gardens of Paradise (firdaws) both prove that the ones intended [here in the verse] are the affirmers of the Oneness (muwaḥḥidūn) of perfected preparedness, above whose perfection there is no other perfection and so there is nothing remaining beyond their rank which they would want to 'change' to.

Say: 'If the sea, the sea of primordial matter that is receptive to the forms that provide it [the matter] with manifestation, were ink for the Words of my Lord, in the way of meanings, realities, entities and spirits, the sea would be spent before the Words of my Lord were spent, since these [Words] are infinite and what is finite can never satisfy what is infinite. And God knows best.

Whoever hopes for the encounter with his Lord, let him do wholesome deeds. Sahl said, “The wholesome deed is a deed delimited by the Sunnah.” It has also been said, “The wholesome deed is the one toward which the soul has no regard and within which there is no seeking of reward or recompense.” It has also been said, “Here the wholesome deed is believing in the permissibility of vision and waiting for its time.” Whenever someone hopes for the vision of God, let him believe in his heart that God is seeable in face-to-face vision as a hidden mystery and an everlasting love. Whenever someone seeks the vision of God, he is promised that one day he will reach it: Whoever hopes for the encounter with his Lord, God's term is coming [29:5]. He is expecting a great thing and has a tremendous hope. His aspiration has reached such a high place that he hopes for the vision of God. Were there not this hope, what would be the worth of paradise with all its sweetness? Were there not this promise of vision, why would service rise up from the servant's heart? Everyone has a desire after which he runs, and the recognizer is waiting for the time of vision. People are all passionate for life, so death for them is difficult. The recognizer hurries to death in hope of vision. What harm if you suffer for a year so long as you see the Friend one day in vision.