Glory be to Him Who carried, that is, [Who] raised him above [the blemishes of] material appendages and the deficiencies of similarity by the tongue of the state of disengagement and perfection at the station of servanthood wherein lies no power of disposal whatsoever, by night, that is, in the darkness of corporeal coverings and attachments of physical nature, since ascension and elevation can only be by means of the body, from the Sacred Mosque, that is, from the station of the sacred heart lest the idolater that are the corporeal faculties should circumambulate it and commit therein their acts of indecency and sins, and lest the misguided one of the animal faculties, the bestial and the predatorial — whose exposed shameful aspects, their excess and immoderation, by virtue of their being denuded from the garb of virtue — should perform the pilgrimage [there], to the Farthest Mosque, which is the station of the spirit, that is the furthest from the world of physical bodies, by means of the presential vision of the self-disclosures of the Essence and the august glories of the Face. Remember what we mentioned [before] about [the fact] that the rectification of each station can only be after rising to the one above it, so that you might understand His words ‘that We might show him some of Our signs’ as [denoting] the witnessing of the attributes. For even if the contemplation of the self-disclosures of the attributes should take place at the station of the heart, the Essence that is qualified by these attributes can only be witnessed in its perfection through the attributes of the Majesty and the Beauty upon rising to the station of the spirit. In other words, that We might show him some the signs of Our attributes from the point of view that these [attributes] are ascribed to Us and that We are witnessed by them and exteriorised in their forms. Indeed He is the Hearing, of his [the Prophet’s] communions at the station of mystery seeking annihilation, the Seeing, of the potency of his preparedness and of his orientation to the locus of presential vision and his attraction thereto by the intensity of his love and the perfectedness of his yearning [for God].

And We gave Moses, the heart, the Book of knowledge, and made it a guidance for the Children of Israel, that is, the faculties who are the grandchildren of Israel the spirit: [saying] that they should not choose beside Me any guardian, that they should not proceed headstrong with their acts or independently in seeking their perfections and shares and that they should not seek to earn according to the requirements of their motivations or delegate their affair to the Satan of estimation lest he seduce you with corporeal pleasures, nor [delegate] to the intellect of livelihood lest it should employ you to nurture it and make it righteous. Nay, delegate your affair to Me so that I might manage you with the provisions of knowledge, gnoses, configurations of character traits and virtues, and that I might perfect you with the reinforcements of lights from the world of the heart and the spirit through the assistance of the Holiness and that I might send down upon from the worlds of the angelic realm and the realm of divine power what would avail you of the earnings of the realm of human nature, I mean:

[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 to the Children of Israel, the faculties, in the Book of the Preserved Tablet, in other words, We judged therein: ‘You shall indeed work corruption in the land twice: once at the station of the soul when it is commanding, at which point you will work corruption in seeking your passionate desires and your pleasures, and you shall indeed become great tyrants’, by dominating the heart, overcoming it and becoming masters over it and preventing it from its perfection and putting its reflective faculty to the service of actualising your demands and your goals; and again at the station of the heart when you adorn yourselves with virtues and are illumined by the light of the heart and manifest yourselves in the bliss of your perfections, you will work corruption in manifesting yourselves through your perfections and in the veiling of the heart with your virtues from the presential vision of the self-disclosure of the Oneness. Luminous veils are more powerful than veils of darkness because of their delicateness and subtlety and because of their conceptualisation of perfections with which it is necessary to halt; and you shall indeed become great tyrants at the station of primordial nature by domineering through intellectual configurations and human perfections.

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 are virtuous, in actualising the perfections of character traits and rational opinions, you are being virtuous to your own souls, and if you do evil, by earning vices and corporeal configurations, it is for them’. So when the time for the other [prophecy] comes, at the annihilation in the Oneness, We roused against you servants in the way of holy lights, self-disclosures of the Majesty and vanquishing august glories from among the divine attributes as well as the hosts of the warrant of the [divine] Tremendousness and Augustness, that they might ravage your countenances, your existences by means of annihilation in the Oneness so that you are overcome by the gloom of the loss of perfections by having these vanquished and taken away, and that they might enter, the temple of the heart, just as they entered it the first time, and the effect thereof reached you in the way of [your acquisition of] forms of knowledge and virtues, and that they might destroy all that they conquered, when they manifested themselves in its [the heart’s] perfection and excellence and were proud to see its adornments and bliss, utterly, by being annihilated in the attributes of God.

It may be that your Lord will have mercy upon you, after subjugating [you] through annihilation and effacing [you] through the self-disclosures of the attributes by means of giving [you] life and that He will resurrect you by means of subsistence after annihilation and reward you with what no eye has [ever] seen, no ear has [ever] heard of or has [ever] occurred to the mind of a human; but if you revert, through variegations at the station of annihilation by manifesting yourselves in your I-ness, We [too] will revert, with subjugation and annihilation, as He says [further on]: And if We had not made you [stand] firm, certainly you might have inclined to them a little. Then We would have surely made you taste a double in life and a double upon death. Then you would not have found for yourself any helper against Us [Q. 17:74-75]; and We have made the Hellfire, of physical nature, for the disbelievers, who are veiled from the lights, those who remain upon the [way of] corruption at the first time, a dungeon, a jail and a prison that confines them to the chastisement of veiledness and privation from reward.

Truly this Qurʾān 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.

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 We have attached every person’s omen upon his neck, that is to say, We have made his felicity and his wretchedness, the cause of goodness or [the cause] of evil for him a concomitant of his essence that adheres [to him] in the way that a necklace adheres to the neck, as he [the Prophet] once said: ‘The fortunate one is the one who has been [appointed as] fortunate in his mother’s womb and the wretched one is the one who has been [appointed as] wretched in his mother’s womb’; and We shall bring forth for him on the Day of, the minor, Resurrection, upon his exiting from the tomb of his body, a book, a frame that takes the form of his deeds and which is attached around his neck, which he will find, given that it adheres to him, wide open, because of those configurations appearing therein in actuality in detail, and not folded [shut] as it had been when those [configurations] were there in potential.

It will be said to him: ‘Read your book!: in other words read as one who has been commanded and is obedient to the command of an Obeyed Commanding One who commands him to read, or who is commanded [to read] by the angelic faculties, whether he reads or not, for deeds then shall be imaginalised according to their configurations and forms so that they will be recognised by all, and will not be written in letters so that an illiterate one is unable to recognise them. This day your soul suffices as your own reckoner’: because his soul shall witness what it did adhering to it, before its very eyes, in detail. It is unable to deny it and so someone other than it elucidates that for it.

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 Him? [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.

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 Qurʾān] 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 Qurʾān] 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 Qurʾān] 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 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.

And verily We have honoured the Children of Adam, with [the faculties of] speech and discrimination, the intellect and gnosis, and carried them over land and sea, that is, We have facilitated for them the means for [their] livelihood and [their] final return in their ability to journey to seek these [means] across the two and to actualise these [means], and We have provided them with good things, that is, with [those] composite things which no creatures other than them have been provided with, and We have preferred them above many of those whom We created, with the exception of the holy essences of the High Council. As for the preferment of certain humans, like prophets, over the near angels, it is not because of the fact that they are sons of Adam, since from that perspective they do not go beyond the station of the intellect, but it is rather from the perspective of the mystery that has been deposited in them, the one alluded to by His words Assuredly I know what you know not [Q. 2:30], which is the complete divine gnosis which He has prepared for that certain individual by means of the concentration in him, namely, the station of unity. In that instance, considered thus, he is not a son of Adam, as has been said:

‘Even if I am indeed a son of Adam in form, I also have a meaning within that is witness of my paternity [of him]’.

Nay, indeed he is the very essence of the honoured one, the one who is known, as has been said:

‘I saw my Lord with the eye of my Lord; He said, “Who are you?”, and I said, “You”.

In this station, the son of Adam has been annihilated and nothing of him remain — how else [could it be] when one is dust and the other the Lord of lords! Or [the verse means] that We have honoured the sons of Adam with proximity and knowledge of the affirmation of Oneness and have carried them over the land of the world of bodies and the sea of the world of spirits by making him journey across them since he is composed of them; and [We have honoured him] by making him rise higher in seeking perfection and We have provided them with the good things that are the forms of knowledge and gnosis and We have preferred them over a great number of what We have created, that is to say, [over] all creatures, provided that [the preposition] min [of mimman] is explicative and hyperbolic, intended to exalt him by describing those [creatures] over whom preferment is being expressed as being ‘many’ and by making the qualifier indefinite and placing this [indefinite] before what it qualifies, in other words, the [qualifier] kathīr (‘many’). Yet, what ‘many’ can it be when in fact it is the entirety of Our creatures by virtue of the fact that min is used to indicate generality;^{1As opposed to being simply partitive.} with a marked preferment, one that is complete and clear.

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 ʿĀʾisha, may God, exalted be He, be pleased with her, once said that his character trait was [shaped by] the Qurʾān, 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…? [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 Qurʾān], 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 Qurʾānic passages] during the sunset prayer and others, since it is an indication of that [veiling?]. The prayer that is most repelling of Satan and the one that is most illuminating for a human’s inner being is the prayer of the presence of the heart, the one suggested by [the phrase] ‘the recital [of the Qurʾān] at dawn’, since it takes place during the moment of the self-disclosures of the lights of the [divine] attributes and the of the coming down of the [divine] unveilings. That is why it is preferable that the congregation for the morning prayer be a substantial one and the preference for this prayer to be performed in congregation has been emphasised specifically as well as the lengthening of [Qurʾānic] recitation [during it]. God, exalted be He, says: Verily the dawn recital is ever witnessed, that is, it enjoys a presence, the presence of the angels of the night and those of the day, an allusion to the coming down of the attributes of the heart and their lights and the flight of the attributes of the soul and their disappearance. The [prayer that is the] strongest in making the soul stand firm and become obedient is the prayer of the soul for reassurance and steadfastness, which is why it is recommended practice (sunna) according to what has been understood as a sign for that in terms of the [late] evening prayer that one enters into silence thereafter until [the time for] sleep, except if it is to remember God. If there should be the possibility that Satan might cast his evil whispers, it is recommended that one recite aloud, as in the prayer of the soul, that of the heart and of the secret in order to drive [him] away; but at the station of the spirit and hiddenness, he has no way in, which is why one is commanded to recite inaudibly.

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 Qurʾānic Intellect^{1See Kāshānī’s commentary, above, at Q. 3:3 and note thereto.} 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: ‘Everyone acts according to his [own] character, that is, [according to] his makeup and his predominant natural disposition in his station. Thus the one whose station is the soul and whose character is the requirements of its [his soul’s] natural traits, he will do what we have mentioned in the way of being disregardful and despairing. The one whose station is the heart and whose character is the virtuous temperament he will exercise gratitude and patience in accordance with its requirements; and your Lord knows best who is better guided as to the way’, from among [all] doers, the one who does good as entailed by the temperament of the heart and the one who does evil as entailed by the nature of the soul and He will recompense both in accordance with their deeds.

And they will question you concerning the Spirit. Say: ‘The Spirit is of the command of my Lord, not from the world of creation so as to enable one to define it for the exoterics, those preoccupied with bodies, whose perception does not go beyond sense and what is sensory, seeking similarities with what they have felt and [seeking] descriptions. Rather, It [the Spirit] belongs to the world of the command, that is, [the world] of origination, which is the world of essences that are disengaged from primordial matter and of substances that are sanctified from shape, colour, direction and whereness. Therefore you are unable to perceive It, you who are veiled by engendered being, by the shortcoming of your perception and your knowledge with regard to It. And of knowledge you have not been given except a little’, namely, knowledge of sensory things, which is [a] trivial and paltry [quantity] in comparison to the knowledge of God, exalted be He, and [that of] those who are deeply rooted in knowledge.

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 Qurʾān, 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 expressed? 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 Qurʾān 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 Qurʾān]. 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 Qurʾān 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: ‘Believe in it or do not believe: in other words, your existences are tantamount to non-existence from Our point of view. The purpose of this [Qurʾān] is not to guide you since your hearts are [already] imprinted [with disbelief], having no place with God or in existence since you are devotees of the land of contigent existence, bereft of entific essence. It is those who have knowledge who are considered here, those who possess existence before God in the world of subsistence, those who are [ever] the exemplars in the [revealed] messages. See how they are when it is recited to them and when they hear it: they fall down, that is, they yield to it, acknowledge it and know the truth of it by virtue of their knowledge of it and their familiarity with it through the luminosity of [their] preparedness and correspondence to it and through the light of their perfection, by virtue of their disengagement and their knowledge that it is a promised book from God and that it could only be it [the Qurʾān] when they found it to correspond to what they had believed out of certainty, as true belief can only be one;

and it increases them in humility’, by making them [spiritually] more pliant and more yielding to His judgement, because they are affected by it and because of their virtuous receptivity in accepting it.

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].