Praise be to God Who created the heavens and the earth: the manifestation of perfections and the attributes of the Beauty and the Majesty in the loci of the differentiations of existents in their entirety — which is the universal perfection and the nondelimited praise — is specific to the All-comprehensive Divine Essence that combines all of Its attributes and names, in view of the origins, [the Essence] which brought into existence the heavens of the world of spirits and the earth of the world of body, and originated in the world of the body the darknesses of its [various] levels, which [levels] are veils of darkness [that veil] from His Essence, and [originated] in the world of the spirits the light of knowledge and perception; then, that is, after the manifestation of these signs [of His], those who disbelieve, those who are veiled absolutely, ascribe as equals to their Lord, other than Him, affirming [the existence of] an existent that is equal to Him with respect to existence.

It is He Who created you from clay, primordial matter, then He decreed a term, non-delimited, not designated by any time or configuration, because the establishing of the fixed [divine] decree, which is the mother book, is a universality that transcends time, ever above individualised entities, since its locus is the first spirit that is sanctified above attachment to locus; and thus this [term] is the term which preparedness requires by nature as per its ipseity, that which is called the natural term in consideration of that same special constitution and the specific composition, without consideration of any temporal accidents; and a term stated, specified, with Him, that is the predetermined temporal term which comes to pass necessarily when the preconditions obtain and impediments are removed, and which is established in the Book of the soul of the celestial sphere, that is, the Tablet of Destiny that is joined to, and a concomitant of, a designated time, as God says when their term comes they shall not delay it a single hour nor bring it forward [Q. 7:34]; yet thereafter, after you have known His power to originate you and to annihilate you, and that His knowledge encompasses you, you are in doubt with regard to Him and His power, and thus you affirm effect and power for other than Him.

And He is God, in the form of the All, His divinity is the same both in the upper world and the lower one; He knows your secrets, in the world of spirits, which is the world of the unseen; and your utterance, in the world of bodies, which is the world of witness, and He knows what you earn, in both [worlds], in the way of forms of knowledge, beliefs, states, motions, stillnesses, and deeds, the moral and the corrupt ones, the sound and the erroneous, as well as the good and the evil ones, and He will thus recompense you accordingly.

And had We appointed him, [Muḥammad] the Messenger, an angel, We would assuredly have made him a man, that is to say, We would have given him corporeal form, because an angel is light which is imperceptible to vision; they^{1They being those addressed by the verse, the Meccan unbelievers in historical terms, but all who are spiritually deficient in terms of this commentary.} are a folk [aware only] of externals and are unable to perceive anything except what is sensory. But every sensory thing is either a body or a corporeal form. There is no form that corresponds to an angel who utters the truth such that he might be able to assume it physically, except for the human form, either because he should be a rational-speaking soul which would require such a form, or because of the necessary existence of genus-correspondence without which they would not be able to hear or receive speech from him.

[God] He has prescribed for Himself mercy, that is to say, He has obligated His essence to it in the sense that it [mercy] is the effusion of goodness and perfection in a manner commensurate with the preparedness [for it] of the recipient entities. Thus there is not a single individual deserving [by virtue of his preparedness] of the mercy of existence or perfection but is granted it upon his deservingness being actualised. He will surely gather you together on the Day of, the minor, Resurrection, and the restoration, or the major one,^{1According to Kāshānī’s Kitāb Iṣṭilāḥāt al-Ṣūfiyya (s.v. qiyāma): ‘Resurrection into eternal life after death may be divided into three types. The first is the resurrection, following physical death, into a life within either the higher or the lower Intermediate Worlds, depending on the state of the dead person during life on earth […] [t]his is the Minor Resurrection […] The second is the resurrection, after voluntary death, into the eternal life of the Heart of in the Holy world […] This is the Immediate Resurrection […] The third is the resurrection, after annihilation in God, into the life of reality, whilst enduring within Truth. This is the Major Resurrection’: tr. Nabil Safwat, A Glossary of Sufi Technical Terms. London: Octogan Press, 1991, 98.} at the source of the nondelimited union, of which there is no doubt: [there is no doubt] in either of the two gatherings, in the same matter upon verification, even if those who are veiled are not aware of it, being: those who have forfeited their souls, by leading them to destruction by [their indulgence of] lusts, transient pleasures and the love of what is quick to perish in the way of the ephemera of this world. A person will be gathered [to the resurrection] with whatever constitutes his object of love. Thus such [individuals] by their love of those [things] and their being veiled by them are blind to the enduring luminous realities, taking in place of them dark and evanescent sensory objects; they do not believe.

Say: ‘I have been commanded to be the first to submit: He says this even as He says Then We revealed to you [saying]: ‘Follow the creed of Abraham, a ḥanīf, and he was not of the idolaters’ [Q. 16:123], and likewise where Moses says ‘Glory be to You! I repent to You and I am the first of the believers’ [Q. 7:143], because the levels of spirits differ in proximity to and distance from the divine ipseity; and every individual who is more distant, his faith is effected through the medium of the one who is ahead of him in level. The people of the unity are all at the divine level, the people of the foremost rank, whose faith is without mediation, whereas the faith of all others is through the mediation of these [foremost] ones, for each who is ahead [from among the former there is the mediation of] one who is ahead [from among the foremost rank]. Every individual whose faith involves no mediation becomes ‘the first of the believers’, even if his existence comes later in terms of time, as the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said: ‘We are the later one and those who are the first’. Thus his following of the creed of Abraham does not detract of his [Muḥammad’s] precedence, because the meaning of ‘following’ is to journey along the path of the affirmation of Oneness as in his journeying in the first epoch, and the meaning of his being of the first is his being among the foremost rank with those who have preceded.

And He is the Vanquisher over His servants, by His annihilation of their essences, attributes and acts by His essence, attributes and acts, such that His vanquishing power is in effect the very source of His graciousness (luṭf), just as He was gracious to them by bringing them into existence, granting the capacity and the power to partake of different kinds of enjoyments and prepared for them what they wanted of different kinds of graces and desires of the appetite by which they were veiled from Him: that is His very vanquishing. Glory then be to the One whose mercy embraces His friends even with the intensity of His retribution and whose retribution is severe against His enemies while His mercy is all-embracing; and He is the Wise, who does what He does in terms of outward vanquishing that entails all-embracing graciousness within, or [who does what He does] in terms of outward graciousness that entails total vanquishing within by His wisdom; the Aware, the One who has knowledge of the hidden aspects of their states and the deservingness of these of grace or vanquishing.

And who does greater evil than he who invents a lie against God, by affirming the existence of any other than Him, or denies, His attributes by manifesting the attributes of his own soul and thus commits idolatrous association with Him, when the utmost in evildoing is to associate [others] with God. They the evildoers shall not prosper, because of their being veiled by what they have placed in the place of God’s essence and attributes.

And on the day We shall gather them all together, at the source of the union of the Essence, then We shall say to those who associated [others] with God, by affirming [the existence of] others: ‘Where are those associates of yours whom you were claiming?’, for the universal annihilation in the self-disclosure of the Essence.

Then, upon the self-disclosure of the state and the issuing forth of all before the Vanquishing King, the ultimate in their idolatrous association and its consequence, was only to say, ‘By God, our Lord we were never idolaters’, because of the impossibility of anything existing with which to associate God.

See how they lie to their souls, by falsely ascribing existence and attributes to these [souls], and how that which they were forging has failed them!, such that they do not find it to be anything, rather they found it to be nothing except the forgery [itself]; or [it means] that they lied to their own souls by denying their idolatrous association, despite the firm-rootedness of that tendency in them.

If you could see when they are made to stand before, the fire of privation and the torture of the configurations of their dark souls and the mastery that forms of forged things have acquired over them in chastisement; and they say, ‘Oh if only we might be returned and not deny the signs of our Lord, such as the self-disclosures of His attributes, and be among the believers!’, who are affirmers of the Oneness, then [our situation] would be what cannot be described.

Nay it has now become evident, manifest, to them that which they used to conceal, in the way of corrupt beliefs, ruinous attributes and dark configurations because of their issuing forth before God and the inversion of their inner aspect into an outer one such that they are chastised thereby; and even if they were returned, they would return to that which they are forbidden, because of the firm-rootedness of these [corrupt] beliefs and traits in them; they are truly liars, in this world and in the Hereafter, for mendacity is a trait firmly rooted in them.

If you could see when they are made to stand before their Lord, at the major resurrection, and this [that follows] is an imagined representation of their state in terms of their veiledness and distance, for otherwise there would be no words and no response at that [moment] because of their being deprived from the presence and the witnessing, even though they might be at the source of nondelimited union. Know that ‘to stand before’ (waqafa ʿalā) something is different from ‘to stand with’ (waqafa maʿa) it, for to stand with something is voluntary and willingly done, whereas to stand before something can only be by coercion or out of aversion. Thus the one who stands with God in [his] affirmation of Oneness — like the one who said, ‘Desire stands whence you [stand] and I can neither walk behind it nor ahead [of it]’ — will not be made to stand for the reckoning. Rather he will be among those of the greatest prize of whom He says: and restrain yourself along with those who call upon their Lord at morning and evening, desiring His countenance [Q. 18:28]; you are not accountable for them in anything [Q. 6:52];^{1Kāshānī here means to recite the entirety of Q. 6:52, and this is certain from the lack of any conjunction between the two verses in the Arabic. He inadvertently cites Q. 18:28 which has similar wording but begins with ‘and restrain yourself with those who call …’, whereas Q. 6:52 has ‘and do not drive away those who call …’} and he will be rewarded by all kinds of bliss in all of the gardens. As for the one who stands with the other through idolatrous association, he will stand before the Lord and will be chastised with all manner of chastisement in the [various] levels of all the fires, because of his veil being denser and his unbelief greater. As for the one who stands with the human realm (nāsūt) by his love of pleasures and desires and lingers in the veil of the vestiges [thereof], he will stand before the spiritual realm (malakūt) and chastised with the fires of privation from what is desired and unleashed on him shall be the Zabāniya angels [cf. Q. 96:18] of [his] dark configurations and he will be bounded together with the devils of [his] ruinous caprices. As for the one who stands with the acts, having emerged from the veil of the vestiges, he will stand before the realm of divine power (jabarūt) and will be chastised with the fire of ambition and hope and is returned to the station of the spiritual realm (malakūt). As for the one who stands with the attributes, having emerged from the veil of the acts, he will stand before the Essence and is chastised with the fire of yearning in abandonment, even if he should be of the folk of [divine] satisfaction; but this standing is not the standing before the Lord, for the one who is made to stand before the Essence knows his Lord as qualified by the attributes of graciousness, such as the Merciful, the Tender, and the Generous, unlike the one who is made to stand before the Lord; and this is thus the veil of the ego, just as the one who stands with the acts is in the veil of His descriptions, and the one who stands with the human realm is in the veil of His acts which belong to the totality of vestiges. The idolater is made to stand therefore before all four standings: firstly, before the Lord where he is veiled through distance and banishment, as He says Begone in it despicably and do not speak to Me [Q. 23:108] and [where] He says Then taste the chastisement for that you disbelieved [Q. 6:30]; then [secondly], before the realm of divine power (jabarūt) where he is banished with wrath and vanquishing, as He says and God shall not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection nor look upon them [Q. 3:77]; then [thirdly], before the spiritual realm where he is rebuked with anger and being cursed as is said [by God] Enter the gates of Hell [Q. 40:76]; then [fourthly], before the Fire where he is chastised with all kinds of fires forever, as He says by the tongue of [the Hell-keeper angel] Mālik [Nay] you will surely remain [Q. 43:77]. Thus his standing before the Fire comes after his standing before the Lord, receiving its justification from it, as He says then to Us is their return; then We shall make them taste terrible chastisement for what they used to disbelieve in [Q. 10:70]. As for the one who stands with the human realm, he will stand for the reckoning before the spiritual realm then before the Fire but may be turned away [from it] if [divine] wrath is non-existent, or may not be turned away if it is existent. As for the one who stands with the acts, he is not made to stand before the Fire in the first place, rather he is reckoned with [promptly] and is admitted into the Garden. As for the one who stands with the attributes, he will be among those with whom God is satisfied and who are satisfied with Him. But God knows best the realities of matters.

They indeed are losers who, are veiled, who are deniers of the encounter with the Truth, until when, the minor resurrection, comes upon them, they are remorseful for being remiss about it, and they shall be bearing their loads, in the way of the burdens of attachment [to the material] and the acts arising from the love of corporeal things, as well as the evil consequences of misdeeds and the sins arising from the configurations of sensory things, on their backs: in other words, these [burdens] shall mount them and assume mastery over them, firmly rooted as these are in their souls, veiling them, causing them [to suffer] chastisement and impeding them from what they desire.

The life of this world, that is, the sensory life — since what is sensory is closer to creatures than what is intelligible — is nothing but a game, nothing but something without foundation or reality, quick to perish and become extinct; surely the abode of the Hereafter, that is, the world of spiritual beings, is better for those who, disengage from the vestments of the attributes of mortals and corporeal pleasures. What, do you not understand?, so as to prefer the nobler, the more wholesome to the viler, the lowlier that is perishing.

We know indeed that it grieves you: this is a reprimand to the Messenger of God for the manifestation of his soul by means of grief; they do not deny you, to the end [of the verse]: that is, their denial is not a denial of you, since in this summoning you do not subsist by means of your own soul, nor is this speech an attribute of yours. Rather you summon them by means of God and His attributes: this is an established habit [of God].

Messengers indeed have been denied before you; yet they endured patiently, through God. He has given him solace through Himself after reprimanding him, lest he subsist within the variegation and so that he might not be sorry after it has departed from him and end up in [a state of] constriction, but rather so that his heart might be reassured, which is why He follows that with His words: There is none to change the words of God, that is, the attributes of God by which He discloses Himself to His servants. These are not replaced, nor are they changed by the denial of the deniers; nor are these [deniers] able to change [His attributes]. He then denies him any power and declares him as incapable with His words:

And if their aversion is grievous for you, then, if you can, to the end [of the verse] is lest that his soul should manifest itself by means of its attributes. So do not be among the ignorant, who are unaware of the wisdom [inherent] in the discrepancy between preparednesses, and then be sorry about the veiledness of those who are veiled. For the divine will has decreed that some be guided and some be deprived because of the wisdom with which the [spiritual] system is organised and [because of] the manifestation of outer and inner perfections. So the only ones to respond [to God] are those the auditory channels of whose hearts God has opened by means of primordial guidance (hidāya aṣliyya) and on whom He has bestowed true life by means of the attributes of preparedness and the light of primordial nature. Not the dead of ignorance [is it who respond to God], whose natural instincts are dead by means of composite ignorance or by means of the veils of innate disposition, or who did not possess any preparedness in accordance with primordial nature. Such are unable to hearm, rather:

God will resurrect them, through restoration at the second creation, and then to Him they will be returned, at the source of nondelimited union for the recompense or reward, despite their veiledness. It is possible the veils are removed in the Hereafter for the latter group exceptionally from among all of the rest.

[And they say, ‘Why has a sign not been sent down to him from his Lord?’ Say, ‘Surely God has the power to send down a sign] but most of them have no knowledge’: about the sending down of signs. For the manifestation of each one of His attributes in every one of the loci of engendered beings is a sign of Him by which those who have knowledge are able to know Him.

There is no animal on the earth, to the end [of the verse], but can undergo transfiguration (maskh), being communities like you in terms of veiledness, enmity, and the commission of vices, such as the people of the [breaking of the] Sabbath, who were transfigured into apes and swine. We have not neglected, We have not diminished [anything] of their Book which contains the forms of their deeds, which is the scroll of the soul of the celestial sphere, or the scroll of their intention in which the forms of their deeds are fixed; then to their Lord they shall be gathered, for the recompense, veiled at the source of the nondelimited union. Manifestly it seems that what is meant [here] is that they are communities like you under the care of a Lord in terms of what they need in the way of their [sources of] livelihood, with their provisions sufficiently taken care of by a measure determined by God and [by] His wisdoms. We have not left out anything from the Book of the Preserved Tablet that might benefit them; rather We have fixed therein their provisions, terms of life, deeds and everything which they might need; then to their Lord they shall be gathered to be recompensed for their deeds, as related in a ḥadīth about the gathering of beasts and the mutual retaliation between them for deeds [committed in this life], every one of which is a sign for you [a sign] by which your states, your provisions, your terms of life and your deeds can be known. Heed these [signs] then and do not expend your resolves (himam) and your efforts in the pursuit of provision or to rectify the affairs of the life of this world and then end up forsaking your souls, harming them and being wretched because of them in the Hereafter.

And those who deny, the self-disclosures of Our attributes, because of their being veiled by the coverings of the attributes of their souls; are deaf, in the ears of their hearts and thus do not hear the words of truth, and dumb, in the tongues of these [hearts], which constitute their intellects and so they cannot speak the truth in the darknesses of the attributes of their souls and the cloaks of their bodies and the coverings of their natural traits, like animals: how then are they to affirm your truthfulness when God has not through His facilitation guided them thereto? He whom God wills, He sends astray, by letting the veils of His Majesty hang down, and whom He wills, He sets him on a straight path, by allowing for the irradiation of the light of His face and the august glories of His beauty.

Say, ‘Do you see yourselves, to the end [of the verse]: in other words, every committer of idolatrous association when he ends up in the chastisement or at the moment of death — if we interpret ‘the Hour’ as meaning the minor resurrection — or [when] the veil is removed as a result of being guided by the Truth to the true affirmation of Oneness — if we interpret it as meaning the major resurrection — [that idolater] he will dissociate from [claims made of] the power and strength of that which he associated with God and will ascertain that there is no power or strength except in God. And he will call only upon God and will forget all the agents to whom he was attached and whom he associated with God, which is why it is said that affliction is one of God’s scourges by which He drives His servants. Do you not see how He follows these words of His by comparing them to the seizing with misery and hardship after the sending of messengers, that perhaps the doubling of the causes of graciousness such as the leadership of prophets and the driving [of them] through punishment might stir them from the established abodes of their souls and break their vehemence and the severity of their contemptuousness, that such a person might become obedient and emerge from the veil, and that they might then comply humbly upon the self-disclosure of the attribute of vanquishing and its impact upon them. Then He makes it clear that the reason why they did not humble themselves is because of the hardness of their hearts as a result of the density of their veil and being overpowered by the deceit of caprice and the love of this world and the inclination to corporeal pleasures.

And warn therewith those who fear, that is to say, warn with what has been revealed to you the prepared ones who are the folk of fear and hope, and turn away from those whose hearts have hardened for it [the warning] brings no results with them, as He said at the beginning of the Book [that It is] a guidance for the God-fearing [Q. 2:2], that they shall be gathered to their Lord: apart from Him they have no protector and no intercessor, so that they know through the purity of their preparedness that the return to God is inevitable, that they might fear to be gathered before Him in a state in which they are veiled from Him by the veils of their attributes and acts, with no protector other than God to assist them and deliver them from the humiliation of remoteness and the chastisement of privation and no intercessor to intercede for them and bring them near to Him and bestow dignity on them, because all essences and powers are annihilated in God and [in] His vanquishing of them, as He says the day when they will emerge nothing about them will be hidden from God. ‘To whom does sovereignty belong today?’ ‘To God, the One, the Vanquisher’ [Q. 40:16]; and that they might be admonished by listening to it [sc. the revelation] so that there arises in them hope [for salvation] and they then embark upon the wayfaring in earnest and with industry, so that they might be wary, that they might be wary of the veils of their acts, their attributes and their essences and disengage from these through effacement and annihilation in God. It would be correct [to understand] that the protector [here] is the heart and the intercessor the spirit, in other words, that they have not yet arrived at the station of the heart, which is the protector of the soul that delivers it from chastisement and assist it against privation, nor [have they arrived] at the station of the spirit that it might intercede for them by reinforcing [the soul] with the support of propinquity, deriving its strength from God, and [by] acting as a means between them and God.

And do not banish those who call, that is, do not drive them away with this [revelation] while they are the folk of the unity, the perfect ones who have arrived, for warning, just as it is of no use with those whose hearts have hardened, is also of no benefit in the case of those whose hearts are fickle and dispersed with regard to God, upon their Lord at morning and evening, that is, always designating [their] worship exclusively for Him through presence of the heart and the presential vision of the spirit and the directing of [their] innermost secret to Him. They desire nothing but His essence in [their] worship by means of pre-eternal love. They do not justify their worship on the basis of some goal such as the expectation of the reward of the Garden or the fear of punishment or retribution; nor do they desire Him through the love of the attributes such that their desires change with the different self-disclosures of these [attributes]; nor do they deem it licit to make His essence an intermediary to [the actualisation of] some goal or pursuit. Rather, they have witnessed the annihilation of all means and intermediaries in Him and in their presential vision there remains nothing for them to cast their eyes upon, not even their essences; you are not accountable for them, in anything that they do, in other words, there is no mediator between them and their Lord in the way of a king or a prophet. Thus it is of no use for you to call them to obedience or to [spiritual] struggle or otherwise: their reckoning then is up to God, as their deeds are only [done] through God and in God; nor are they accountable for you in anything, that is to say, they do not involve themselves in the affairs of your mission [either] by supporting or assisting Islam, nor by averting or curbing disbelief, preoccupied as they are with the God to the exclusion of others and by the permanence of their presence, as He says and those who maintain their prayers [Q. 70:23], unconcerned with any affair relating to your or to your prophethood, that you should drive them away, from what they are upon in terms of the permanence of their presence by inciting them to some task relating to religion, or some welfare, or by disturbing their [spiritual] moment and their concentration (jamʿiyya), and be of the evildoers.

And even so We have tried, that is, with the like of such tremendous trial and affliction, We have tried, some of them, who are the veiled, by others, for those who are veiled, seeing from those [others] nothing but their form and their evil state outwardly as well as their poverty and need and not seeing their worth and their [spiritual] level and their goodly state inwardly, despise them and their eyes scorn them with regard to what they enjoy of wealth, repute, comfort and an easy life, and so they say [the following] about them: ‘Are these the ones whom God has favoured from among us?’, with guidance, sarcastically, when by God these they are the ones whose living is the most wholesome, their state and their waystation the most exalted and their measure and level the most magnificent before God and before those who know them, as Noah, peace be upon him, said Nor do I say to those whom your eyes scorn that God will not give them any good [Q. 11:31]: nay indeed, good and nothing but good is what God has given them. Is God not best aware of those who are thankful?, who are thankful to Him in reality by employing the grace of their existence, their attributes and their limbs and what He sustains them with in the way of provisions and sources of livelihood in acts of obedience to God. Thus they give thanks to Him in return for the outward grace by worshipping [Him] and conceptualising this [grace] as issuing from the Gracious One and expending it in acts that are pleasing to God; and in return for the grace of [having] limbs [they give thanks to Him] by using these [limbs] to worship Him and to wayfare upon His path, to actualise knowledge of Him and to know His attributes; and in return for the grace of attributes [they thank Him] by effacing them in God and by admitting their inability to [truly] know Him, thank Him and worship Him; and in return for the grace of existence [they thank Him] by means of annihilation in the source of presential vision such that God shows His appreciation of their effort by means of [granting them] existence bestowed from [His Name] the Truth and teaches them that He is the Appreciative One who is thanked for Himself by means of Himself, and that none except Him is able to [truly] thank Him. Hence they say, ‘Glory be to You: we have not come to know You in the way You truly deserve. Glory be to You: we have not worshipped You as You truly deserve to be worshipped’. That is His knowledge of their gratitude and His recompense [of it] from Him.

And when those who believe in Our signs, by effacing their attributes, come to you, say, ‘Peace be upon you, for exalting yourselves above the faults of your attributes and your disengagement from the garments of these [attributes]. Your Lord has prescribed for Himself mercy: He has committed His essence to replace your attributes with His attributes as a mercy for you, since in God there is compensation for all that has gone before: truly whoever of you does evil in ignorance, that is, upon whomever there manifests in his variegation one of his attributes as a result of absence or forgetfulness, but then returns from that variegation after the manifestation [upon him] of that attribute and rejoins the presence, having come to know that [attribute] and curbed it through repentance to God and humble submission before Him and [through] spiritual discipline, truly He is Forgiving, covering that [attribute] from him, Merciful’, to him by granting him fixity and the grace of uprightness.

And thus We distinguish the signs, that is, just like that clarification that We have made to these believers, We clarify to you Our attributes, and that it may become clear [to you] the way, of those who are veiled by their attributes, those who act on them in the [evil] way that they do, which is their crime.

Say: ‘Truly I have been forbidden to worship, those besides God whom you worship by your caprice in the way of wealth or soul or lust or corporeal pleasure or otherwise, but no: ‘I shall not follow your whims, by worshipping these and then end up astray by being veiled thereby and fail to be guided to the affirmation of Oneness. The significance of the [use of the] past tense [here of the verb qad ḍalaltu] is that my error would have been realised in such a situation and I would be nowhere near guidance.

And with Him are the keys of the Unseen, to the end [of the verse]: know that the unseen is made up of levels, the first of which is the unseen of unseens which is the knowledge of God called first solicitude; then comes the unseen of the world of spirits which is the engraving in an all-encompassing manner of the forms of all that has existed and will exist from pre-eternity and sempiternity in the first intelligible world which is the spirit of the world called the Mother Book, which is the preceding decree; then comes the unseen of the world of the hearts which is that very engraving itself differentiated in cognitive detail universally and particularly in the world of the universal soul, which is the heart of the world called the Preserved Tablet; then comes the unseen of the imaginal world, which is the engraving of engendered beings in their entirety within the particular souls of the celestial spheres imprinted in the celestial bodies therein entified, individuated and joined to their moments in accordance to the very thing that occurs: this world is the one referred to in the [revelations of the] law as the heaven of this world (al-samāʾ al-dunyā), since it is the nearest of the levels of the unseen to the world of witnessing and the tablet of divine predestination, which is the differentiated form of His decree. God’s knowledge, which is the first solicitude, entails His encompassing of all things by the presence of His essence in all of these worlds, which constitute the very source of His essence, such that He has knowledge of them together with all of the forms within them as individual entities and not through some additional form: [His] knowledge of these is the very thing that they are. Not even the weight of an atom escapes Him in the heavens or in the earth [Q. 34:3]. Thus if mafātiḥ is [taken as] the plural of maftaḥ, which is a ‘store’ (makhzan), then it means that with Him are those storehouses that subsume all of the unseens, by virtue of His essence being present therein; none but He knows them. If it is [taken as] the plural of miftaḥ, in the sens of ‘key’ (miftāḥ), then either it has that very meaning [of ‘keys’], in other words, that its doors are closed and the keys are in His hand such that no one accesses them, or [it has the meaning] that the causes of its [the unseen’s] manifestation and its being brought out from its place to the world of witness such that creatures are able to know it lies in His power and His disposal, preserved with Him, none other than Him is able to extract it from Him in order to know what it contains, being His Names, exalted be He; as for the ‘clear book’, this is the heaven of this world by virtue of these particulars being entified therein despite their number and individuations.

Then He raises you up therein, that is, in the sound deeds that you have committed and [in] what you have earned, for recompense, so that a term, which He has specified for resurrection and revivification, may be accomplished, whereafter you shall be returned to your Lord at the source of the nondelimited union so that He might inform you [of what you used to do] by making manifest upon you the forms of your deeds and recompense you therewith.

He is the Vanquisher over His servants, by His disposal over them as He wishes and His annihilation of them in the source of nondelimited union, since there is nothing that will not be vanquished therein. And He sends over you guardians, namely, their faculties wherein is imprinted every state in accordance with the extent of its firm-rootedness or lack thereof, manifesting itself on them upon their being stripped off from the body and assuming a form that corresponds to it, being either subtle and spiritual leading it to the spirit and to reward, or dark and corporeal leading it to chastisement. Indeed these forms will be manifested upon their limbs and organs, becoming configured according to their configurations and will speak against them through their deeds by the tongue of the state; and [these guardians] are also the heavenly faculties, to which we have alluded and the engraving therein of all particular accidents, that are manifested on them in their entirety upon their separation from the body, leaving out neither small nor great but having counted it against them [cf. Q. 18:49], these being the very messengers that receive them upon death.

The ‘restoration’ shall also be to the source of the nondelimited union for the reckoning. He is the swiftest of reckoners, since their reckoning takes place at the same time as their death.

Say: ‘Who delivers you from the darknesses of the land, that are the veils of the corporeal coverings and the ego-centric attributes, and, the darknesses of, the sea, that are the veils of the attributes of hearts and the reflection of the intellects; you call upon Him, to remove these [veils], openly, in your souls, and secretly, in your inmost consciousness, “Verily, if He were to deliver us from these, veils, we shall truly be among, those who are thankful for the grace of deliverance through uprightness and fixity.

Say: ‘God delivers you therefrom, by removing those veils by means of the lights of the self-disclosures of His attributes, and from every distress, that is, [from] what remains in your preparedness of the potential for your perfections, [delivering you therefrom] by bringing these out, even if a remnant of the remnants of your existence should be a distress for you because of your preparedness for annihilation and for the deliverance of yourselves from this [remnant] totally by the potency of [your] preparedness and the perfection of [your] yearning, then He would deliver you therefrom, yet you, after coming to know this noble station and what has been kept in store for you, associate, with Him your souls and your caprices worshipping them.

Say: ‘He has the power to send forth upon you a chastisement from above you, by your being veiled by intelligibles and spiritual veils, or from beneath your feet, by your being veiled by the veils of nature, or to confound you in parties, or to mix you together as separate parties, each party following the religion of one of your faculties which they take as their imam and by which they counterpose the other party, so that confusion and chaos or fighting ensues between you; or [He mixes you] as parties with differing creeds, each party following the religion of a false messiah or a human devil or a jinn which they adopt as their imam; or He makes your souls as parties by making each one of your faculties hold sway over your hearts so that it [the soul] seeks its own particular pleasure through that [faculty], with one drawing him to wrath while the another [draws him] to lust or covetousness or otherwise. The heart thus becomes overwhelmed and incapacitated between them, captive in their hold, every time it resolves to actualise the pleasure of this [faculty], the other one prevents it. Confusion and chaos ensues between these [faculties] within your existences since they are not disciplined by the rule of one subjugating master who is able to vanquish them and to govern them with a unified command and establish each one of these [faculties] in its [proper] station where it would reside obedient and compliant, so that the kingdom of existence stands in order and the dominion is established for the master of the heart. According to this [last] interpretation, every one of them would constitute a party or separate parties following different religions and not any one individual.

Your people have denied it, that is, your people [have denied] this chastisement; yet it is the, fixed, truth, that shall descend upon them. Say: ‘I am not a guardian over you: [I am not] one who has been charged with guardianship [of you], to protect you and defend you from this chastisement.

For every, thing concerning which a tiding comes, there is a locus in which it will occur and reside. And you will come to know’, when the coverings of your bodies are removed from you and the pain of this chastisement reveals itself upon you in the forms deserved by your souls.

When you see those who engage in discourse about Our signs, that is, Our attributes, by manifesting the attributes of their souls and affirming that they possess knowledge and power; turn away from them, for they are veiled and are idolaters. And if Satan should make you forget, by seducing you with falsehoods and superstitions and through the evil insinuations of your soul such that you manifest yourself through some of its attributes and end up corresponding to these [idolaters] in genus, inclining to companionship of them, then do not sit after, having remembered by Our reminding of you, with the folk, who have committed evil against their souls by placing their attributes in place of My attributes and veiling these [souls] with their attributes. For companionship of them has influence and you are on the verge of succumbing to becoming veiled by the misfortune of their company by means of variegation.

And upon, those who are affirmers of Oneness, who disengage from the garments of their attributes and shun their configurations, there shall be no [obligation to] account for those [others] who are veiled, in any way [whatsoever]: in other words, they shall not become veiled as a result of their mixing with them and thus end up being equal to them [in veiledness]. Rather, We have mentioned them so that perhaps they will guard against keeping company with them and [against] any variegation which they might fall into or [against becoming involved in] their evil fate, their affair and their account and keep company with them. Instead, let them remind them from time to time with the minimum of interaction so that perhaps they might guard against acts of idolatrous association and being veiled and be delivered by the blessedness of the companionship of those [God-fearing ones]. Or [it means] that they are not accountable for the deeds of those [veiled ones] and their evil consequences; but let them mention these [deeds] to them with censure and prohibition that perhaps they might guard against such [deeds].

And forsake those who take, that is, shun those whose religion and habit are caprice and diversion, since they pay no attention to this [Reminder] because of the firm-rootedness of that conviction in them and [because of] their being deluded by the sensory life. Turn away from them and warn by means of the Qurʾān lest a soul should be veiled for what it has earned when the religion and custom of such [a soul] is not like that^{1In other words, the Reminder of the Qurʾān is of use for those individuals whose religion and habit is not quite caprice and diversion, but who nevertheless succumb to natural temptations that make them seem similar to those whose religion and habit is caprice and diversion (mentioned at the beginning of the passage), in whose case the Reminder falls on deaf ears.} and in whom that conviction has not taken a firm rooting, but [a soul] which nevertheless commits by natural inclination deeds that are similar to the deeds of those [veiled ones] and might thus become veiled because of them. For such [a soul] will be influenced by this [Reminder] and will take heed and desist: so warn such [a soul] lest it should become like them and be prevented by its deeds from guidance whereafter, once it has been veiled by what it has earned, no ransom will be accepted from it. The draught of boiling water constitutes the intensity of its yearning for perfection because of the potency of its preparedness; the painful chastisement is its privation from that [perfection] because of its being veiled by its deeds and configurations.

Say: ‘Shall we call upon, instead of God: that is, shall we worship that which in reality has no power or existence to profit or cause hurt, and so be turned back, to idolatrous association, after God has guided us?, with true guidance to the affirmation of [His] Oneness — Like one whom, the devils of estimation and imagination have carried off in the pursuit of the earth of the soul, bewildered, not knowing in which direction to walk or what to do, without a path or a purpose; he has companions, escorts in the way of reflection and practical and considerative reason, who call him to guidance, saying: “Come to us, for this is the path [of guidance]!”, but he does not hear because the auditory channels of his heart are sealed [shut] with caprice. Say: ‘Truly, the guidance of God, which is the path of the affirmation of Oneness, is [the true] guidance, and nothing else; and we have been commanded to submit to the Lord of the Worlds, so that we might be willingly led to the attribute of lordship by the effacing of our attributes in the One disclosing Himself in that [attribute of lordship] and submitting It to Him,

and so that we might establish the prayer of the presence of the heart, fear Him and take Him as a shield for us against [the manifestation of our] attributes so that He might be the One whose attributes are assumed [by us] and that through Him we might be rid of our existence so that He might be the One to Whom the gathering will be by His essence upon our annihilation in Him.

He it is Who created, the heavens of the spirits and the earth of the body, upholding justice, which is the exigency of His essence. And the day He says, ‘Be’, and it is, that is, the moment of timeless time which is the pre-eternity of the pre-eternal manifestation of things in the pre-eternity of His essence, which is the absolute beginninglessness of pre-eternity, being when His eternal will became attached to the manifestation [of that will] in the entifications of His essence, expressed in His statement ‘Be’: this is after the beginninglessness of pre-eternities, considered rationally, but not in the sense that these [entifications] are posterior to that beginninglessness, rather in terms of the hierarchy of rational consideration of His essence, exalted be He. For entifications are posterior to the absolute pure Ipseity by virtue of reason and in reality: the manifestation of these [entifications] through [His] will referred to by His words ‘Be and it is’ without any interval or posteriority, is expressed by [the form] ‘and it is’, because in pre-eternity it was not but then came to be. His words are the truth: that is, at that moment especially the timelessness of His will, which entailed the existence of originated things in the way that they were, fixed in their state and immutable, also entailed that these be in the most excellent way possible in terms of organisation and hierarchy and in the most equitable way in terms of configuration and composition; the day when the Trumpet is blown, the moment of His blowing into the Trumpet, namely, [the moment of] giving life to the forms of engendered things (mukawwanāt) by effusing their spirits upon them, there is no kingdom other than His, for in themselves these [things] are dead, having neither existence nor life, let alone any ownership (mālikiyya). He is the Knower of the Unseen, that is, the realities of the world of spirits, which constitute His dominion (malakūt), and the visible, that is, the forms of the world of bodies, which constitute His kingdom (mulk). He is the Wise, who has brought these into existence and placed them within a hierarchy in accordance with His wisdom, effusing upon each form the spirit that befits it; the Aware, who knows their innermost aspects and outward ones, their specific qualities and their acts. In sum: He is the originator of spirits and the absolute body by His fixed eternal beginningless will that is ever immutable, a creation from nothing that is just and wise as entailed by His essence, and [He is] the engenderer of engendered beings (kāʾināt) by producing them in the world of the Kingdom of which He is the owner, and no other, in the way that He desires, Knower of the obligations that must rest upon them, Wise in perfecting them, their organisation and their hierarchy, Aware of the accidental states that occur therein in accordance with His will through His essence, without any partner in all of that.

And when Abraham said to his father, that is, remind of the moment of Abraham’s wayfaring along the path of the affirmation of Oneness when We gave him insight and guidance and apprised him of the idolatry of his people and their veiledness by the manifestation of the world of the kingdom from the realities of the world of the dominion and His lordship, exalted be He, of [all] things through His names, believing [instead] in the effective power of celestial bodies and engendered beings, distracted thereby from the Engenderer Himself, which is why he [Abraham] censures them for that, saying to their leader and their most senior one, his father: ‘Do you take idols as gods?, believing in their efficacy? I see you and your people in manifest error’, [error] that is manifest and can be known sensorially.

And such insight and all-inclusive perfect knowledge We grant to Abraham and show him, the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, namely, the spiritual faculties by which God governs the affairs of the heavens and the earth, since for every thing there is a faculty from the world of the dominion that preserves it and governs its affair by God’s permission, and that he might be of those knowing with certainty: We did that, that is, We gave him insight so that he might know and learn that only God has the power to effect, governing through His names, each [of these] constituting His essence together with one of the attributes, as a result of which acts multiply from behind the veils of engendered existence (akwān). Thus the one who is veiled by engendered existence and has stopped at the sensory will see these acts as issuing from engendered beings; and the one who has passed beyond it, who has pierced through the veil of existence and has stopped at the rational detained in its shackles will see them as issuing from the dominion, whereas the one who is guided by the light of divine guidance, the eye of whose insight is open will see that the dominion relative to God’s essence, exalted be He, is equal to the kingdom relative to the dominion: so just as he does not see effect as issuing from engendered things, he does not see it as issuing from the dominion of these [engendered things], rather from their King and Engenderer, and so he says: ‘Truly there is no god except God!’

When night descended upon him, that is, when the night of the world of corporeal nature grew dark over him during his childhood and early youth, he saw, the star of the dominion of the human frame, which is the soul referred to as ‘spiritual spirit’ he found that his effusion, his life and his lordship was issuing from this [soul], since God, exalted be He, was showing him at that moment through His name the Life-giver (muḥyī), and so he [Abraham] said [the following] by the tongue of his state: ‘This is my Lord’. But when it set, by his crossing over the station of the soul and [by] the rising of the light of the heart and its radiating over him with its vestiges of maturity, rational comprehension and knowledge of the contingency of the soul and the necessity of its being imprinted upon the body, he said, ‘I love not those that set’, those who are eclipsed in the setting place of the body, who are veiled by it, hiding behind the darkness of contingent existence and the need for the other.

And when he saw, the moon of the heart standing prominent upon his arrival at the station of the heart and his having risen above the horizon of the soul by prevailing over it; and [when] he saw his effusion, through the unveilings of realities, and his knowledge and lordship as issuing from it [the moon of the heart], for God, exalted be He, was at that instance showing him through His name[s] the Knower and the Wise: he said, ‘This is my Lord’. But when it set, by becoming veiled from him and its crossing over from his stage and his sensing that its light was drawn from the sun of the spirit and that it would set in the darkness of the soul and its attributes and be veiled thereby, having thus no light, he turned away from his station to wayfare along the path of the self-disclosure of the spirit, saying: ‘Unless my Lord guides me, to the light of His Face, I shall surely become one of the folk who are astray’, those who veil themselves from Him behind esoteric aspects, such as the Christians who stop at the luminous veils.

And when he saw the sun, the spirit, shining prominent, by its self-disclosure to him and the manifestation of its light, he found that his effusion, his presential vision and his lordship as issuing from it [the spirit], for God, exalted be He, was now showing him through His name[s] the Witness, the Sublime and the Tremendous; he said, ‘This is my Lord; this is greater!’, because of its tremendousness and the intensity of its luminosity. But when it set, as a result of the dominance of the lights of the self-disclosure of the Truth and the rising of the august glories of the Abiding Face and the unveiling of the veil of the Essence upon his arrival at the station of unity, he saw that to look upon the spirit and his own existence was an act of idolatrous association, and so, he said, ‘O my people, surely I am innocent of what you associate, with Him, that is, whatever that thing be, since there is no existence other than His.

Verily I have turned my face, that is, I have surrendered my essence and my existence, to Him Who, brought into existence the heavens of the spirits and the earth of the soul, inclining [myself] away from all that is other than Him, even from my own existence, by annihilation in Him, and I am not of those that associate others [with God]’, that is, I have nothing to do with idolatrous association whatsoever, be it the existence of remnants [in me] or their manifestation or otherwise.

But his people disputed with him, over [his] denial of the effective power of celestial bodies and engendered beings and [over] shunning the worship of all that is besides God. He said, ‘Do you dispute with me concerning God when He has guided me, to the affirmation of His Oneness? I, shall, have no fear of what you associate with Him, and [what] you claim of its effective power, ever, except, at the moment, that my Lord should will something, to befall me from its part in the way of some mishap or harm, but that would be from Him [in reality] and with His knowledge, not from it. My Lord encompasses all things through His knowledge, knowing my state and wherein lies my welfare: if in His knowledge He should deem it better for me to suffer harm from its part, He will do so; will you not remember, and thus distinguish between what is incapable and one who is Powerful?

Those who believe, with the affirmation of the unity of the essence, and have not, confounded, their belief with evildoing, in the way of the manifesting of the soul of the heart, or the existence of some remnant, [both of] which are subtle [forms of] idolatrous association, theirs is, true, security, alongside which there is no fear, and they are rightly guided, in reality to the Truth.

That argument of Ours, that is, the argument for affirming [God’s] Oneness with which Abraham used against his people.

And We bestowed upon him Isaac and Jacob; each one We guided. And Noah We guided before, and of his seed, David and Solomon and Job and Joseph, and Moses and Aaron; and so We requite the virtuous.

[And Zachariah and John, and Jesus, and Elias] all were of the righteous, those who uphold the rigtheousness of the world and keep its organisation in check, managing it in order that they might become upright through the existence bestowed by [His name] the Truth after the annihilation of human existence.

[And Ishmael and Elisha, and Jonah and Lot:] all We preferred above, the two worlds of their time.

They measured not God with His true measure when they said, ‘God has not revealed anything to any mortal’: that is to say, they did not know Him as He should be known, for they went beyond the limit in defining His transcendence making Him remote from His servants to the extent that nothing of His knowledge or His words could become manifest upon them. Had they known Him as He ought to be known, they would have realised that His servants have no existence nor does anything else [for that matter] except through Him. All exists through His existence: there is no existence except His. The entirety of the world of the visible is His exoteric aspect and [the entirety of] the world of the unseen is His esoteric aspect and for every esoteric aspect there is an exoteric one. So what inhibition is there against that certain of His attributes should manifest themselves in a human locus? Indeed, there is no [better] locus for the manifestation of His perfect esoteric knowledge and wisdom than the perfect man. The Prophet therefore, in terms of form, represents His exoteric aspect, and in terms of meaning, represents His esoteric aspect: His knowledge descends onto his heart and manifests itself on his tongue, wherewith he calls His servants to His essence. There is no dualism here, except when considering the differentiation of His attributes. However, when considering the union, there is no existent other than Him, neither the Prophet nor anyone else. If one were to consider the differentiations of His attributes and His names, the Prophet becomes manifest as a consequence of the specific in His essence, exalted be He, through certain of His attributes and becomes one of His names. If he is perfect in his prophethood, then that [name] would be [God’s] Greatest Name by which alone the gates of the storehouses of His unseen, His existence and His wisdom are opened, as you will have heard. Therefore do not deny [it], if you feel stupified by, and deprived of, its understanding and are dumbfounded: it may be that God will open up the eye of your insight and so you see what no eye has ever seen, or [that He will open up] the hearing of your heart and you hear what no ear has ever heard, or that He will illumine your heart such that you will perceive what has never occurred to the mind (qalb) of a mortal.

And who does greater evil than he who invents lies against God, by [falsely] claiming to have [attained] perfection and to have arrived at the affirmation of Oneness, and to have rid himself of the multiplicity of the soul’s attributes and their thronging [within him], despite their remaining in him, such that in his statements and acts he is [acting] through his soul while he claims to be [acting] through God; or who says, ‘It is revealed to me’, when nothing has been revealed to him, that is, he supposes that the fabrications of his illusion and imagination and the inventions of his intellect and reflection are revelations from God and an effusion from the Holy Spirit, such that he claims prophecy; or he who says, ‘I will reveal the like of what God has revealed’?, that is, he acts [haughtily] like Pharaoh through the existence of his egoism, under the illusion that cognitive affirmation of Oneness is located in him as an individual and thus he claims divinity. If you could only see when the evildoers, that is, [when] those evildoing and veiled claimants of perfection, who allege that their acts are divine, while they are ego-centric, and [when] those false prophets and pseudo-Pharaohs, are in the agonies of death, that is, [in] its adverse moments and throes, lost as they are in their claims and errors, supposing themselves to have been annihilated from their souls and disengaged from the garments of their bodies, despite the intensity of their attachment to these and the potency of [their] love of this world and the firm-rootedness of caprice in them — for they have not died through voluntary death or disengagement from lusts and corporeal pleasures and have not been annihilated from the attributes of their souls and their exigencies such that natural death should then be brandished against them; and the angels, that is, the faculties of the world that used to reinforce their ego-centric faculties through the souls of the heavenly bodies and the celestial spheres, and their effects, [effects] which used to hold sway over them during their lifetimes, while they supposed that they were rid of them through disengagement, as we have pointed out: extend their hands, having a powerful and overwhelming effect upon them, [the hands] signifying the quintessence of their faculties and powers: ‘Give up your souls!, that is, they treat these [souls] harshly and compel them because of the intensity with which they cleave [to their bodies] and the extent of their distress and the difficulty they find in separating from the bodies. Today you shall be requited with the chastisement of humiliation, and abasement for the existence of the attributes of your souls and their injurious dark configurations and the veils of your egoism and your Pharaonic haughtiness, as He says He will assuredly requite them for their describing [Q. 6:139], because of what you used to say about God [that was] other than the truth, that is, because of your falsely imputing to God deeds and statements that issued from the attributes of your souls and their caprices, and that you used to scorn His signs’, and also because of your being veiled by your egoism and your Pharaoh-like behaviour, enamoured of your attributes, refusing to be obedient, by effacing them, to Our attributes, veiled from these [last] by the existence of those [that are yours], scornful of those [attributes that are Ours] because of these [attributes of yours].

And now you have come to Us singly, disengaged from attributes, attachments, family, relations and existence by being absorbed in the source of the Essential union, as We created you the first time, by producing the atoms of your ipseities in pre-eternity at the taking of the covenant [cf. Q. 7:172], and you have left what We conferred on you, of means, forms of knowledge and qualities of excellence, behind your backs; and We do not see with you, your means, your causes and what you preferred by your caprices and attached yourselves to of your beloved things and your objects of worship, whom you claimed to be associates amongst you, out of your love for them and your devotion to them and your ascribing of [the power of] effect to them, and your heeding of them and equipping of yourselves with them. Now that separation has befallen you as a result of the mutation of states and the changing of forms and figures, and that which you claimed, as a thing possessing existence, has failed you, by your witnessing: [this statement] constituting universal laudation of God.

God it is Who splits, the grain of the heart by the light of the spirit from the forms of knowledge and [various] gnoses, and [Who splits] the date-stone of the soul by the light of the heart from character traits and virtues. He brings forth, the one who is alive in his heart from the one who is dead in his soul, at times by giving mastery to the light of the spirit over this [soul], and is the Bringer-forth, of the one who is dead in his soul from the one who is alive in his heart at other times by that [living] person’s turning to it and his falling under the sway of caprice and the attributes of the soul. That is God, the One who has the power to turn over your states and making you prevail in your [various] stages. How then, are you turned away from Him to another?

He is the Cleaver of the daybreak, that is, the Cleaver of the darkness of the attributes of the soul from the heart by the breaking through of the light of the sun of the spirit and its radiation over it [the soul]; and He has appointed, the darkness of the soul a stillness for the heart in which it might rest, to make use of it and refresh itself at times, or [He appointed it] a residence wherein reside the corporeal faculties and find stability from restlessness. The sun of the spirit and the moon of the heart are reckoned among the ranks of the noble remaining existents that can be relied upon, or [they are] the two forms of knowledge for the reckoning of states and moments which should be heeded. That is the ordaining of the Mighty, the one who has the power to do that, the Knower, of the states of projection (burūz) and unveiling (inkishāf), and being concealed or veiled in these two [states], at times He is mighty by being veiled in them and from them in the covers of His majesty and at other times by His self-disclosure and His vanquishing and annihilation of the two. By His wisdom He knows what He does.

And He it is Who appointed for you, the stars of the senses, that you may guide your course by them amid the darkness, of the land of bodies, to the welfare of livelihood and [to] the sea of hearts by acquiring knowledge by these [senses]. Verily We have distinguished the signs, that is, the spirit, the heart and the senses, for a people who know, that.

And He it is Who produced you from a single soul, namely, the universal soul, such that some are established, in the earth of the body during the state of manifestation, and some are deposited, in the source of the Essential union during the state of annihilation. Verily We have distinguished, the signs of the manifestation of the soul, its establishing and its depositing, for a people who understand, by the illumination of their hearts and the purity of their comprehensions.

And He it is Who sent down, from the heaven of the spirit, the water of knowledge, and therewith We bring forth plants, of every kind of character trait and quality of excellence; and We bring forth, from the plants the configuration of a verdant soul, fairly and beautifully adorned, as well as gladdened by knowledge and [virtuous] character traits, bringing forth, from that configuration and [that] tender and pliant soul, corresponding noble deeds that are pleasing and sincere intentions by which the heart is fortified; and from the palm-tree of the intellect by the manifestation of its attachment, [We bring forth] gnoses and realities that are close for the picking because of their being manifested by the light of the spirit, being as though self-evident, and gardens of grapes: states, tastes and especially the [various] types of the love of the heart (maḥabba qalbiyya), whose pressed nectar and unpressed dregs are both intoxicating, and the olives of reflection and the pomegranates of truthful estimations which are the noble aspirations and the resolves of the soul, similar, are some of them to others, like as attachments, reflections, gnoses, realities, deeds, intentions and like the love of the [one’s own] essence and the love of the attributes, but not alike, as in the case of the [various] types of love and deeds, for example, or [it means] that they are similar in level, potency, weakness, its clarity and its obscurity and dissimilar in these. Look upon their fruits when they have borne fruit, and be mindful of them through self-examination during the wayfaring and the incipience of a state, and let your look fall away from pleasures to these fruits, and their ripening, their perfection upon the arrival at the presence. Surely, in all that are signs for a people who believe, with cognitive faith and who have certainty regarding these signs and states that we have enumerated.

Yet they ascribe to God as associates the jinn, that is, they assign the jinn of illusion and imagination as associates of God by their obedience and submission to them, when they know that God created them: how then do they worship other than Him? And they falsely impute to Him, they are at variance in [their] pure calumny, [ascribing to Him], sons, from the intellects, and daughters, from the souls, believing them to be effective and to be disengaged entities like Him, generated from Him, without any knowledge, on their part that these are His names and attributes that have no effect except through Him. Glory be to Him and exalted be He, transcendent is He above that He should be a disengaged existent specified by one particular single entification from among entified existents from whom there issue the existences of disengaged intellects and souls, and greatly magnified and extolled be He, above what they describe, Him with!

The Originator of the heavens and the earth, that is, One without analogue or equal in the heavens of the world of spirits and the earth of the world of bodies: how should He have a son, that is to say, how can anything be equal to Him, when He has no consort, since a consort can only be [a consort] through a correspondence in genus, whereas He does not share a correspondence with any genus and since He does not share a correspondence in genus with anything nothing can be equal to Him. Thus there can be no equal of Him from whom something would be generated; and He created everything, by His specification [thereof], [each] entified in His essence and is existentiated through His existence and not because that thing is an existent like Him; and He has knowledge of all things: His knowledge encompasses intellects, souls and other things just as His existence encompasses theirs, while these [things] are encompassed and cannot encompass His knowledge and has no knowledge except through His knowledge and do not exist except through His existence. Thus they are not equal to Him since in themselves they are non-existent and how can a non-existent be equal to the Absolute Existent?

That, Originator Who is without equal, described by all of these attributes, then is God, your Lord. There is no god, in existence, but Him, that is, there is no existent except Him when considering the union;^{1That is because ‘the union’ is the Truth without engendered beings: cf. Kāshānī, Rashḥ al-zulāl fī sharḥ al-alfāẓ al-mutadāwala bayna arbāb al-adhwāq wa’l-aḥwāl, ed. Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya li’l-Turāth, 1995, 75.} the Creator of all things, when considering the differentiations of His attributes. So single out worship for Him [alone], that is, for the Existence that is qualified by all attributes, Who is God, to the exclusion of what is besides Him. And He is Guardian over all things: in other words, only the Originator of all things is worthy of worship; yet despite that He is Guardian over all, preserving them, governing them and furnishing them with provisions and what is needed so that they might attain the perfection that is attached to them.

Vision cannot perceive Him, that is, it cannot encompass Him, because He is too subtle and majestic for its perception. How can it perceive Him when it cannot perceive its own soul which is but a light from Him? Yet He perceives [all] vision, because He encompasses all things and [because of] the subtlety of His perception.

Clear insights have come to you from your Lord, that is, clear signs, being the forms of the self-disclosures of His attributes which are the lights of the insights of the heart, for insight is a light by which the heart perceives, much as eyesight is the light by which they eyes perceive; whoever perceives, that is, [whoever] becomes perceptive by these [insights], then the benefit of his perceptions and guidance is only for his own soul; and whoever is veiled from these [insights], then the hurt of his veiledness does not extend to anyone else, rather to him alone. And I am not a keeper over you, a watcher to watch over you and preserve you from misguidance; rather it is God who is the Keeper, preserving you and preserving your deeds.

Had God willed, they would not have been idolaters: in other words, everything that takes place only occurs by the will of God and there is no doubt that the preparednesses by which they fell into idolatry and the causes of such [error] in the way of the teachings of their parents, habits and otherwise take place also by the will of God, for otherwise these things would not take place. If they believe in that, then it will have been by the guidance of God; if not, then be easy on yourself; and We have not set you as a keeper over them, to preserve them from misguidance, nor are you, appointed as a guardian to make them believe. This does not contradict what He says to them in censure later on, where He says, The idolaters will say, ‘Had God willed, we would not have been idolaters [Q. 6:148], because they said that out of obstinacy and as a way of pushing away [the need for] faith by that pretext and not out of conviction. Thus with this statement of theirs, even if it might be true in the same case, they were lying and denying the Messenger. For had they been sincere, then they would have known that the affirmation of Oneness on the part of the believers was also by God’s will; such is the case with any set of beliefs (dīn) but without obduracy or enmity towards anyone. Had they known that everything occurs only by the will of God, they would not have remained idolaters. Rather they would have become affirmers of [God’s] Oneness. Nay, they said that with the purpose of imputing lies, to be obstinate and to prove that they were incapable of desisting from their idolatry. That is why God censures them with that [statement of theirs] and not because it is not so. For they have not been apprised of God’s will and just as He willed that they be idolaters at a previous point in time, so now He does not will that they have faith. It is not that the heart of each one of them has been imprinted [with disbelief]: the proof of this is the faith of some of them. Why can it not be that some of them were prepared for faith and affirmation of the Oneness, yet were veiled by habit and by what they received from their fathers and thus fell into idolatry, but that then when they heard the warning and witnessed the signs of the Oneness, they yearned for the Truth and their veil was lifted and they affirmed [His] Oneness? That is why He rebukes them with their own statement and demands of them proof that God had always willed that for them, and warns them with the threat of punishment given to those before them, so that perhaps the one in whom there is a modicum of preparedness, when he has been severed from his [false] argument and has heard the threat of punishment given to deniers before him, his veil might be lifted and his heart might soften and he might believe, all of which would be a facilitation for him [from God] and a graciousness in his case; for the world of wisdom is built upon [such] causality. As for the one who belongs with the wretched, those who are turned away, their hearts sealed, he does not pay attention, nor does he give ear, to [any of] that.

They have sworn by God the most earnest oaths that if there came to them a sign, to the end [of the verse]: they demanded that habits [within the natural world] be broken and refused clear proofs, because they were veiled by sense and all that is sensory, which is why the call [made] on the basis of wisdom and confirmation through proof, that works with the intelligent ones who are prepared, was of no use with those. Say, ‘Signs, that is, the breaking of the habits [of nature] which they requested belong to the world of power which is only with Him. But what will make you realise, that they will not believe when these [signs] come? In other words, I know better than you do that they will not believe in them. Or [it means] what will make you realise that they will believe if these [signs] were to come? Perhaps if they were to come, they would not believe in them. For in the case of he from whom God does not want belief, He will turn his heart and his eyesight over upon the coming of the sign which he had requested and upon the coming of which he claimed that he would believe, such that he will say, ‘This is sorcery!’ and will not believe in it just as he did not believe before the coming of the sign. He [God] will then leave him to the manifestation of his soul in its attributes and his veiling of himself therewith; that is why He says [the following] at the end of the second verse [in this narrative]:

yet they would not have believed, unless God willed: meaning the one who prepares himself for faith, having understood the rational and perceived the argument, with the eye of his insight having been opened by the smallest light of God’s guidance and having embraced faith for the smallest reason. As for the one who is not prepared for that and was not created for it, were he to see every single sign of the breaking of the habit [of the natural world] or otherwise, it would have no effect on him; but most of them are ignorant, of the fact that faith is by the will of God and not by the breaking of habits. Faith that results from the witnessing of the breaking of habits carries no weight in reality, for this might well be [a case of simply] yielding to a sensory affair and affirming [faith] by the tongue, which means nothing in terms of the heart, like the faith of the followers of the Samaritan [cf. Q. 20:85ff]. Faith can only be [true if it is] through the inner heart (janān), as God, exalted be He, says The Bedouins say, ‘We believe’. Say, ‘You do not believe, but rather say, “We have submitted” for faith has not yet entered into your hearts’ [Q. 49:14].

And so We have appointed to every Prophet an enemy, to the end [of the verse]: it is a concomitant of the hierarchical order of the levels of spirits that the purest and most luminous of preparednesses be countered by the most sullied, the darkest and the remotest of these, and the concomitant of that is that there be an enemy for every prophet on account of the real contrareity between the two. The significance of the existence of an enemy as his counterpart is that the perfection predetermined for him [that prophet] in accordance with his preparedness does not manifest itself upon him except by the potency of [his] love for [divine] reinforcement [against that enemy]. As for vanquishing, it is [the result of] his [that prophet’s] soul being broken by that [enemy] and his humiliation and disdain of him [the enemy], his constancy upon encountering him at the station of the heart as well as his endurance in turning away from the soul and its pleasures by his preoccupation with the enemy, distracted from it by the intense vehemence and eager desire to secure the excellent quality by which he vanquishes that enemy, guarding himself against animal and satanic garments that he might thereby distance himself from his [the enemy’s] station and [from] any correspondence with him, and lest the latter find a means of defaming, disdaining or scorning him by that [soul]. That is why he [the Prophet] said, ‘No prophet has ever been suffered hurt as I have’, for no one possesses the [potential for] perfection which he possesses. Thus the cause for bringing that [potentiality] out into actuality must necessarily be more powerful, given the sheer extent of his [the Prophet’s] remoteness from the attributes of the soul and its habits.

And that the hearts of those who do not believe in the Hereafter may incline to it, and that the veiled ones might incline to it by their correspondence [to it], and that they may be pleased with it, because of their love of it, intensifying their errancy and causing them to make common cause [against the Prophet] and causing the evils within them to come out into actuality, that they might increase in insolence and transgression against the Prophet, thereby enhancing the potential for his perfection and also for that reason stirring the exigencies of the believers and those in whose preparedness there is a correspondence to the Prophet, provoking their vehemence and increasing their love of the Prophet and their support of him such that their perfections are manifested upon them and the Prophet is fortified by them, as the saying goes that the renown of shaykhs and the great number of their disciples is only [precipitated] by [the great number of] those who deny them.

Perfected is the word of your Lord in truthfulness and justice, that is, His decree has been completed in pre-eternity, in the sense of what He has decreed and determined of the submission of those who will submit and the disbelief of those who will disbelieve, the love of those whom He will love and the enmity of those to whom He will be an enemy, a decree concluded and a judgement that is truthful and corresponding to what will happen, equitable in the correspondence of every speech, every perfection and state to the preparedness of that person from whom they will issue and their being entailed in him; none can change, His pre-eternal judgements. He is the Hearer, of the predetermined words and acts which they manifest, the Knower, of what they hide.

[If you obey] most of those on earth, those who are in the lower aspect, by leaning towards this world and the world of the soul and nature, they will lead you astray from the way of God, by their adorning of their refined speech for you and their calling of you to [indulge in] what they are involved in; they follow only supposition, since they are veiled from certainty by illusions and imaginations at the station of the soul; they are merely, conjecturing [by replacing] forms with meanings, the Hereafter with this world and estimating [what] the states [will be] at the final return, as well as the essence of the Truth and His attributes, such as the states of the means of livelihood, in addition to their essences and their attributes, falling thereby into idolatrous association and permitting certain things that are forbidden.

So eat, to the end [of the verse]: this is known from what has already been mentioned in [sūrat] al-Māʾida [Q. 5:1-5] and constitute a cause for the prohibition against obeying or following the leaders of misguidance.

[And forsake] the outward aspect of sin, evil deeds and words that manifest themselves upon the limbs, and its inward aspect, corrupt beliefs and false resolves.

Why, is he who was dead, by ignorance, which is the soul, and by his being veiled by its attributes, and We gave him life, through knowledge and love of the Truth, or through the removal of the veils of his attributes by means of the self-disclosures of Our attributes, and appointed for him a light, from Our guidance and Our knowledge, or a light from Our attributes, or a light from Us by Our eternal sustenance of him through Our essence in the measure commensurate with his levels, [is such a person] like one whose attribute is [as] this, that is, [as mentioned in] this statement, which is that he is in the darknesses of his soul and its attributes and its acts from which he is unable to emerge? So has been adorned, for those who are veiled, their deeds, and thus they are veiled by them.

And thus, We have made in every town, by virtue of the wisdom mentioned whereby prophets are exalted. So it is also in the town of man’s existence, which is the body: We have made them great ones, its sinners from among the faculties of the commanding soul, that they may plot therein by leading the heart astray, tempting it and enticing into error; but they plot only against their souls, because the sequel of their plotting shall return against them by causing them to be consumed by the fires of the loss of instruments and means in the Hell-fire of caprice and privation from pleasures and lusts and [by] the actualisation of the corporeal instruments in the vilest of forms and in the worst of states upon the disintegration of the body and at the final return and the sending forth [for the resurrection].

And when a sign comes to them, in the way of an attribute of the heart, a luminous radiation from an angelic character configuration, or knowledge, wisdom and an effusion from a spirit, they deny them by turning away therefrom and [instead], from the part of the estimation and the imagination, they wish for perceptions similar to those intellective and reflective perceptions, and [desire] imaginary compositions and estimative fallacies with which to oppose the veridical proofs in order to believe in them and to yield thereto. God knows best where to place His Message, placing it only where it belongs among the spiritual faculties that are disengaged from primordial substrata. Those who have sinned, by being veiled and plotting to lead astray those who have prepared themselves to be guided, or [those] who pure hearts that have become guided, shall be smitten with humiliation from God, by the elimination of their capacities and their empowerment at the disintegration of the body, and a terrible chastisement, by depriving them of what is favourable for them and the procurement [to them] of what is incompatible for them at the physical resurrection in return for their plotting.

Whomever, from among these faculties, God desires to guide, to submission to the intellect, He expands his breast, that is, He facilitates [things] for him and makes his countenance, the one that is adjacent to the heart, projecting and capacious for the acceptance of His light and empowered for Its reception; and whomever He desires to send astray, He makes his breast, He makes [things] difficult for him and incapacitates him therefrom, narrow, darkened and deficient in its preparedness to receive the light [from Him], as though he were engaged in something impossible in seeking illumination from the light of the heart and requesting effusion therefrom. On the basis of this interpretation that we have mentioned and according to the exoteric meaning signified by the preceding verse: the one whom God desires to guide to affirmation of [His] Oneness, He expands his breast by the reception of the light of the Truth and the submission of existence to God through the removal of the veils of the attributes of his soul from the countenance of the heart that is adjacent to the soul, enlarging it thereby for the reception of the light of the Truth. As for the one whom He wishes to send astray, He makes his breast narrow and constricted by causing it [the soul] to dominate it and oppress it, as if he were engaged in ascent, to the heaven of his spirit with those corporeal configurations, which is an impossibility. So, God casts, the ignominy of being polluted by the pollutants of material attachments, or the ignominy of being chastised with corporeal configurations, over those who do not believe.

And this, that is, the path of the affirmation of Oneness and the submission of one’s countenance to God, is the path of your Lord, a straight one, with no crookedness in it whatsoever that might incline to the side of forms or the side of meanings or to the inspection of what is other [than God] and the commission thereby of idolatrous association. We have detailed the signs for a people who remember, the gnoses and the realities that are centred within their preparedness so that they might be guided therewith.

Theirs will be the abode of peace, of safety from every deficiency, fault, fear of the manifestation of an attribute or the existence of a remnant, with their Lord, in the presence of His attributes, or the presence of His essence; and He will be their Friend, granting them His love and perfection and admitting them into the shade of His attributes and His essence, placing them within His security by means of timeless subsistence after the annihilation of the misfortunes precipitated by the deeds of their hearts and their [spiritual] moulds during their wayfaring.

And, the day when He shall gather them, on the day of the source of the nondelimited union, all together, We shall say: ‘O assembly, of the jinn of the ego-centric faculties, you have garnered much of mankind’, that is, [much] of the senses and the external organs, or of the human forms, making them your adherents and the folk whom you obey and your seducing of them and adorning for them the ephemera of this world and corporeal pleasures and your evil whisperings to them to [commit] acts of disobedience. Then their friends from among mankind, who befriended them, will say, ‘Our Lord, we enjoyed one another, by profiting each from the other in the form of the concentration (jamʿiyya), but, verily, now we have arrived at the term which You have appointed for us’, at death, or at the physical return in the vilest of forms and the most evil of living. He will say, ‘The Fire, the fire of being deprived of pleasures and the finding of pain, is your lodging to abide therein’ — except what, moment, God wills, that it be lessened or that from among you should be delivered he the cause of whose chastisement is not idolatrous association that had been firmly-rooted in his beliefs. Surely your Lord is Wise, not chastising you except for the configurations of your souls that you have acquired, commensurate with what is entailed by [His] wisdom, Knowing, of the one who is chastised for his beliefs and whose chastisement thus endures, or [who is chastised] for the configurations of his evil deeds and who is thus chastised in the measure commensurate with these [configurations] but is then delivered therefrom.

So, We let some of the evildoers become associate of others, in other words, just like that tremendous and awesome assignment [of chastisement], We assign some to be associates of others by virtue of the consonance of their gains and their mutual correspondence. Thus they become associates of one another and are gathered together in the chastisement, as in the case of the jinn and humans that We have mentioned; or We assign some of them to be masters of others by chastising one for what he [the other] has earned, in the Fire.

[‘O assembly of jinn and mankind: did not] messengers come to you from among you, from among those mortals who are of your own species — and on the basis of intepretation — the [messengers] mentioned from among your intellects which are faculties from among your own species? These questions, responses and testimonies are all [spoken] by the tongue of the state and the manifestation of descriptions — as in the saying: ‘The wall said to the nail, “Why do you split me?”, to which the nail replied, “Ask the one who is hammering me!”’ — and as the witnessing of hands and legs in the forms that correspond to the configurations of their deeds and by which they are chastised.

That: a reference to the sending of messengers [to them], the explanation of signs and the reinforcing of arguments through warning and threat. In other words, the matter is that, because your Lord would never destroy towns while they were heedless through [an act of] injustice, since that is contradictory to [His] wisdom.

All shall have degrees, of proximity and remoteness as a result of the deeds that they have committed.

If He will, He can remove you, by annihilating your very being, and leave to succeed after you, from the folk who are obedient to Him, by His mercy.

That, namely, the prohibiting to them of wholesome things is a requital with which, We requited them, for their insolence; verily We are truthful, in promising them requital for insolence.

So, if they deny you, [by saying] that God is the Lord of all-embracing mercy and will not chastise us for our insolence, then say: ‘Yea! Your Lord is the Lord of all-embracing mercy, but He is also the Lord of severe vanquishing whose mercy will not repel His might, from the sinning folk’. Rather, it may be that He has deposited His vanquishing in the form of His graciousness and His graciousness in the form of His vanquishing.

So, those who were before them gave the lie, that is, [so] the deniers gave the lie to messengers before them by making their disbelief [as something] dependent on the will of God, out of obduracy and recalcitrance, and they were [indeed] chastised for their disbelief. Say: ‘Have you any knowledge, such that you can adduce for us?, that is to say, if you were to have any knowledge or proof of that, then illustrate [it]. He says this by way of allusion to their statement ‘Had God willed, we would not have been idolaters [Q. 6:148], for had they said that on the basis of some [factual] knowledge, they would have known that the faith of those who believe in the Oneness [of God] and everything else only comes to be through the will of God. So on the basis of what are they [the deniers] hostile to them when they [the believers] have not rejected them, but even associated with them until there remained no disagreement between them and the believers. By God, had they said that out of knowledge, they would not have actually been idolaters, nay, rather affirmers of Oneness. But they followed supposition regarding that and based themselves on estimation (taqdīr) and conjecture, their purpose being denial and recalcitrance; and what they have heard from the messengers constitutes an indictment of them and proof that they are not prevented from [the call of] the messengers. [All of that is] because they are veiled at the station of the soul: whence certainty for them then and how could they know what God’s will might be?

Say: ‘To God belongs the conclusive argument: in other words, if your supposition were sincere, in terms of making your idolatry contingent upon the will of God, then you have no argument against the believers or other religious folk, since every religion would then be the result of God’s will, in which case you ought to be in agreement with them and to believe them. Nay, God has the conclusive argument against you in that there is an obligation upon you to believe them [the messengers] and to affirm that you have ascribed to the One without whose will nothing takes place partners whose will there is no trace of outright. Hence you are pre-eternally wretched, deserving of banishment and punishment; for had He willed, He could have guided all of you’, in other words, yes you are correct [in one sense], but just as He willed that you be unbelievers, had He willed He could have guided you all. On the basis of what, however, do you [think that you] know that He willed not that you be guided for you to then insist [on your idolatry]. This [statement] is meant to incite those among them who may have the preparedness to curb [the inclination to unbelief] and be guided and thus revert from idolatry and become a believer.

Say: ‘Come, I will recite that which your Lord has made a sacred duty for you: having proven that in terms of what they deem licit and make illicit idolaters are [merely] following their caprices, since idolatry in itself is simply the worship of caprice and Satan — and so when they became veiled in the attributes of the soul from the attributes of the Truth and made caprice master over them, worshipping it and obeying its commands and its prohibitions in terms of what it [caprice] deems licit or illicit — He makes it clear that the act of deeming things licit or illicit that is pursued regarding these has been commanded by God, exalted be He; and given that the discourse is directed at them with regard to their prohibiting what are goodly things, He enumerates the things that are forbidden in order that the permitted things be inferred therefrom. By forbidding genera of vices, He has encompassed all the types of excellent things. He begins by forbidding the vice of the speech faculty, which is the noblest of them [the faculties] — for the vice thereof is the worst of grave sins, entailing as it does all [other] vices, in contrast to the vices of its two sister-faculties, the bestial and the predatory — and says: that you associate nothing with Him, since idolatrous association is the result of its mistaken consideration and its shortcoming in employing the intellect and perceiving the proof. He then follows it with [the mention of] being dutiful to parents. For knowledge of the rights due to them comes after the knowledge of God in terms of existentiation and lordship, as they [the parents] are two causes that are close in terms of existence and nurture and two means which God, exalted be He, has made loci for the manifestation of His two attributes of existentiation and lordship. That is why he [the Prophet?] said, ‘Whoever is obedient to his parents is indeed obedient to God and His Messenger’. Disobedience to them comes after idolatry, since ignorance of what is due to them can only be out of the ignorance of what is due to God and of the knowledge of His attributes. Then [He mentions] the prohibition against the slaying of one’s children for fear of poverty. To do that can only be the result of ignorance and blindness concerning His causation of provision for every creature and [ignorance of] that the provisions of servants are in His hand, expanding provision for whomever He wishes or restricting [it], and the result of being veiled from the mystery of [divine] predetermination, not knowing thus that provisions are predetermined in relation to lifespans, much like the predetermination of terms of life. And so the most important of these [vices] occurs as a result of its [the faculty’s] erroneous knowledge of God’s essence. The second [of these vices] is the result of its error regarding the knowledge of His attributes. The third is the result of [the error regarding] the knowledge of His acts. Thus only a degenerate who is veiled from the essence of God, exalted be He, and from His attributes and acts commits these three [types of] vices, and these veilings are the mother of all vices and the roots thereof. He then illustrates the vice of the bestial faculty, because its vice is more manifest and long-standing, saying: and that you do not draw near any acts of lewdness, deeds that are despicable and vile to the intellect, whether it be manifest, such as engaging in illicit fornication in inns, drinking wine and the consumption of usury, or concealed, such as seeking acts of lewdness such as those mentioned, having the intention and the resolve to [commit] them or hiding them, as in the case of theft or engaging in forbidden things secretly. He then points out the vice of the predatorial faculty, saying: and that you do not slay the life which God has made sacred, that is to say, through retaliation or disbelief. He concludes the narrative with His words: This, the avoidance of the three genera of the vices of the soul, is what He has charged you with that perhaps you will understand: in other words, only the people of the intellect are able to avoid them. The one who commits them is one without [the faculty of] reason (ʿaql). He then wishes to illustrate that the three vices by their confluence entail the vice of injustice, which is the greatest of these [vices] and the sum thereof, just as the virtues [of the soul] entail justice, which is the perfection of these [virtues] and the one that subsumes them [all]. Thus He says:

And that you do not approach the property of the orphan, in any way whatsoever, save with that which is fairer, except through that trait which is more virtuous, in the way of preserving that [property] or making it multiply, until he is of age, and profits from it, as opposed to [approaching it] by consuming it and spending it for your use or wasting it, since that is most vile. Then after He has illustrated the illicitness of the four genera of vice in their entirety in detail, He enjoins the obligation of the four virtues in a generalised form, because the detailing of the vices avails of the need to detail their counterparts [from among the virtues] since they are included all of them in [the virtue of] justice and so He has enjoined it in all of its aspects, whether in acts or speech, saying: And give full measure and full weight in justice, that is, observe justice between you and [other] creatures in an absolute way. And if you speak, then be just, in other words, say only what is the truth, even if he, the one concerning whom it is spoken, should be a kinsman: so do not be biased in speaking for him or against him by adding or withholding [facts]. And fulfil God’s covenant, that is, the affirmation of Oneness and obedience and all that is between you and God in terms of what the former covenant entails for the subsequent one. And since the wayfaring upon the path of virtue, that is the path of the unity and the orienting of oneself towards the Truth, is difficult — being, as they say, ‘finer than a hair and sharper than [the edge of] a sword’ — especially [difficult] in terms of acts, since to be mindful of moderation regarding them without inclining in some way to the side of excess or immoderation is extremely difficult, He, after saying And give full measure and full weight in justice, says, We do not charge any soul beyond its capacity, illustrating that in this instance [of the Qurʾān] He has combined the prohibition against all vices and the enjoining of all virtues in their entirety in such a way that no particulars of the subdivisions of these [two categories of vice and virtue] have been omitted, which is why Ibn ʿAbbās, may God be satisfied with him, said: ‘Verily these are clear verses of which nothing has been abrogated by anything in any of the scriptures’. The followers of the two scriptures and all of the sects and creeds are in agreement over his words. Kaʿb al-Aḥbār, ‘By the One in whose hand lies the soul of Kaʿb, these were the first [verses] of the Torah’. This, what has been mentioned in terms of the obligation to desist from all vices and to acquire all virtues, is what He has charged you with, in all scriptures by the tongues of all messengers, that perhaps you will remember, upon hearing them, what God has endowed you with of perfection and deposited in your preparedness from pre-eternity.

And that this, the path of virtues, since the source of virtue is the unity. Do you not see how these [virtues] are middle ways and forms of moderateness between the two aspects of immoderation and excess which can only be in reality pursued in terms of designation (taʿyīn) by the one who is upright following the religion of God and whom God reinforces by facilitating [for him] the wayfaring along the path of the Truth until he arrives at [the stage of] being annihilated from his attributes, then from his essence, then in the state of subsistence after the annihilation he acquires the attributes of God, exalted be He, such that he subsists through God and becomes upright for Him and by Him. Thereupon his path becomes the path of the Truth and his journeying the journey to God, My path, it is a straight one, that is, My path can only be wayfared upon by the one who subsists in Me upright, inclining not to the right or to the left for some purpose; so follow it and do not follow other ways, such as [those of] schismatic creeds and differing religions, as these are coventions invented by those who are veiled in habits and caprices, that is to say, a convention for them lest they increase in darkness, insolence and bewilderment. Ibn Masʿūd related from the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, that he [the Messenger] drew a line [in the sand] and said, ‘This is the path of right guidance’, then drew lines to the right and to the left of it and said, ‘These are [other] paths, upon each of them is a devil summoning [man] to that [path]’; he then recited this verse: lest it separate you away from His way, that is, from wayfaring along the path of unity and virtue. [This is what] He has ordained for you, that perhaps you will be wary’, of the divided paths, by avoiding what is entailed in caprices and the exigencies of the souls and by making God your shield for adhering to virtues and avoiding vices.

Then We gave Moses the Scripture: that is to say, after He charged you with wayfaring along the path of virtue in ancient times, We gave Moses the scripture, complete for him who does good, that is, to consummate the nobleness of sanctity and the grace of prophethood over and above the virtuousness of Moses in his wayfaring along the path of perfection and the station he attained of communion [with God] and proximity [to Him] by means of the existence divinely-endowed after the annihilation in the unity, as God says and when he recovered his senses he said, ‘Glory be to You! I repent to You and I am the first of those who believe’ [Q. 7:143], in perfection and in [the necessity of] calling creatures to the Truth, and a detailing of all things, which creatures will need for the final return, and as a guidance, for them to their Lord in wayfaring along His path, and a mercy, to them, in effusing unto them His perfections by means of Moses and the scripture given to him, that perhaps they might believe in the encounter with their Lord, with either cognitive faith or that [faith] of presential vision.

And this is a Book which We have revealed, blessed, by the addition of guidance to the simple affirmation of Oneness and the direction to the even way, guiding by the shortest of paths to the most exalted degrees of perfection; so follow it, and be wary, of all that is besides God, even your own essences and attributes, that perhaps you might be shown mercy, the mercy of being upright through God and in God by means of the endowed existence.

Or lest you should say, ‘If the Scripture had been revealed to us, we would have surely been more rightly guided than they are’, because of the potency of our preparednesses and the purity of our minds, were you to be telling the truth. Now indeed a clear proof has come to you from your Lord, illustrating the modality of how you should wayfare, and a guidance, to your goal, and a mercy, by easing for you the path and its facilitating for you [the way] to the noblest of perfections.

Are they waiting for nothing less than that the angels should come to them, to receive their spirits in death, or that your Lord should come, by His self-disclosure in all of the attributes, as has already been alluded to in terms of the transmutation of form at the Resurrection such that none but the perfected affirmers of Oneness know Him, whereas the people of the creeds and [other] differing religions only know Him in the form of their belief [regarding Him]; or that one of your Lord’s signs should come?, His self-disclosure in an attribute which they never knew of Him. On the day that one of your Lord’s signs comes, a self-disclosure of His with which they were never intimate, or which they never knew, it shall not benefit a soul to believe if it had not believed theretofore, for people are either veiled absolutely or otherwise, and they are either believers by their knowledge of some attributes or all of them. Those who believe in Him and know Him in all of these [attributes] are either lovers of the Essence or lovers of [His] attributes. So when the Truth discloses Himself in one of the attributes, the faith of those who are veiled absolutely is of no avail, nor the faith of those believers who did not know Him in that attribute prior to that self-disclosure, since faith is only beneficial when it has become a fixed and firmly rooted conviction embodied in the heart and one by which the soul is illumined and by which the spirit witnesses, and not that [faith] which comes about suddenly out of some urgent necessity; or earned in its faith some good, such as the faith of the knowers and lovers of the attributes, for these, even if they should believe in Him and have come to know of His self-disclosures in all of the attributes, because they have not acquired the Essential love and the absolute perfection and have loved Him through one of the attributes, such as the Gracious, for example, or the Gentle or the Merciful, when He discloses Himself in the attribute of the Vengeful or the Vanquisher or the Tester, their faith in Him shall not benefit them then, since they will not have been obedient to Him before that description and will not have been disciplined by that self-disclosure of His and loved the Essence to experience the pleasure of witnessing Him in whatever attribute it may be.

Those who have divided their religion, that is, who have made their religion a collection of divided caprices, such as those overcome by the attributes of the soul some of which draw them to this, while others draw them to that, such that there issue in them varying caprices and they thus remain bewildered without direction or goal, and have become parties, groups differing depending on which of the caprices has overcome [them], with some overcome by wrath, others by lust. And if they were to have a religion, they make their religion, depending on the caprice that has overcome them, the very substratum of their partisanship and the reinforcement for the sway of that faculty that has overcome the heart. Their acts of worship are but habits and innovations, obeying as they do only caprices and deceptions, each of them worshipping a deity conjured by his illusion and conceived in his imagination and making that [deity] a cause for his arrogance towards, and division from, the other, as we witness in the case the adherents of the exoteric schools; you have no concern with them at all, that is to say, it is not your concern to guide them or to call them to the affirmation of Oneness in any way, since they are the folk of schism and of being veiled by multiplicity, their goal never being one. Their case will go to God, in terms of the recompense for their division, and not to you. Then He will inform them, upon the manifestation on them of the configurations of their differing souls and divided caprices at the separation of bodies, of what they used to do, of evil deeds.

Whoever brings a good deed, shall receive tenfold the like of it, this being the least of the degrees of reward. For the good deed issues by the manifestation of the heart, while the evil deed by the manifestation of the soul. Thus the smallest degrees of the reward for it [the good deed] is that he should arrive at the station of the heart which comes after the station of the soul in terms of ascension in the way that the level of tens comes after that of ones in the context of numbers; and whoever brings an evil deed shall only be requited the like of it, since there is no station lower than the station of the soul and so he necessarily descends to it and finds his recompense at the station of the soul to be the like of [the deed]. From this it can be inferred that reward pertains to [God’s] bounty, for its recipient is enhanced by it and his preparedness is illumined [thereby] and his receptivity to the effusion of the Truth is increased, strengthening him many times his deed, causing him to acquire rewards that multiply infinitely by the increased receptivity upon the performance of every good deed and the increase in capacity for, and love of, the good deed upon the increase of the effusion to an extent which only God knows, as He says after having mentioned its doubling up to seven hundred times: and God multiplies [the reward] for whom He will [Q. 2:261]. And [it can be inferred] that punishment pertains to [God’s] justice, since justice entails equality and so the one who acts through his soul, but is not pardoned, is recompensed with the soul equally. Remember what is said in His statement, exalted be He for it is what it has merited and against it is what it has earned [Q. 2:286]. Virtue for man is essential, causing him ever to rise higher, while with vice, its darkness is accidental to the primordial nature. Thus as long as it [the vice] is not deliberate or intentional on the part of the person, or it is [so] but he does not persist in it, it is pardoned and does not veil him. But if it is [intentional] and he persists in it, he is recompensed at the station of the soul with the like of it. The good deed and the evil deed mentioned here pertain to actions, for otherwise it may be that one man’s evil deed be equal to another’s good deed, as he [ʿAlī], peace be upon him, said, ‘The good deeds of the pious are the evil deeds of those brought near by the existence of the heart at the witnessing, while the evil deeds of the pious are by the manifestation of the soul at the wayfaring; their good deeds are by the manifestation of the heart’. It may be that an evil deed results in an eternal veiling, as in the case of idolatrous belief, for example.

Say: ‘As for me, my Lord has guided me to a straight path, to the path of the affirmation of the unity of the Essence, a right religion, forever firmly established, which creeds and sects cannot alter nor abrogate the [other] laws and scriptures, the creed of Abraham, with which he turned away from all else by rising above all of the levels, inclining away from every false religion and path that contains any idolatry, even if it be in the case of one of God’s attributes, exalted be He.

Say: ‘My prayer, that is, my presence of heart and witnessing in spirit, and my rituals, that is, my drawing near or all that by which I seek to draw closer through the heart, and my living, in the Truth, and my dying, to my soul, all, are for God, no portion being in it for me or for anyone else, since I did that for Him by [my] annihilation. Hence I possess no existence nor does anyone else that I should thus possess a share or a portion; [for] the Lord of the Worlds, that is, [all that is] for Him in consideration of the union in the form of the differentiations of [His] lordship.

No associate has He, in that, [either] in the union or the differentiation. And to this I have been commanded, that is, I have been commanded to see nothing other than Him at the source of the union, or in the form of the differentiations, so that I might strive for Him as He has described me, exalted be He, in His words The eye did not swerve, nor did it go beyond [the bounds] [Q. 53:17], and so He is the one who commands and the one commanded, the one seeing and the thing seen, and I am the first of those who submit’, of those who yield to the annihilation in Him, by submitting my countenance to Him according to that level within the differentiations of the Essence, for otherwise there would be no first or last, submitter or disbeliever.

Say: ‘Is it any other than God, whose affair is as [described] here, that I should seek for a lord, and hence demand the impossible, or [should I] seek as a goal [something] other than the Essence that subsumes all of the attributes, that is the All qua all, for it then to turn out to be merely a subject of a lord and not a lord in itself, when He is the Lord of all things?’, all that is other than Him, in consideration of the differentiations of His attributes, being subject to the Lord. Every soul earns only, something that is of evil consequence, against itself: for the earnings of the soul constitute an idolatrous association with His acts, exalted be He, and every individual guilty of such association, the evil consequence [of his action] shall be upon him by virtue of his being veiled, and no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another, by virtue of the fact that the configuration of that burden is firmly rooted [only] in that [particular soul] and adheres to it [alone], such that it [that soul] veils itself therewith: how then can it [the burden] pertain to another [soul]?

And He it is Who has made you successors, in His earth by manifesting His perfections in you as loci of manifestation to enable you to execute His command, and has raised some of you above others in degrees, within the manifested forms of His perfections in accordance with the varying degrees of your preparednesses, so that He may try you in what He has given you, of His perfections in accordance with preparednesses, [to ascertain] who observes the dues of that [perfection] which is manifested upon him, who fails to observe [them] and who observes what is due to Me by wayfaring in the path of these [perfections], until God makes these [perfections] manifest by concealing the attributes of that person’s soul such that he will have fulfilled the trusts of God, and [to ascertain] who does not observe [them] and is thus a treacherous one; and [until] your deeds are manifested upon you in accordance with [the fulfilment of] these [dues] such that it results in recompense for these [deeds] all together either by the requital of veiling in the case of shortcomings, where your Lord is swift in punishment, or by the reward of exteriorisation (burūz) and unveiling, where He is Forgiving covering up your acts and the attributes of your souls, which had covered and veiled those divine attributes and lordly perfections, being Merciful to you by manifesting these [attributes and perfections] upon you. Yet God knows best the realities of matters.