10. Yunus

Among them are those who listen to thee. The listeners are diverse and their degrees disparate. One hears through nature with the ear of the head; he was sleeping and listening wakes him up and relieves him of sorrow. Another hears through the state with the ear of the heart; he was resting and listening brings him into movement until the breeze of intimacy blows. Another hears through the Real with a soul that is dead, a heart that is thirsty, and a burning breath; the beginningless reminder arrives, the spirit takes its ease in loving kindness, and the secret core is filled with love. Bū Sahl ṣuʿlūk said, " In listening the listener is between curtaining and self-disclosure. The curtaining of the Real belongs to the beginners. It is the mark of mercy's gaze on the work of the Men, for in their weakness and incapacity they are not able to bear the unveiling of the ruling power of the Haqiqah. " In this meaning it has been recounted from Manṣūr Maghribī that he said, " I alighted at a camp of nomads. A young man made me his guest. Suddenly he fell down unconscious, so I asked about his state. I was told that he was in love with the daughter of his uncle, and that she had just come out of her tent. The youth had seen the dust of her garment as she went, so he fell down unconscious. I got up and went to the doorway of that tent and interceded for the youth. I said, 'A stranger among you has respect and safeguards. I have come to intercede with you in the business of this young man. Be kind to him in his longing.' " The woman said to me, 'You have a sound heart. He is not able to put up with witnessing the dust from my dress. How will he put up with my love?' This is the state of the desirer, for He keeps him covered by the curtain of selfhood so that he will not be totally burnt and melted by the assaults of the Haqiqah. He sees no more than one flash of the lightning of the Haqiqah, and it brings him into movement; he shouts out, tears his clothing, and weeps. Again, when he reaches the place of straightness and achieves stability in the reality of solitariness, the breeze of proximity begins to blow on him from the horizon of self-disclosure. His movement is changed to stillness, for the influxes of awesomeness bring forth courtesy with the Presence. This is why the Lord of the Worlds says, " When they were in [the Qur'an's] presence, they said, 'Give ear!' " [46:29].

And of them are some who look toward you, but do not perceive the truth nor your reality, because of one of the two mentioned reasons or both, as in the case of the blind person to whose loss of sight is added the loss of insight so that he neither sees nor perceives: how can such be guidedḍ

Verily God is not unjust towards mankind in any way: since there is mention of deafness and blindness, both of which indicate a lack of preparedness for perception, one is given to think from these statements that an injustice has taken place by virtue of the fact that some possess preparedness while others do not. However, He disavows any [suggestion of] injustice with regard to Himself because the lack of original preparedness is not [an act of] injustice [on His part], on account of the non-existence of the possibility of better [preparedness] than that with regard to that person's specificity and ipseity: thus his entified reality entails that [preparedness] at some level of contingency. It is like in the case of an ass which, given its asinine nature, cannot possess preparedness entailing human perception and its entified reality requires the asinine preparedness entailed therein: nothing is demanded of it that would be beyond [the capacity of] its preparedness. Hence there is no injustice in this case, since there had not been any at the outset. If, however, it [the preparedness] is invalidated by dark configurations taking firm root, then [the matter is clear and] there is nothing more to be said about this. In both cases, that person is unjust to his soul. As for the former, [he is unjust] because he has fallen short in terms of the degrees of contingency and his deficiency relative to what is above him, as, for example, with the ass falling short of [the level of] man and its being deficient in relation to him but not in relation to itself: in terms of itself it [the ass] has neither fallen short nor is deficient. As for the latter, it is obvious. According to this sense then: they [mankind] are unjust to their own souls. They diminish their shares. Or, it is that God does not wrong mankind in any way by demanding of them what is beyond their [individual] preparedness and then punishing them for [failing] that. It is that mankind wrong their own souls by using their preparednesses for things other than for which these were created.

And on the day when He shall gather them as if they had not tarried but an hour of the day, since they do not sense motion, a concomitant of their obliviousness (dhuhūl) to [the passage of] time. For the one who is oblivious to motion will [also] be oblivious to time. Thus a single hour or interminable ages are all the same to them; they recognise one another, by virtue of their former companionship and the exigency of vain desire that is a corollary of the original correspondence [between them] [and recognising each other] by the sign of the ominous fate [that awaits them]. Then if the original genus-correspondence and correspondence of primordial nature remain by virtue of their having the one orientation and coincidence in terms of goals the mutual recognition between them remains. If it does not remain because of the variance of desires and difference of opinions as well as the discrepancy in terms of the configurations deriving from the appendages of creation and the accidents of substrata, this [mutual recognition] turns into mutual denial; those will verily have lost who denied the encounter with God, because of their having fallen under the loneliness (waḥsha) of mutual denial in that case and their veiling themselves with the veils of their wicked habits and the configurations of their corrupt beliefs, and they were not guided: and the light of their preparedness is invalidated so that they are not guided to God nor to mutual recognition and are thus made to slink in a loathsome state, banished, having no intimate with whom to be familiar nor any acquaintance to give refuge to.

And for every community there is a messenger, who corresponds to them in terms of ego-centric states so that he might make possible between them that familiarity which leads to their being able to learn from him and so that he might be able to descend to the limits of their intellects and the levels of their comprehensions and thus cleanse them by means of what will rectify their states and remove their veils and teach them that which will result in their elevation from their stations and guide to God. And when their messenger comes, judgement is passed between them, with the guiding of those who have accepted guidance and the sending astray of those who have chosen to stray and the felicity of the fortunate ones and the wretchedness of those who are damned by the manifestation of all of that in his presence, some obeying him because of their closeness to him, others denying him because of their remoteness from him, justly, that is, with equity, that which prevails in the state of a prophet, being as it is the outward aspect of his affirmation of [God's] Oneness, his conduct and his chosen path, and they are not wronged, by having other than what is their state ascribed to them and then being requited for it. Or, it is that judgement is passed between them by delivering and confirming those who have found guidance through him [the messenger] and destroying those who have gone astray and chastising them on account of the manifesting of the causes for such [chastisement] through his presence [among them].

And they say: 'When will this promise come to pass, if you are truthfulḍ': a disavowal [on their part] because of their being veiled from the resurrection and their failure to become aware of its meaning, since had they known its modality by the lifting of their veils through disengagement from the garments of the soul, they would have believed them concerning that [promise] and would not have disavowed [it].

Say: 'I have no power to hurt myself, to the end of this [verse]: he approximated for them the presential vision of the [divine] acts by denying that he has power or effective agency and that if such does come about from him it must necessarily be through God's will, so that they might recognise the vestiges of the resurrection. He then intimates [to them] that the minor resurrection will take place at the termination of their appointed times, which are determined by God as in where He says: For every community there is an appointed time, to the end of this [verse].