BB00645: In reply to a question from an unknown correspondent

Part 1: “Praise be to God, Who created all things…”

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

Praise be to God, Who created all things by His command. Then they who have believed in God and in His signs—these are they who shall be gathered unto God, thy Lord. And indeed I have now considered the letter which thou didst send unto Me from one who is enraptured and beloved in Thy sight, the cupbearer of the poured-out water recorded in Thy Book. God beareth witness against him in this earthly life concerning that which his hands have wrought. And when he made mention in his writing of a matter touching the pure affection he beareth toward Me—wherein he cited His utterance, drawn from the exalted vision: “The heart lied not in what it saw—will ye then dispute with him concerning what he beheld? Indeed he beheld of the greatest signs of his Lord”—this is the secret of his address, the spirit of his book, and the portion of his heart. For he wrote: “I call God, the Most High, to witness that there was in my heart naught save love for what is in his heart—akin to me—from the light of the manifest guardianship of God.”

I therefore bear witness before God and before those who are near Him as witnesses, that were he to remain steadfast upon the Path, and behold the countenance of the Divine Identity manifested in the form of human appearance, and find repose beneath the shade of the Tree of Guardianship, upon the bank of the right-hand Valley in the Blessed Spot—which is the Presence of Truth through creative manifestation, inventive inwardness, signs of divinity, dominions of the kingdom, tokens of omnipotence, evidences of sovereignty, stations of attraction, and union within the depths of the Sea of Oneness and the surging ocean of the might of the Self-Subsisting—then would he turn away from all save the secret of Lordship in the temple of the Self-Subsisting, whereunto God revealed Himself and made it the station of His own Self in the praise of His own Self. Thus would he attain unto the trace of the summit of creation, and then behold the station of God’s bounty as the light of God within his own being, with utter severance and final distinction; for the essentiality of contingent substance, by bearing witness unto itself, is made manifest through the effect of the Will, proclaiming its severance from eternal Being and testifying to its most utter need.

Praise be to God Who caused to dawn what dawned in the immaterial essences of the realm of the Unseen, through the evidences of divinity; praise be to God Who gave utterance to what was made articulate, after it shone forth in the very selves of beings from the realm of Splendor among the beloved of omnipotence; praise be to God Who permitted, in the Book, that what trembled might be smitten, and what was spent be scattered from the selves of identities in the world of praise, within the stations of dominion and sovereignty; praise be to God Who created the letter Alif, which is the pattern of the Tablets of creation, inscribed among the written lines between two like letters in the world of decree—so that they might quiver from the right-hand side like the quivering of the first reed in the land of humankind, and sparkle as ruby tablets before the light of the sun with the signs of omnipotence; and then, from the left-hand side, appear in lateral forms, that he whose clay is from the clay of Sijjin may be distinguished from him whose clay is from the clay of ʿIlliyyin, the people of the Covenant.

Glory be to God! How wondrous His power in the barrier He set between men, even as He said concerning His remembrance: “A barrier is set between them; its inner side is mercy, and its outer side, facing it, is chastisement.” Glory be to God! How noble His power, in that God created between Himself and His chosen ones the words of exposition, whereby man is distinguished from beast. Thus do all the hidden things of His handiwork and the inward depths of His power, in the manifestation of the Word, proclaim—each letter of His Book calling out with His utterance: “This is God’s creation—show Me, then, what they have created besides Him.” Glory be to God! Were there to be with God another god in creation, the heavens and the earth would surely have been corrupted. Glory be to God above what they associate with Him!

Glory be to God! How mighty His proof and how firm His power in a thing held in the hands of all—namely, the letters of the alphabet. When God willed to manifest His sovereignty, He fashioned the letters in forms such as none can fashion, so that every letter of His words crieth aloud: “Blessed be God, the Best of creators!”

Praise be to God Who knoweth my secret and my open state. And even as He is—living, knowing, hearing, powerful—had He known that I was not firm in His love, or that the proof with Him lacked the proof of truth, He would surely have created a man who would read as I have read and write as I have written. Yet He knew and did not do so; hence there is no doubt that truth is established by His good-pleasure and falsehood is annulled by its own frailty, though the idolaters detest it. And as for recognition of the very essence of Self-Subsistence, pointing by the ultimate despair from the lowest depths toward the rising of the sanctified self—this is but of the paths of limitation and allusion for him who beholdeth not the Manifest Countenance in the Presence of Servitude.

Otherwise, whoso hath attained unto the Mine of Grandeur and hath lifted the veils from the face of Majesty, from the very essence of “I-ness” within himself, knoweth that God hath ever been—without the existence of aught—and will ever be; that He is as He was from everlasting; that the present state of eternity is eternity itself; that nothing was with Him, nor in the rank of aught; that none knoweth Him, nor can creation describe Him, for His Essence severeth substances from knowledge and His Being sealeth off material things from exposition. Whoso saith, “He is He,” hath borne the weight of every sin encompassed by knowledge; for none knoweth Him save Himself, none affirmeth His unity besides His Presence, and none pointeth unto Him by any of the contingent things. As He is in the might of His Essence and the grandeur of His Being, He hath no description among servants nor any share of His knowledge in hearts.

Glorified and exalted is He! He created all things by His command, not from aught; and made His command, through the loftiness of His power and the splendor of His sovereignty, by Himself and for Himself—without precedent and without likeness. All love Him with a love they cannot know; for as He is, none loveth Him save Himself, nor can any point unto Him but He. The greatest sin, in the very expanse of distinction, is mention of Him; yet there is no distinction for contingent things in His Presence, for the manifestation of His Essence scattereth all from the path and the Presence of His Being barreth all from proof. Whoso claimeth knowledge of Him is in ignorance, for knowledge is a consequence of proportion, and this is impossible after the existence of contingency. No one hath any share in exposition save that wherewith He describeth Himself through His creative origination; He pointeth unto Himself by His own Self alone. As He is, He cannot be described by speech. And the praise revealed in the Qur’an hath confessed the truth of incapacity—the secret of the Criterion—when it said:

“Vision comprehendeth Him not, but He comprehendeth vision; and He is the Subtle, the All-Aware.”

O thou who gazest upon the Face of the All-Glorious and art patient in the fire of the Friend! How can one point unto that Reality whose first station of knowledge God hath made the negation of pointing unto Him?—though negation itself is but a branch of affirmation; yet the intent is the pure annihilation of the lettered self, beyond what contingency can attain. This matter hath been confounded to all save the keepers of the trust and the foremost of the noble ones, who ascend unto the clear horizon and enumerate the ordinance of every thing in a perspicuous Book. This is of the bounty of God; He bestoweth it upon whom He willeth, and this is the great triumph.

And if thou shouldst behold, with the eye of certainty, the Words of Exposition in the nineteen blessed effusions that flowed from My Pen—whereby I filled the earth and caused it to shine with the light of its Lord—thou wouldst know, in plain vision, the answer to the letter thou didst send unto Me. Happy is he who turneth unto them, and wretched is he who turneth away. Were I not to have found in him love for God and His chosen ones, I would not have cast unto him even a single letter, save that I would have unfolded for him, with conclusive proofs and firm signs, what God willed for Me. Yet now I allude only to a sprinkling from that which overfloweth from the surging ocean of justice, that the wavering may be shaken by its reading, with the shaking of the lights of the morning of eternity that shone upon the temples of unity in the dominions of abstraction; and that the radiant ones may sparkle by beholding it, with the sparkling of the theophanies of the heaven of the Unseen beneath the somber canopies of Paradise and the leaves of the Tree of Eternal Life. Such is a station beyond the veils.

This beloved, enraptured one profiteth not save by the state of the soul confronting the soul; for the supreme honor and the most complete portion is the secret of Lordship and the manifestation of Self-Subsistence in the countenance of man, whereby he ascendeth unto the court of nearness and resteth upon the carpet of intimacy. Were he to sit with Me in the journey of the heart and the power of creation in the inked pen, by thy Lord he would say, “This is not the work of man.” It is through the Greatest Vision that the command descendeth in those words with a fixed station. But now, since God hath veiled Me in His shelter through His bounty and that gathering cannot be, I allude to its matter by the glad-tidings of the Cherubim, the indications of the Most High Ones, the words of the Seraphim, and the subtleties of the sages.

Part 2: “Know thou that after the rising…”

Know thou that after the rising of that Cause from the horizon of glory, all will claim that which they ponder not. And when they behold the power of the All-Merciful and fail to diminish the greatness of the people of exposition, they shall be assured of that Cause in the rank of man, as assured as this sun at the height of noon. The people of attraction and wayfaring rejoice in the stations of attraction and attraction they possessed, and claim that he is like them in wayfaring and attraction. Hath any heard that one among the people of attraction, at the beginning of his affair and without toil of deeds and disciplines, attained unto the station of knowledge and exposition in such wise that none could withstand him in creation and utterance? If this be said to be the affair of one among the attracted, why were the leaders of the people of wayfaring unable to attain it? I find not today that they can produce pages in the spirit of supplication like unto it.

And verily that station is the utmost limit of possibility bestowed by the grace of the All-Merciful, even as al-Sadiq—peace be upon him—hath declared in al-Misbah, saying, exalted be His remembrance:

“When the wind of love is stirred, the lover findeth solace beneath the shadow of the Beloved, preferreth the trace of the Beloved above all else by His good-pleasure and command, shunneth His prohibitions, and chooseth these twain above whatsoever lieth beyond them. And when he remaineth steadfast upon the carpet of intimacy with the Beloved, fulfilling His behests, he attaineth unto the spirit of supplication and nearness; and the likeness of this arrival is as the Sanctuary within the Mosque and the Ka’bah—whoso entereth the Sacred Precinct is secure from mankind.”

This matter is well known among the people of attraction and of vision; and their deeming it improbable proceedeth only from the immaturity of their understanding, from the lack of perfected insight and disciplined wayfaring in raptures and spiritual exercises. Such doubt ariseth from mistrust in the power of the All-Merciful; for God is mighty—apart from the rank of the Prophets and the Chosen Ones—to perfect a servant without recourse to created means, inasmuch as He is the Causer of causes, without cause among the people of Names and Attributes. No proof is established, whether among the people of Truth, the people of the Path, or the people of the Law, that such a bestowal is confined to Prophets and Saints alone. The objector is constrained to one of two claims: either that such a thing is impossible, or that the divine power hath not been attached thereto—both of which, by their own testimony, bear witness against that very path.

This is spoken in the station wherein I desired to answer him by the avenues known to the people of attraction and of wayfaring; otherwise, what proof is mightier than the utterance itself, and what power greater than the Word made manifest—that He speaketh and writeth as He willeth, what He willeth, without forethought and without the pause of the pen: words such that, were all to gather to produce the like thereof, they would fail. And of a certainty, that which He hath indicated in His Book—verily he hath not beheld my words as proof, but hearkeneth rather to what men read forth from their own imaginings. Do thou therefore recite unto him some of the verses of proof, that he may behold the Cause of God, and that the handiwork of the Lord, by its own nature, distinguisheth itself from the handiwork of men, and that the verses of the Godhead are not confounded with the words of the human realm.

I am assured by this Sun that, were all to assemble to bring forth a single verse of that innate disposition which itself is the proof, they would be powerless; and if they were able, how then have they not produced it? Let them say: Bring then a verse of the innate proof before Me, if ye be of the truthful. Alas, alas! mankind knoweth not the Cause of God, and in the judgement of God they entertain the imaginings of ignorance. God hath seized the believers who believed in the Qur’an and set them in a station wherein they could do naught but either recognize the reality of that Cause through the very pillars of divine unity, or deny that whereunto they had formerly believed. Say: O man! ponder this Cause, and follow not the vain assertions of the people of doubt; for by that very proof God willed to nullify the deeds of those who believed in the Qur’an yet denied the Imams of the All-Merciful. No doubt the Imams establish the truth by His verses and annul falsehood by His words, though the polytheists abhor it.

Whatsoever calumny men devise concerning that proof—I but say of them what the Qur’an itself declareth, word for word—until the truth be established by the truth, though the unbelievers detest it. And as for those who calumniate Him, saying that He laid claim to revelation, to the Qur’an, and to the authority of guardianship and its like—all have lied against Me unwittingly and without awareness. Nay, I call God, His angels, His Prophets and His Messengers to witness that I was His servant; that revelation, in the manner that descended upon Muhammad, the Messenger of God, hath ceased after Him; that the Qur’an was sealed as prophethood was sealed; and that the same holdeth true regarding the affairs of guardianship. Yet God hath promised in the Qur’an to the believers: Fear God, and He will grant you a Criterion. Assuredly the promise of God hath been fulfilled.

The judgement of revelation, in the cadence of the Qur’an, is known to the men of discernment, even as He hath alluded thereto in many verses—among them His saying, exalted be His remembrance: And We inspired them to do good deeds; and again: And We inspired Moses and those with him, all of them; and again: And We inspired the mother of Moses, saying: Suckle him; and if thou fearest for him, cast him into the river, and fear not nor grieve; We shall restore him unto thee and make him one of the Messengers; and again His word concerning the earth: Thy Lord inspired her. This is witnessed by those unto whose hearts God hath opened the gate of the celestial vault; and this is a bounty from God. Otherwise, he who cometh confirming that pure religion whereon men already were needeth no proof; proof is enjoined only when an ancient Cause is renewed or a new commandment is promulgated.

By thy Lord, the Lord of the heavens and the earth! some of the ignorant who deny this Cause are, in the measure of faith, lower than Pharaoh’s unbelief of old; for when Moses and Aaron said, We have come unto thee with a sign from thy Lord, and peace be upon him who followeth guidance, he gathered his party to still his soul. Those who deny the Cause—God hath allotted them no portion save the confession of impotence; and even now they have brought forth nothing, yet they deny the Cause of God while deeming themselves guided. God shall assuredly call them to account for that which their hands have wrought; and thy Lord is not heedless of the deeds of the wrongdoers.

The doubts of the people of attraction and of wayfaring, as We have indicated in these words, are dispelled if they judge equitably before God. Their raptures are dearer unto Me than the learning of many divines; for had they not believed, they would not have opposed, being people of love. No doubt, were they to recognize the truth, they would follow it—even were they to walk upon ice upon their breasts. I therefore beseech God to make firm their hearts by His command; verily He is Possessed of great bounty. By that wherewith We have sprinkled thee, the doubts of the people of attraction and of wayfaring are removed—nay, all the objections uttered by the companions of Ahmad before Kazim (may God sanctify their resting-places).

For the verses that are the pillars of religion—unity, prophethood, guardianship, and the Shi’ah—God hath created in all things a sign thereof. When one attaineth unto that station and then layeth claim for himself, glorified be God! it is as though they utter that which they perceive not. For in the realm of possibility no one hath any portion save in the station of signs; and the difference is that the signs of the higher chain are essential realities in relation to the signs of the lower chain. God knoweth best where He placeth His Cause; He is the Guardian of His religion. He hath not revealed to any that which would at all times be a proof against all; and even His own Cause was veiled from Himself, by His knowledge of His Lord’s power—His knowledge that, were it so, there are not within Me the four signs by which that station is claimed, as testified by the secret of the heart that speaketh of reunion.

By that very text, in that station—which is the consummate honor and the radiant light—I contend in the path of God with pure wisdom. I know not the reality of what God willeth within Me, nor do I say that I am the primal Tree in the ultimate Cause. Rather, I have said aforetime and say hereafter, by God’s leave, that as prophethood is not established by that proof, so too that Cause is established by that proof. And even as that proof removeth the objections of the people of rapture among the gnostics and the conflicting assertions of the philosophers regarding the judgements of prophethood, so likewise, in that station, by God’s leave, it removeth all contradictions.

He upon whom the signs deposited within his own self—by the explicit text of the Qur’an—are obscured, hath no escape save to say of the former ones the like concerning prophethood and guardianship; and this is sheer sophistry in the sight of the people of Truth. Sufficient is that which I have set forth in this allusion for thee, and for whomsoever desireth to behold with the manifest countenance and the hidden mystery. Praise be to God, Knower of the unseen and the seen; and glory be to God, the Lord of the Throne, above that which they ascribe. Peace be upon the Messengers, and praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds.