and of a manifest Qurʾān, that is, [a Qurʾān] 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 We have made for you therein [means of] livelihood, by means of the regulations of particulars and corporeal deeds, and those for whom you do not provide, of those attributed to you and attached to you. Or [it is] that We have placed in the heaven of the heart constellations that are the stations, such as patience, gratitude, trust, satisfaction, gnosis, love and adorned these with gnoses, wisdoms and realities and guarded them from every outcast devil of illusions and imaginations, except for the one who listens by stealth and is then pursued by a clear flame, that is, a luminous radiation from the risings of the lights of guidance.

And there is not a thing but that the stores thereof are with Us: that is to say, there is not a thing in [all of] existence but that with Us there is a store for it in the world of decree, first by its form becoming delineated in the Mother Book, which is the Universal Intellect, in a universal way; then [there is] another store in the world of the universal soul, which is the Preserved Tablet, by its form becoming delineated therein as being dependent on its causes; then [there is yet] another store, nay, stores in the particular heavenly souls expressed in [the concept of] the heaven of this world (samāʾ al-dunyā) and the Tablet of Destiny (lawḥ al-qadar) by the form of that [thing] becoming delineated therein as a particular, determined according to its measure, shape and situation; and We do not send it down, in the world of the witnessing, except in a known measure, in terms of shape, quantity and situation, as well as a time and locus that is designated and a preparedness that is specific to that [thing] at that moment.

And We send, the winds of the fragrant divine gusts, to fertilise, with wisdoms and gnoses, to purify the heart and to prepared the preparednesses for the reception of the self-disclosures, and send down, out of the heaven of the spirit the water of the forms of true knowledge, so that We give it to you to drink, and gave you life therewith, for you are not the storers, of that knowledge, being devoid of it as you are.

Indeed it is We Who give life, by means of real life through the water of the life of knowledge and making you reside in the station of primordial nature, and bring death, by annihilating [you] in the unity, and We are the inheritors, of existence, who will subsist after your annihilation.

And verily We know the advanced among you, that is, those who perceive and yearn from among the lovers [of God] who seek to advance, and verily We know those behind, attracted to the world of sense and the source of abomination as a result of the mastery of the attributes of the soul and the love of the body and its pleasures, those who seek to lag behind away from the world of the holy.

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.

And verily We created man out of a dry [clinking] clay of malleable mud, that is, out of the four admixed elements, since ḥamaʾ is mud that changes and masnūn is that [mud] on which water is poured until it is rid of hard or rough particles that are intemperate and are resistant to the acceptance of the form that is to be conceptualised from it; al-ṣalṣāl is that [clay] which is penetrated by air and becomes dry by heating.

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 Qurʾān, 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 Qurʾān, 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.