11. Hud

And he said, 'Embark therein! In the Name of God be its course and its mooring, that is, in the Greatest Name of God, which is the existence of every perfect knower from among the individuals of the human species [shall be] its effectuation, the putting into force of its judgements and the propagation of these [judgements] across the sea of the corporeal world, in addition to the establishing, the setting clear and the confirming of these, as you see in the case of every [divine] law whose command is effected, confirmed and set clear by the presence of a prophet or one of the leaders (imām) of that community [subject to that law] or one of its religious scholars (ḥabr). Truly my Lord is Forgiving, of the dark corporeal configurations of your souls and the sins of the garments of physical nature that bring about your destruction and cause you to drown in it sea, if you follow the Law; Merciful', by His effusion of bestowals of knowledge and unveilings as well as luminous configurations by which He delivers you. Were it not for His forgiveness and mercy, you would surely be drowned and destroyed like your brethren.

He said, 'I shall take refuge in a mountain that will protect me from the water', meaning by this, the brain which is the locus for the intellect, in other words, I shall take refuge with the intellect and the intelligible so that it might protect me from the overpowering of the sea of primordial matter that I might not then drown therein. Said he, 'This day there is none that can protect from God's command, except him on whom He has mercy', with the religion that proclaims the Oneness and the Law. And the waves, of the vain desires of the soul and the overpowering of the water of the sea of nature, came between them, that is, these veiled him from his father, his religion and his affirmation of Oneness, so he was among those drowned, in the sea of corporeal primordial matter.

And it was said, 'O earth, swallow your waters, and O heaven, abate!': in other words, a call came from the direction of the Truth by the tongue of the Law [to] the earth of corporeal nature to the effect: O earth, by the command of the Law and by following its precepts diminish the power over you of your vain desire and its mastery by the gushing forth of your substrata over the heart and halt at the bounds of moderation through which it [the heart] acquires its proper condition; and O heaven of the intellect, veiled [as you are] by habit and sense, tarnished by illusion and overcast with the clouds of vain desire that reinforce the soul and physical nature by preparing for it its substrata and means [of nourishment] through consideration, desist from reinforcing it. And the waters, of corporeal nature and the lifeline of the moisture that screens off the light of the Truth and prevents real life, subsided. And the affair, of God, was accomplished, by the deliverance of those who were saved and the destruction of those who were destroyed, and it became steady, that is, his law was upheld, upon the Jūdī, of Noah's existence and it settled, and it was said: 'Away with, that is, destruction for, the evildoing folk!', who denied God's religion and worshipped vain desire instead of the truth and substituted the place of the Law with the path of nature.

And Noah called out to his Lord and said, 'My Lord, lo! my son is of my family: fatherly compassion and the affectionate bonds of kinship drove him to demand his deliverance on account of the intensity of his attachment to him and concern for his affair. Despite that, he was mindful of the [refined] manners required in the [divine] presence and the virtuous [form of] requesting [from God], saying: and truly Your promise is the Truth, and he did not say, 'do not break Your promise to deliver my family'. And he said that [which he did say] only because of the presence of some variegation and a remnant within him, since by 'family' he had understood those related [to him] by form and natural ties of kinship, oblivious on account of his excessive distress for his son of God's proviso where He said: save those against whom the Word has already gone forth [Q. 11:40], failing to realise that his son is the one against whom the Words had already gone forth. Nor did he [Noah] solicit the compassion of his Lord, but alluded with his words: and You are the Most Just of Judges' to the fact that the Knower, the Just and the Wise does not break His promise.

He said: 'O Noah, lo! he is not of your family: in other words, that [the one who is of] your family in reality is the one with whom you share religious kinship, a spiritual relationship and a real connection not a formal one, as in the saying of the Commander of the Believers, peace be upon him: 'Verily the friend of Muḥammad is the one who obeys God, even if he should be distantly related and verily the enemy of Muḥammad is the one who disobeys God, even if he should be closely related'; lo! it is not a righteous deed: He makes clear that he is not of his family by [saying] that he is not righteous, pointing out that his family are the righteous ones, the followers of his religion and his law and that because of his [the son's] indulging in corruption and error his soul is as it were a unrighteous deed and that the cause of deliverance is only righteousness and not his kinship with you on the basis of form. Thus the one bereft of righteousness shall be denied deliverance. He [God] also intimated that he [his son] was a form of sin that issued from him [Noah], as in the saying, 'he is one of his father's secrets', according to what the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'The child is the secret of his father'. That is because when he [Noah] had done his utmost in his [prophetic] call [to his people] and expended all effort in the prolonged period without his people responding to him, he became wrathful and invoked [God] against them with his words: My Lord, do not leave from among the disbelievers a single dweller upon the earth. Assuredly if You leave them, they will lead Your servants astray, and will beget only disbelieving profligates [Q. 71:26-27]. In this way he was distracted from the presential vision of God's power and wisdom and [from the fact] that He brings forth the living from the dead and brings forth the dead from the living [Q. 10:31]. That invocation of his constituted the sin of his state at the error of his station. Consequently God tried him with the disbelieving profligate whom he claimed, during his state of wrath, was the only thing which they would beget, prejudging God this supposition of his, which is why He cleansed him of that sin with that punishment.

He said, 'My Lord, I seek refuge in You that I should ask of You that whereof I have no knowledge. Unless You forgive me, my variegations and the manifestation of my remnants, and have mercy on me, by [granting me] uprightness and fixity, I shall be among the losers', who lose their souls as a result of being veiled from Your knowledge and wisdom.

It was said, 'O Noah, go down, that is, descend from the locus of the union and the pinnacle of the station of sanctity and absorption in the unity to the station of differentiation and law-giving prophethood by returning to creation and witnessing the multiplicity at the source of unity, neither wrathful because of [your] being veiled by them [the multiplicity] from the Truth, nor satisfied with their disbelief by veiling [yourself] from them with the Truth, in peace, that is, safe from being veiled by the multiplicity and from the manifestation of the soul in wrath and from the existence of variegation and the actualisation of attachment after disengagement or error after guidance, from Us, that is, [a peace] issuing from Us and through Us, and blessings, as a result of the legislation of the rules of the Law and the establishing of the foundations of justice by means of which everything grows and is augmented, upon you and upon some communities, that will issue, from those with you, following your religion and your path until the end of time. And [there will be other] communities, that is, and there will issue forth from those with you communities, to whom We shall give enjoyment, in the life of this world, because of their veiling themselves therewith and halting [thereat], and then a painful chastisement will befall them', when We destroy them for their disbelief and burn them in the Fire of the vestiges and chastise them with the configurations.If you wish to effect a correspondence [between this and your own existence], you would interpret Noah as your spirit and the Ark as your cognitive and practical perfection through which shall be your salvation at the point of the Flooding of the sea of primordial matter, such that when the oven of the body overflows as a result of the mastery of alien moisture and corrupt mixtures and there comes the call [proclaiming] its [the body's] disintegration, he [your spirit] rides in it and carries with him [on board] from every two kinds from among the beasts of the animal and the natural faculties and the birds of the spiritual faculties two, that is, their original pair. And [he carries with him] his three sons, Ham (Ḥām) the heart, Shem (Sām) the considerative intellect and Japheth (Yāfith) the practical intellect as well as his wife, the reassured soul, taking it [the Ark] on its course in the Greatest Name of God and [finally] being delivered with timeless subsistence from eternal destruction in the Flood, while his other wife, the corporeal nature, and his son from her, the estimation that sought refuge in the mountain of the brain, are drowned.