13. Ar-Ra'd

For him are attendants, reinforcements that follow one another from the angelic realm and arrive to him by the command of God, guarding him, from the snatches of the jinn [cf. Q. 37:10] of the imaginal and estimative faculties and the overcomings of the bestial and the predatorial ones and their destruction of him. Indeed God does not alter the state of a people, in terms of an outward or inward grace or perfection, unless they have altered the state of their souls, in terms of their preparedness and the faculty for reception, as the divine effusion is all-inclusive and contiguous, like flowing water. Have you not considered His statement watered by the same [source of] water. And We make some of them to excel others in flavour [Q. 13:4]ḍ Thus that person is coloured by the nature of his preparedness: the one whose preparedness is pure, his effusion will likewise be pure and so his goodness will increase. Similar is the case with outward graces, which inevitably change into scourges merited by some manifest or hidden cause. That is why the verifiers said that the supplication whose response is forthcoming, as alluded to in His words, Call on Me and I will respond to you [Q. 40:60], is the one that issues forth by the tongue of preparedness. Moreover, according to one of the pious predecessors (salaf), 'That mouse has eaten into my slippers, and I know that it is only because of some sin I have committed; for otherwise, God would not have sent it against me', citing the example of the poet's words:'Were I from the [tribe of the great] Māzin, you would not have [dared] deem my camels yours for the slaughtering!'

He it is Who shows you, the lightning that is the flashes of the holy lights and the divine snatch, [inspiring] fear, that is, making you fearful of the speed with which it comes to an end and the long wait for its return, and hope, that is, making you hopeful of its remaining fixed or its quick return, and He produces, the clouds of the divine peace, that are heavy, with the rainwater of certain knowledge and true gnosis.

And the thunder that is the assault of the self-disclosures of the Majesty, proclaims His praise, in other words, it glorifies Him and sublimate Him above what is conceptualised by the intellect of the one visited by such self-disclosures as he becomes ecstatically conscious of what the intellect is unable to comprehend; and it praises Him as He ought to be praised by means of the perfection that is derived from that self-disclosure, a praising in actuality, so that the glorification of the thunder becomes the cause of that [perfection] itself; or [it is that] the assault glorifies by means of the very same self-disclosure which is exalted above that it should be comprehended by mental perception; and so too the angels, that is, the angelic realm of the spiritual faculties, [also proclaim His praise] out of awe of Him and of His Majesty. He unleashes, the thunderbolts that are the divine august glories by means of the self-disclosure of the real vanquishing that contains the universal grace and in this way strips the recipient of the self-disclosure of his existence and annihilates him from the remnants of his soul, as reported in the ḥadīth [qudsī]: 'God, exalted be He, has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. If He were to remove them, the august glories of His countenance would burn up every creature whose eyesight perceived Him'; and smites with them whom He will, of His beloved servants and those fervent lovers [of Him] that yearn [for Him]; yet they dispute about God, by reflecting on His attributes and by trying to affirm [the truth of] Him through rational consideration and what is incumbent on Him and what is impossible in His case, though He is great in might, the One with the power to eliminate [the usefulness of] rational devices for the purposes of comprehension and to obliterate the light of a person's insight by disclosing Himself and consuming him with the light of fervent love [of Him].

His is the call of truth: in other words, the truthful call that is not made in falsehood belongs to Him and not to anyone other than Him. He calls on Himself and He responds, as He says [elsewhere] Surely to God belongs pure religion [Q. 39:3], which is to say that pure religion is His religion only, which means that the truthful call that deserves to be answered is the call of the affirmer of the Oneness, the one who is annihilated from his soul and subsists through his Lord; likewise is pure religion, His religion. Callers who subsist by their own souls only call upon what they have conceptualised and sculpted in their imagination and so their call is not answered, except in so far as an inanimate thing responds when something is requested from it. By my life, only an affirmer of the Oneness calls upon God, whereas another calls upon the other, an illusory thing that has no power or existence and hence no response. Such [a caller] is one who has veiled his preparedness by the attributes of his soul and thus is not aware of what it [his preparedness] deserved and so his call is lost, and such a call can only be doomed [to failure]. Or [it is that] the call of truth, Majestic and Exalted, can only be for Him; or that the call of the one called, who is the Truth, is the call specific to His Essence, not made to any of His names or attributes. The describers (wāṣifūn) who call upon His names and attributes as opposed to His essence do not receive an answer from the thing that they have called upon except as the answer received by the one who calls upon water by gesturing [to it], [and that is] because they are veiled; and the call of, those who are veiled, [goes only] astray, lost.

To God prostrate themselves all in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly. In the tongue of commentary, the prostration of the unbeliever is an unwilling prostration, for he prostrates himself and shows humility at the time of tribulation in the state of hardship so as to repel harm from himself. Thus MuṣṬafā said to Ḥaṣīn Khuzāʿī,1 " How many gods do you wor- ship today? " He said, " Seven: one in heaven and six in the earth. " He said, " Which one of them do you look to on the day of your hope and fear? " He said, " The one in heaven. " According to these words, when someone prostrates himself to a god wanting to attract a benefit or repel a harm, that is a prostration of unwillingness, not a prostration of willingness. The willing prostration is the one done for the command alone and to venerate the Real's exaltedness. There is no taint of wanting, no hope for compensation, and no dread of tribulation. The individual is in prostration, the heart in finding, the spirit in witnessing; the individual is with loyalty, the heart with shame, and the spirit with limpidness. That chieftain of the Tariqah, Abū Yazīd BasṬāmī, was addressed in a dream: " 'O Abū Yazīd, Our storehouses are full of worship. Approach Us with brokenness and abasement.' In Our thresh- old, bowing and prostrating are of no use without brokenness of the heart and limpidness of the spirit, for the storehouses of Our exaltedness are already full of the bowing and prostrating of the lords of the heart. When you come to Our threshold, place the heart's pain in the spirit's cup and send it to the Presence of the Beloved, for the heart's pain has measure with Us. " The Pir of the Tariqah said, " The tawḤīd of the hearts of the faithful is in the measure of the heart's pain. The more a heart is burnt and the more complete its pain, the more it is familiar with tawḤīd and the closer it is to the Real. " Without the perfection of burning pain, don't mention religion's name. Without the beauty of yearning for union, don't lean on faith.

Say: 'Then have you taken beside Him, that is, anything other than Him, whoever it be, protectors, who have no power to benefit or harm themselvesḍ', for the Powerful and the Owner is God and none other.

He sends down from heaven water, and the wadis flow in their measure, and the flood carries a swelling scum. And from that which they kindle in fire, wanting ornament or ware, arises a scum the like of it. Thus does God strike truth and falsehood. As for the scum, it van- ishes as jetsam, and what profits people abides in the earth. Abū Bakr WāsiṬī said that this verse is the pivot of knowledge of the Haqiqah and recognition. " The meaning is that He revealed from on high to the hearts and ears of the prophets and He in- spired the intellects and insights of the wise. " The majestic Unity, through the attribute of mercy and clemency, sent down from heaven to the messengers the true message and the pure revelation. They heard it with their ears and they perceived it with their hearts. In the same way He inspired the friends and threw the light of wis- dom into their hearts. And the wadis flow in their measure, that is, He made the hearts see in the measure of their capacity, life, and illumination. The hearts of the prophets became clear and bright through the light of revelation and messengerhood, and the hearts of the friends with the lamp of wisdom and recognition. In their measure, that is, each person in his own measure, in degrees and grades-one higher, one middling, one lower-the relative preference and disparity being apparent to everyone. About the messengers He says, " We made some of the prophets more excellent than others " [17:55]. About the friends He says, " They are degrees with God " [3:163]. One has messengerhood in ad- dition to prophethood, another has prophethood in addition to wisdom, another has recognition in addition to knowledge, another has tasting the Reality in addition to faith and bearing witness, another has the knowledge of certainty along with explication, another has the truth of certainty along with face-to-face vision. He gave to each person what was fitting, and He placed within each heart that for which there was room. And the flood carries a swelling scum, that is, He caused loss to those hearts with erroneous views, lowly lapses, and the wishes that Satan casts, what he steals from memory, his casting of slips.

For those who respond to their Lord, by purifying [their] preparedness of the impurities of the attributes of the soul, there shall be the goodly reward, which is the perfection that is effused upon them at the moment of purity, expressed by His words, light upon light [Q. 24:35], and those who do not respond to Him, who have not purified themselves of human vices and the impurities of physical nature, will not be able to offer in redemption anything of what belongs in the lower aspect, such as property and those means to which they were attracted by means of love. They will have thus destroyed their souls because those [means] are the cause of increased distance [from God] and ruin, and so how can they constitute a means for their deliverance from those darknessesḍ Their declaring themselves innocent of such things will not avail them once the configurations of being attached to these things have become deeply rooted in their souls. For such there shall be an awful reckoning, for halting with the acts at the station of the soul, which is the station of divine justice, and so their questioning is inevitable at the Reckoning, and their abode shall be the Hell-fire, of the attributes of the soul and the fires of privation and evil configurations;