13. Ar-Ra'd

Alif Lām Mīm RāÌ This is one of the secrets of love, one of the treasures of recognition. In the midst of their spirits, the friends have a deposit, but they do not know what they have. The wonder is that they keep on seeing an ocean and they weep in hope for a drop. This is like the Pir of the Tariqah said: “O God, Your stream is flowing-how long will I be thirsty? What sort of thirst is this that I see one cup after another? “Who has ever had a state rarer than this? I'm thirsty and clear water is flowing before me. “Exalted of the two worlds! How much will You be hidden, how much apparent? My heart is bewildered, the spirit distracted. How long this curtaining and self-disclosing? When at last will there be the everlasting self-disclosure?” The allusion is that today the friends have nothing more than the scent of the lights of those secrets and the whiffs of those traces, and that, other than MuḤammad the Arab, no one is worthy of that face-to-face vision. First He alludes to the road of recognition for the elect, since their gaze is on the Essence and the attributes, which are called “the World of the Command.” Then He uncovers the road of recog- nizing Himself for the common people. He knows that their gaze does not pass beyond the newly arrived things, the engendered beings, and the World of Creation. He says,

God is He who lifted up the heavens without pillars that you see. Heaven and earth, land and see, air and space, are the World of Creation, the playing field of the gaze of the creatures, whose end is apparent and which can disappear. But the World of the Command can never have an end, for it is necessarily continuous. As long as a man does not pass beyond the World of Creation, he will not be given access to the World of the Command. The che- valiers whose gaze travels in the World of the Command are the Pegs of the earth. Just as in respect of form the world's mountains keep the earth in place, so also in respect of meaning the chevaliers keep the world standing. " Through them rain falls and through them provision is given. " This is why the Lord of the Worlds says,

And He it is who spread out the earth and placed within it unshaking mountains. In terms of the allusion and intimation of the Folk of the Haqiqah He is saying, " It is He who spread out the earth and placed within it the Pegs, namely the friends and masters among His servants, to whom recourse is had and from whom assistance comes. " The sun rises in the east and sets in the west for a hundred years before someone's eyes are daubed with the collyrium of the Haqiqah by the pencil of solicitude. Perhaps we will be allowed to see those chevaliers and reach endless felicity with one look at them. For thousands of years the moon-faced beauties of Firdaws and the houris of paradise have been standing in wait in that busy bazaar: When will the fortunate procession of those chevaliers be conveyed to the highest of the High Chambers so that they, as hangers-on, may step into the pageant of good fortune at an Omnipotent King [54:55]. On the day Junayd's bier was carried, a bird came and sat on the edge of his coffin. People were waving their hands at it but it would not leave. Ruwaym said, " In generosity the bird is telling us with the tongue of its state, 'Leave me alone, for my claws have been fixed to the edge of his coffin with the nails of passion. Today this frame of Junayd is the portion of the cherubim. If not for the intrusion of your tumult, you would fly with me like falcons in this air.' " When they buried him, one of the poor stood above him and recited these verses: " Oh the grief at separation from a group who are lamps and fortresses, rain clouds, cities, and unshaking mountains, good, security, and stillness. The nights will not change for us until they are brought forth by fate. So every fire belongs to our hearts, every water belongs to our eyes. "

And if you are wondering, because of their statement, then that [statement of theirs] itself is the cause for wonder, since man becomes a new creation in every minute, indeed, the world [itself] becomes a new creation at every moment by the changing of configurations, states, conditions and forms. How can one who has contemplated the world of engenderment and corruption with a heedful eye deny the [reality of] new creationḍ Those are the ones who, have been veiled from the presential vision of the acts and the self-disclosures of [His] lordliness, and how much more so [are they veiled] from the self-disclosures of the divine attributesḍ those - fetters shall be around their necks, and so they are unable to raise their heads - lowered [as they are] in disgrace towards the earth, their eyes restricted to [perceiving only] what is close to them of [things perceptible to] the senses - in order to see the angelic realm of the spirits and witness the world of [divine] power and the rational concepts that are remote to the waystations of the senses; and those, they shall be the inhabitants, of the Fire of the acts in the lowest pit of the abyss of physical nature, abiding therein.

And they would have you hasten on the evil rather than the good, because of the correspondence between their preparedness and evil, this [itself] being on account of the mastery of dark configurations and vices on that [preparedness], and so they incline to evil because evil prevails over them, when there have indeed occurred before them, punishments of the likes of them. Truly your Lord is forgiving to mankind, despite their evil-doing towards their own souls when they acquire those wicked configurations that veil [them] from the light, [forgiving] to those in whom such [configurations] have not taken deep roots and have not annulled their preparednesses, and so He removes them with the light of His mercy; and truly your Lord is severe in retribution, of those in whom such [wicked configurations] have become deeply rooted and have become a rust, annulling [their] preparedness.

And those who disbelieve say, 'Why has not some sign been sent down upon him from his Lord!': having become veiled, they did not see the signs that bore witness to [Muḥammad's] prophethood, such as his [the Prophet's] assumption of God's attributes, because of their non-perception and the blindness of their insights. That is why they did not reckon these as signs and requested them according to their vain desires. Your duty is only to warn them, and not to guide them, for guidance belongs to God; and for every folk there is a guide, who corresponds to them in terms of the genus-correspondence of primordial nature and so they acquire an affinity with him at the point of his perfection and his reception of the divine light cast upon him. They accept guidance from him and so God guides them according to His manifestation [in that guide]. Therefore, whoever corresponds to you in terms of that original genus-correspondence will receive guidance from you, and whoever does not, will not.

Those are hidden mysteries known only to God, who, knows what every female bears, and thus He knows what the female of the soul bears in the way of the child of perfection, in other words, the potential of every preparedness, and [knows also] the increase in the wombs of preparedness as a result of self-cleansing, self-purification and the blessed company of perfections, and [He knows] the reduction [in these preparednesses] as a result of engrossment in passionate desires. And everything, in the way of perfections, with Him is according to a, designated, measure, in accordance with [a person's] receptivity. Or [it means]: and everything in the way of the potential for receptivity is with Him according to a measure [designated] in pre-eternity issuing from His holiest effusion, neither increasing or decreasing. Or: for every folk there is a guide, who is God, exalted be He, as He has said You [Muḥammad] cannot guide whom you like, but [it is] God [who] guides whomever He will [Q. 28:56], by virtue of the fact that He knows the potential for receptivity that is in [all] preparednesses, the [potential for] increase and decrease [in them] and so He determines on that basis their perfections.

[He is] the Knower, of the Unseen in the way of the potential for receptivity in preparednesses as well as [Knower] of the witnessed of those perfections present that emerge into actuality; the Great, in stature, whose majesty is above granting the requirements of certain preparednesses, yet He embraces them all and gives them [all] what they require; the High Exalted, above that His effusion should be stemmed such that it fails the actualisation of a preparedness and be the cause of it lacking what it requires.

[They are all] the same, those of you who keeps his words secret, in the hiding-places of his preparedness, and those who proclaim them openly, by exteriorising knowledge from [a state of] potentiality to [one of] actuality, and those who lurk, in the night that is the darkness of his soul, and those who go forth, exiting from the station of the soul and departing to the daylight that is the light of the spirit.