BB00383: Answer to the son of Mulla ’Ali-i-Nuri (Kayfiyyatu’l-Mi’raj)

A questioned, on the night of the sitting, concerning the matter of the Ascension in the Land of Sad:

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

Praise be to God Who has manifested Himself to all contingent beings through the appearance of the Will for them and through them, that all contingent beings might know what God has placed within the essential realities of their beings regarding the stations of action and manifestations of passivity, until each station knows itself and recognizes the decree of its origin in what God has ordained for it in every condition without end, that it might testify in the realm of contingency to what God has testified to Himself and to His creation that there is no God but Him, the Mighty, the Most High.

That esteemed one asked regarding a difficulty well-known among the people of divine knowledge: How it was possible for the Prophet to be present simultaneously in all regions of existence, both hidden and manifest?

Know that none can understand this lofty station except through knowledge of “the matter between the two matters” which is the mystery of destiny. For things have three ranks: the rank of eternity (sarmad), which is the station of action, though God has given it an end in the station of manifestation due to the inexhaustibility of divine outpouring in the rank of existence—this is the station of Muhammad and his successors, where none can grasp anything of the wisdom of that rank; the rank of perpetuity (dahr), which in God’s knowledge has a beginning from the station of eternity and an end in the station of concealment—this is the station of other contingent beings in the ranks of essences in the worlds of abstraction; and the rank of time (zaman), which God has given bounds in both beginning and end, and which is realized through the motion of the celestial spheres.

Having established these ranks, there is no doubt that in the first rank the heart knows that a thing has all ranks established for it and all manifestations tell its story, for the universal body which God made the bearer of the loci of action speaks of its essential station which indicates the station of eternity. For although the Prophet’s body on the Night of the Ascension was in the house of Humayra according to tradition, it is established by consensus that he was in heaven and the ranks of paradise and hell. For just as nothing in the contingent worlds can veil his essence, so too with his body. Since minds can only perceive things as limited, they cannot witness the matter between matters and the decree of eternity in the decree of determination.

Thus whatever was said in the two gatherings, the mind turned from it due to its unity, until some souls acknowledged their lack of knowledge of what actually occurred regarding the rank of the body. Had God willed and desired, He would have explained the reality of this matter through the mystery of what occurred and the conclusive wisdom in its station, that all might know who knew the matter in the stations of manifestation and not be veiled from beholding the light of the unseen when veiled from the court of the presence of nearness.

At that station the pen has ceased to flow, and to God returns the decree of exposition in beginning and return. Glory be to God, Lord of the Throne, above what they describe. Peace be upon the Messengers, and praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.