God’s commandment has come: since the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, was from among the folk of the major resurrection witnessing it and witnessing its states at the source of the union — as [indicated by what] he has said, ‘I have been sent with the Hour [following me] as [in the distance between] these two [fingers]’^{1The Prophet is said to have indicated this with his first and middle finger, the small difference in length being the small period of time left between his mission and the Resurrection.} — he informed of his presential vision by saying God’s commandment has come. And since its manifestation in differentiated mode, such that it will be manifest to every single person, will only occur with the coming of the Messiah (Mahdī), peace be upon him, he said: so do not seek to hasten it, as this was not yet the time for its manifestation. He then confirmed his presential vision of God’s countenance and the annihilation of creation in the Resurrection with his words: Glory be to Him and exalted be He above what they associate, [with Him] in the way of affirming the existence of another. He [God] then differentiated what he [Muḥammad] had witnessed at the source of the union — since he was at the station of separation after concentration, witnessing the multiplicity of the attributes at the source of the [exclusive] unity of the Essence where he is neither veiled from the multiplicity by the unity nor vice versa, as mentioned in His words God bears witness … [Q. 3:18] — and so He said:

He sends down the angels with the Spirit, that is to say, the knowledge with which He revives hearts, meaning [by that knowledge], the Qurʾān, from, the world of, His command, wherein it was inscribed, to whomever He will of His servants, those singled out for extra solicitude from Him [saying]: Inform them of the affirmation of Oneness and fear of God. And so after the explication of the [exclusive] unity of the Essence, He elucidates the world of the real attributes by sending down the spirit, which is knowledge, and affirming the [divine] will, which is the [divine] volition, and [He elucidates] the world of the Names by affirming the angels, and the world of the acts by [sending His] warning. He then enumerates the relative attributes, such as those pertaining to creation and provision, and differentiates the various graces such as blessings and others. Once the Truth and the creation are manifest, then the path[s] of truth and [that of] falsehood become manifest and so He says:

And God’s is the direction of the way: that is, adherence to the straight way and guidance to it of those who are His folk falls on Him, as he [Hūd] said surely my Lord is on a straight path [Q. 11:56]. In other words, all who are on this path, which is the path of the affirmation of Oneness, are undoubtedly His folk, exalted be He, since that is His path, the one to which He adheres; and some of these, paths, are deviant, in other words, some paths, which are those separate paths, to the exclusion of the path of the affirmation of Oneness, are deviant, swerving from the truth and inevitably leading to falsehood: that is the path of error, whichever one it may be. He did not will that all be guided to the straight path because that would contradict the [divine] wisdom;

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.

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] subjugated?

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.

[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.

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 desire? [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 person? 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’. Then if such [a person’s] noble aspiration should flourish [rising] high above engendered beings and not halt with his love of other than God or turn its attention to what is besides Him, We will increase his provision and grant him Our attributes, effacing his attributes, teaching him knowledge from Us and empowering him with Our power, as He has said: ‘The [true] servant will not cease to draw close to Me through supererogatory devotions until I love him. And when I love him I become the hearing with which he hears …’ [to the end of] the ḥadīth; such that he expends thereof secretly and openly: he expends of the inward graces, such as knowledge and wisdom secretly, and of the outward ones openly; or [it is] that he expends of both secretly, as with the one that arrives to people without his being the cause of its arrival outwardly, when in reality it arrived because of him since he is in that instance a means of the Divine Existence and the deputy of His Presence; or [he expends of both] openly, as with the one which he himself outwardly causes the arrival of. Are they equal?, an interrogative intended as a rebuttal.

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 good? 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 justice? 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 straight?, 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 heaven?, 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 recognise God’s grace, that is to say, the guidance of the Prophet or his presence, in light of what we have mentioned, namely, that every prophet is sent with a perfection that corresponds to the preparednesses of his community and he enjoys a genus-correspondence with them in terms of his primordial nature so that they are able to recognise him by the faculty of their primordial nature; and they then deny it, because of their obduracy and their falling into sin as a result of the mastery [over them] of the attributes of their souls such as arrogance, haughtiness, love of power, or because of their disbelief and their being veiled from the light of primordial nature through evil dark configurations and the alteration of [their] first preparedness; and most of them are ingrates, in denying that [grace] by virtue of the fact that their primordial natures have borne witness to the truth thereof.

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-Nisāʾ. 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.

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].

Whoever performs a righteous deed, whether male or female, that is, a deed that brings him [or her] to the perfection that his [or her] preparedness entails. For righteousness in an individual is [the degree of] his [or her] orientation towards his [or her] perfection or his [or her] very being upon that perfection, while corruption is the opposite [of that]. [Righteousness] in terms of deed is that it [the deed] be a connective means to that [perfection] from a person who possesses a heart that has attained perfected manhood or a person who possesses a soul that is receptive to the influence of the heart and draws effusions from it, and is a believer, that is, one who is convinced of the truth in a categorical way, for the righteousness of a deed requires soundness of conviction, or else his perfection would not be conceptualised according to how it should be and he would not believe in it in the way that he ought to and so it would not be possible for him to perform a deed that would make him reach that [perfection] and so what he would then be doing would not be righteous in reality, even if it took on the [external] appearance of righteousness; him verily We shall revive with a goodly life, that is, a real life, after which there is no death, by means of disengagement from corporeal substrata and devoting oneself to the path of the timeless [divine] lights and taking pleasure in the perfectedness of the attributes in the witnessings of the self-disclosures of the acts and of the attributes. And We shall surely pay them their reward, in the way of the gardens of the acts and the attributes, according to the best of what they used to do, since their deeds correspond to their attributes which constitute the principles of their acts, while their reward corresponds to Our attributes which are the sources of Our acts: behold then how great the contrast between the two in terms of fairness.^{1In other words, how much fairer is their reward than the deeds they performed to deserve it.}

And when you recite the Qurʾān, 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 indeed your Lord: what [great] divergence there is between these veiled ones over whom indeed your Lord stands in wrath and subjugation and those over whom God stands indeed with satisfaction and mercy, being those who have emigrated from the abodes of the soul by abandoning familiars and objects of lust, after they were tempted, and tested by virtue of [their being a] human creation, and then struggled, for the sake of God by means of acts of spiritual discipline and wayfaring along His path by rising through the stations and disengaging from configurations and attachments, and were patient, in withstanding what the soul loves and loathes by remaining firm along the [spiritual] journey — indeed your Lord, after these states, is Forgiving, of them by hiding [for them] the coverings of the ego-centric attributes, Merciful, by effusing perfections and substituting their attributes with the divine attributes.

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].

Truly Abraham was a community: it has already been mentioned how each prophet sent to a people with a perfection that subsumes all of the perfections of that community and [with] such an extent that his community cannot attain a level except that is below his. Thus he constitutes the sum-total of the perfections of his people and it is only through him that a perfection such as good or happiness reaches them. Nay, their very existences are effused from his existence and so he by himself constitutes a community since in reality they come together in his essence, which is why he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, said: ‘If I were to be weighed against my community, I would outweigh them’; [devotionally] obedient, to God, yielding and compliant before Him in such a way that not a single hair of his moves except by His command, as the warrant of the affirmation of [His] Oneness holds sway over him, his attributes having been effaced by His attributes and hi being united with His Essence. That is why he [Abraham] was called ‘God’s Intimate Friend’, because the Truth has befriended him in his presential vision; thus His friendship [of Abraham] represents an admixture of a remnant of his essence that verges on a duality. Do you not see how the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, when there no longer remained any remnant of him, was called the Beloved of God. Thus the effacement of his attributes in the attributes of the Truth totally and the subsisting of a vestige of his essence but not his entity constitutes his [devotional] obedience (qunūt) to God, else he would have been obedient through God and not to God, as He said to Muḥammad, blessings and peace be upon him: and your patience is only by [the help of] God [Q. 16:127]; a ḥanīf, who inclines away from every falsehood, even from his own existence and the existence of anything that is other than Him, exalted be He, and refuses to affirm that [thing]; and he was not of the idolaters, by attributing existence and effect to another;

grateful [as he was] for His graces, in other words, putting them to the use in the way which they ought to be [put], since he disposes of these [graces] by means of God’s attributes, such that his acts become divine and sought for their essence and not for some [other] purpose. In this way he is the power and the ability to direct every grace only towards that which constitutes its perfection as entailed by divine wisdom and [His] timeless solicitude. He chose him, selecting him for the first solicitude without the intermediary of a deed on his part and that is because he is one of the beloved [of God] for whom the fairest reward has already gone forth from Him, such that for them unveilings precede their wayfaring; and He guided him to a straight path, that is to say, after the unveiling and the affirmation of the Oneness and the arrival at the source of union, He guided him to the wayfaring along His path so that his example might be followed, and He brings him back to the multiplicity from the unity and to the separation after the concentration in order to fulfil what is due to every person in the way of the levels of differentiation and [in order] to clarify the rules governing the [divine] self-disclosures at the station of fixity and uprightness. For otherwise, he would not be fit for prophethood.

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 you, that is to say, after these charisms and good things which We gave him in both abodes, We [also] honoured him and exalted him by Our commanding of you to follow him: [saying]: ‘Follow the creed of Abraham, in the affirmation of Oneness and the principles of religion, which do not change from one divine law to another, such as the matter of the origin and the final return, the gathering and the reckoning and the like of these; but not in the sub-branches of the law, their contexts and their stipulations, as these change in accordance with what is best [at a given point in time] and [in accordance] with the different times and natures and the states of people in terms of habits and character traits.

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.

Call to the way of your Lord, to the end [of the verse]: let your call be confined to these three aspects, because the one being called [by you] will either be devoid of denial or not. If he is devoid [of it], by virtue of being at the station of simply ignorance without believing in anything, then he will either be one who is prepared and not incapable of perceiving demonstrated proof, indeed, will be given to demonstration by nature or not. If he is [of] the former [kind] then call him with wisdom and speak to him by means of demonstration and argued proof and guide him to the path of the affirmation of Oneness through gnosis. If his preparedness is deficient, then call him with fair exhortation and profound counsel in the way of warnings and good tidings, promises [of Paradise] and threats [of Hellfire], calls to restraint and inspiring [in him] awe, gentleness and making him desirous. If he is a denier of composite ignorance and false beliefs, then dispute with him by way of that which is best, by invalidating the beliefs to which he adheres in his school of thought gently and considerately in a way that would indicate to him that you are simply establishing the truth and invalidating falsehood and have no other objective. Truly your Lord knows best those who stray from His way, from pre-eternity, by virtue of that person’s original wretchedness and so none of these three ways brings about any result in his case; and He knows best those who are guided, those who are prepared for and receptive to guidance on account of the purity of [their] primordial nature.

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 patience? 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. Each time that a light of the august glories of the lights of the Beauty appears to them they are consumed [by it] and are annihilated [therein], and each time that a veil is thrust infront of them and their faces are turned back as a way of making them yearn and an exaltation for them they taste of the pain of yearning and the burning of separation what their patience can no longer bear and their death is verified. That is of the states belonging to the lovers [of God] and there is nothing more burdensome than this [type of] patience and more difficult to bear and more deadly. If the lover is able to bear it then he is hidden and if he is unable to he is annihilated and destroyed in it. Shiblī [famously] said [the following] with regard to this station:

He vied patiently against patience until patience called out for his help

Whereupon the lover cried out: ‘Patience, with patience!’

In other words, the lover vied against patience patiently until patience sought his help when he was on the verge of being exhausted, whereupon the lover cried out ‘be patient and endure patiently’ exhaustion and destruction for therein lies success and prosperity. Patience by [means of] God is for the people of fixity at the station of uprightness, those whom God has totally annihilated and in whom He has left no remnant of ego or duality, and upon whom He then bestows existence from His Essence such that they subsist in Him and act through His attributes. That is one of God’s character traits, exalted be He, and none has any share in it, which is why He enjoined it upon him [the Prophet] and then clarified that that patience to which you have been enjoined does not belong with the other types of patience such that it can exist by means of your soul or your heart. Rather it is My patience, one which you can exercise only by means of Me and which you can bear only by means of My strength. It is because of the inability of his [the Prophet’s] strength to fulfil [the requirements of] this [type of] patience that he [once] said: ‘Sūrat Hūd has made my hairs turn grey’.

And do not grieve for them, by [succumbing to] variegations at the heart manifesting itself through its attribute, because the person who enjoys this [type of] patience sees things with the eye of the truth, so that everything that issues from them he sees as being an act of God, and every attribute manifested in them, he sees as one of His self-disclosures and he also rejects what is morally indecent by means of His judgement, since God has made him see various kinds of self-disclosures, those of vanquishing, gentleness, wrath and satisfaction, and [because] He has made him aware of His judgements and has commanded him to execute [His] judgements in their [proper] places; nor be in distress because of that which they scheme, as your breast is opened up to Me. So be with them as you see how I am with them, conducting yourself as I do and subsisting through Me and by My command.

Truly God is with those who guard themselves, against their remnants and their egos by expending themselves in the unity and immersing themselves in the source of the union, and those who are virtuous, through their presential vision of the unity at the source of multiplicity, and through obedience at the source of disobedience and through [their] observance of command and prohibition at the station of uprightness, and through [their] retaining the dues of differentiation at the source of the union so that the separation does not veil them from the concentration, nor the concentration from the separation, and they are able to be mindful of the Truth and [His] creatures, returning to multiplicity with a heart present that is from [Him] the Truth.