Alif lām mīm rāʾ, that is, the Essence of the [exclusive] unity, and His Name the Knower, and His Greatest Name and the locus of His manifestation which is the complete mercy, according to what has been mentioned. Those are, the most exalted tokens of the universal Book which is the nondelimited existence and Its greatest verses, and that, meaning, which has been revealed to you from your Lord, from the Discriminating Intellect and this that has been mentioned of meanings contained in the letters is the Truth, but most people do not believe.

God is He Who raised up the heavens without visible supports, that is, with supports that cannot be seen, these [supports] being the heavenly souls of their [the heavens’] spiritual angelic realm which keeps them up and moves them, or the heavens of the spirits that have no substratum by which to support them [physically] so that they remain upright by these [spirits], indeed, these [heavens] are disengaged and subsist by themselves; then presided, with mastery, upon the Throne, by means of [His] effective agency and [His] sustaining, or [He presided] upon the throne of the heart by means of self-disclosure; and disposed, the sun of the spirit to the comprehension of the universal gnoses and the seeking of irradiation by the sublime lights, and [He disposed] the moon of the heart to the perception of what is in all the worlds in their entirety and the seeking of replenishment from above and from below then to the reception of the self-disclosures of the attributes by means of unveilings; each one moving, until [the conclusion of] an appointed time, that is, [until] a designated purpose, which is that thing’s perfection in accordance with the first primordial nature. He directs the command, at the beginning by setting up preparednesses and ordering the principles; He details the signs, at the end by ordering the perfections and stations that result from wayfaring in accordance with the self-disclosures of the acts and the attributes, so that you might be certain, with the eye of certainty, of the encounter with your Lord, at the witnessings of the signs of the self-disclosures.

And He it is Who spread out, the earth of the body, and set therein the firm mountains, of the bones, and the rivers of the veins, and of all, of the fruits of character traits and perceptibles, He has made in it a pair, two, that is, two kinds that are opposites, such as munificence and niggardliness, modesty and shamelessness, licentiousness and chastity, cowardice and valour, injustice and justice and their like, as well as [opposing pairs such as] black and white, sweet and bitter, wholesome and putrid, heat and cold, smooth and rough and their like. He covers, with the night of the darkness of corporeal things the daylight of spiritual things, as in the covering of the spiritual faculties with their instruments and the spirit with the body. Surely in that are signs for a people who reflect, on the handiwork of God and the harmonious correspondence between His two worlds, the minor one and the major one.

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 creation? 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 attributes? 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]? 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.

And to God prostrates, [to Him] submits, whatever is in the heavens and the earth, of the realities that are the spiritual entities, such as the individual substances and the angelic realm of things, and also their shadows, that is, their frames and their bodies, which are the idols that represent those spiritual entities and their shadows, which is why the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, said [the following words] during this prostration:^{1In other words, when he came to verse Q. 13:15 during a recitation. There are some 14 or 15 instances in the Qurʾānic text where the reciter is expected to perform a recitation after reading that verse. In modern editions these instances are indicated by a glyph or a symbol at the end of the relevant verse.} ‘My face, my core and my shadow prostrate to You’, in other words, the reality of my essence, the core of me as an individual and the shadow of my soul, meaning, my existence, me as an entity and me as an individuation [prostrate to You], willingly or unwillingly, that is, whether they desire or refuse. The meaning is that they are required to do so necessarily and not that some of them are obedient and others averse; in the mornings and the evenings, that is, always.

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 themselves?’, for the Powerful and the Owner is God and none other.

He sends down, from the heaven of the Holy Spirit the water of knowledge, whereat, the valleys that are the hearts, flow, according to the measure of their preparednesses, and, the flood of knowledge, carries a scum, that is the vileness of the attributes of the earth of the soul together with its vices and baseness, and from that which they smelt, in the fire of fervent love in the way of gnoses, unveilings, realities and meanings that cause fervent love to swell, desiring, the ornaments of the soul and its joyousness thereby, being perfections for it, or enjoyment, in the way of the virtues of character traits that result thereby, since it is the sort of thing in which the soul finds enjoyment, [there rises] a scum the like of it, a vileness, such as inspecting these [ornaments], seeing them and conceptualising the soul as perfect or excellent decked out in the ornaments of those descriptions, and [vileness] such as its vanity and its veiledness and all that is reckoned as being among the banes of the soul and the sins of the states. As for the scum, it passes away as dross, discarded and annihilated by knowledge, as He has said, that He may purify you thereby [Q. 8:11], while that which is of use to mankind, of truthful meanings and pure virtues, lingers, in the earth of the soul.

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 darknesses? 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 Qurʾān], 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 believe, that is, those who turn in penitence and who believe with cognitive faith in the Unseen, and whose hearts are reassured by God’s remembrance, the remembrance of the soul by means of the tongue and by reflecting upon [His] graces; or the remembrance of the heart by reflecting upon the angelic realm and contemplating the attributes of the Beauty and the Majesty. For there are levels of remembrance: the remembrance of the soul by means of the tongue and by reflecting upon [His] graces; the remembrance of the heart by contemplating the attributes; the remembrance of the innermost self by means of communion [with Him]; the remembrance of the spirit by means of witnessing; the hidden remembrance that is the courting at the falling into fervent love [of Him]; and the remembrance of God by being annihilated in Him. The soul is agitated when its attributes and the words of its speech are manifested, and it becomes fickle, and as a result the heart becomes variegated because of that and changes because of its [the soul’s] words. But when God is remembered the soul settles down and the evil whisperings are dissipated, as he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, once said: ‘Verily Satan places his snout upon the heart of the son of Adam, but when God is remembered, he slinks away and the heart is reassured’; likewise [is the case with] the remembrance of the heart by means of reflecting on the angelic realm and contemplating the lights of the realm of divine power. As for the remaining [types of] remembrances, these [also] only come about after the reassurance [of the heart] and [the performance of] righteous deeds, in this case self-purification and self-adornment;

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 earned?, 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:^{1Note that Kāshānī is commenting on the last part of the verse first.} 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.

God effaces whatever He will, from the Tablets of particulars, which are the heavenly souls, of engravings that are fixed therein, so that these [effaced things] are given non-existence in terms of matter and are annihilated, and He fixes, whatever He will therein and brings [these] into existence, and with Him is the Mother of the Book, that is, the Tablet of Preceding Decree, which is the Intellect of the All, engraved with everything that has been and that will be, from pre-eternity to sempiternity in a universal way, above being subject to effacing and fixing. The Tablets are four: 1) the Tablet of Preceding Decree that is above being subject to effacing and fixing, which is the Tablet of the First Intellect; 2) the Tablet of Destiny, that is, the Tablet of the universal rational speaking soul wherein are differentiated the universals of the first Tablet and to which causes are attached, and this is the one referred to as the Preserved Tablet; 3) the Tablet of the particular heavenly souls, wherein is engraved all that is in this world in its [given] figure, structure and measure, and this is the one called the Heaven of this world and it is the equivalent of the imagination of the world, just as the first one is the equivalent of its spirit, the second its heart; then comes the Tablet of Primordial Matter that receives form in the world of the witnessing. But God knows best.

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 edges?, 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 day? [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.