BB00424: Li-’Askari

He is the All-Glorious, the All-Powerful, the All-Bestowing

I testify before God and whatsoever lieth within His knowledge that there is none other God but Him, and that all else is His creation and within His grasp, and all are subservient unto Him. The peace of God and of whosoever is in God’s dominion be upon thee, O thou Sovereign of all contingent beings in the depths of beginnings and King of all existence in the oceans of endings!

May my soul be a sacrifice for thee, O Beloved of all atoms! How can I describe Thee when Thou art far more glorious and exalted than that the highest bird of essence from among the camphor-like ones should alight in Thy court, and far more magnificent and great than that the ultimate abstraction of the simple ones should ascend to the holy atmosphere of Thy nearness. May my soul and all that lieth within my Lord’s knowledge be a sacrifice for Thee! Were it not for my fear of the limitation of my existence, I would bear the sin of description and the transgression of characterization. I would not have approached the sanctuary of Thy glory nor sought permission from the angels who throng around Thy sacred precincts.

But now, since my existence hath caused the dwellers of the sphere of my will to slip from my grasp, my heart is consumed in my remembrance of Thee, and this, like all my deeds, appeareth without the volition of my essence. Therefore unto Thee do I offer the essence of my being and the pure abstraction of my reality in absolute effacement and sheer nothingness. And I testify before Thee that I and the highest essence of my praise before Thee are as a mere shadow—nay, I seek God’s forgiveness for this and turn unto Thee in repentance from every description save Thy Self, and every praise except Thine Own, and my remembrance of Thine Essence, and my recognition of Thy Identity.

By Thy might and the majesty of Thy sovereign grandeur! If Thou shouldst chastise me in requital for my certitude in Thy Cause, my acknowledgment of Thy sovereignty, and my faithfulness to the covenant of Thy glory with all that Thou possessest of compulsive majesty and sovereign might, I would surely glory in this among the concourse of the heavens of names and attributes and upon the dome of time in the kingdom of earth and heaven. For I am he whom the King of Eternity hath mentioned, even if it be with the mention of chastisement.

Thine is the favor, and from Thee is the grace which, after that lowest limit and greatest of sins, Thou didst decree naught for me save bounty and didst treat me with naught save pardon and concealment, as though I had never disobeyed Thee in any matter and Thou hadst never mentioned me save in my remembrance of Thee.

May my soul and all that lieth within my Lord’s knowledge be a sacrifice for Thee! I sanctify Thee through what God willeth beyond sanctification, and I exalt Thee beyond that sanctification through what God willeth in exaltation. And I beseech from the King of Thy generosity and the vastness of Thy mercy that which Thou possessest in the kingdom of destiny and the heaven of decree, for when Thou willest, God willeth, and He hath made Thee thus, and He is powerful over all things.