3. Aal-i-Imraan

God has elected you, because of your being above lust, and made you pure, from the vices of reprehensible character traits and attributes, and He has chosen you above the women, of the concupiscent souls variegated by despicable acts and vile natures.

O Mary: be obedient to your Lord by [the fulfilment of] the duties of acts of obedience and worship, and prostrate, at the station of brokenness, humility, poverty, incapacity and pardon-seeking, and bow, at the station of submissiveness and heartfelt humility with those who submit.

That is of the tidings of the Unseen, that is, the states of the unseen aspects of your existence. We reveal it to you, O prophet of the spirit, for you were not with them, [you were not] with the spiritual and ego-centric faculties, that is, at their rank or station, when they were casting their quills, which of them should have charge of Mary: that is, [when] they were vying against one another with their arrows and hurrying with their shares, which of them should govern Mary the soul and take charge of it in accordance with his opinion and what his nature entails, to preside over it and command it to what he sees as beneficial to his affair; nor were you with them, at the station of the breasts, which is the locus for the conflict between the spiritual faculties and the ego-centric ones, the locus of the their conflict being the breast, when they were disputing, in conflict back and forth seeking to be in charge when this [possibility] became manifest, before [engaging in] spiritual discipline, when the angels of the spiritual faculties were victorious with the success granted by the Truth after spiritual discipline and said to Mary the soul:

When the angels said, “O Mary, surely God gives thee the good news of a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, celebrated in this world and the next, and one of those given proximity.” In this verse the God of the universe, the enactor of the world's folk, the assigner of daily provi- sions to the servants, the bestower of bounty and the lovingly kind, the caresser of the friends, caresses Mary and honors her. With this honoring He gives her excellence over the women of the world and separates her from all of them. First, He calls her with the vocative of honor, saying “O Mary.” Exalted is this address! Exalted is this call! Thousands of thousands of prophets and friends went, either in the repose of having found it, or in remorse and hope for it. O spirit of the world! If a thousand times you call on Him saying, “My Lord, my Lord,” that is not like His calling on you once, “My servant, My servant.” Even if you accept Him in lordhood, that gains you nothing, for in any case His lordhood is inseparable from you. What does the work is that once He should accept you for servanthood. Abū Yazīd BasṬāmī said, “God stood me before Him in a thousand standing places, presenting the empire to me, but I was saying, 'I do not desire it.' In the last standing place He said to me, 'O Abū Yazīd, what do you desire?' I said, 'I desire not to desire,'” that is, I desire what You desire. “Then He said, 'You are My servant in truth.'” Even if you do not have the gall to speak with God like Abū Yazīd, you are not too small to present your need to Him, to show Him your burning and hope, and to say, “O Lord, a name and mark is enough for me! You have come from Your threshold to place a name on me. Whatever name You want, let it be.” A man went to the bazaar to buy a slave. They presented the slaves to him and he chose one to buy. He said, “O slave, what's your name?” He said, “First buy me so that I may belong to you. Then call me by whatever name you want.

He shall speak to mankind in the cradle, of the body, and in his manhood, as one having attained the stage of the shaykh of the spirit overtaken by the brightness of his light, and he is of those who are good, for the station of gnosis'.

She said, 'Lord, how shall I have a child when no mortal has touched meḍ': the soul marvels at its bearing child and giving birth without having been touched by a mortal, that is, without having been nurtured by a shaykh or taught by a mortal teacher, this being the significance of her virginity. He said, 'It is such. God creates what He will, that is, He elects whom He will through divine attraction and unveiling, endowing that person with the station of the heart without nurture or pedagogy, as is the state with [God's] beloved and some of the loving ones.

And He will teach him the Book, the wisdom, the Torah, and the Gospel. Until the end of these verses are all his miracles. Because it was in God's knowledge that the Christians would exaggerate concerning him, the Lord of the Worlds gave him speech in the cradle in the state of infancy to reject those Christians, so he said, “Surely I am the servant of God” [19:30]. In other words, it is not as the Christians say. Rather, “I am the servant of God, created by Him, and He is my Lord.” It is also a rejection of those who criticized his mother: “O sister of Aaron! Your father was not a man of ugliness” [19:28]. The Lord of the Worlds declared her in- nocence and, to brighten her eyes, He made those words come to his tongue in the state of infancy. Here there is an exalted point: Since it was in God's knowledge that Jesus would be the brightness of Mary's eyes and the joy of her heart in this world and the afterworld, the Lord of the Worlds placed the burden and pain of Jesus on her at the time of birth. That is in His words, “And the birth pangs took her to the trunk of a date palm” [19:23]. Thus what was rightfully due became incumbent for her. As the counterpart of that suffering and hardship, blessings and ease reached her. MuṣṬafā's state with his mother was the opposite of this. Since it was in God's knowledge that his mother would have no portion of him, whether in this world or in the next, He did not place the burden of MuṣṬafā upon her, and at the time of birth no suffering reached her, so that no rightful due would become incumbent for her. Similar to this is the story of Noah and his community and that of MuṣṬafā and his community. It was said to Noah, “Do not let yourself suffer for the community and do not carry the load of their trial, for they will never give you brightness of the eyes and joy of the heart: None of your community will have faith except those who already have faith” [11:36]. It was in keeping with this address that he supplicated, “My Lord, leave no disbeliever dwelling on the earth” [71:26], and God did that.

To be a messenger, to the spiritual ones who are prepared from among the children of Jacob the spirit: 'I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, that proves that I have come from His part; I will create for you, through [my] nurture and acts of purification and practical wisdom, out of the clay of the souls of the deficiently prepared ones, like the shape of a bird, the one that flies off to the Holy Side by the intensity of its yearning; then I will breathe into it, of the breath of divine knowledge and an infusion of the true life by the effects of [divine] company and nurture, and it will be a bird, that is, a living soul, flying away with the wings of yearning and aspiration towards the Side of the Truth. I will also heal the blind, the one veiled from the light of the Truth whose insight has never opened up [to the truth] and the sun of whose face has never seen the Truth or His light and has never known His folk adorned as they are by the light of guidance; and [heal] the leper, whose soul is disfigured by the sickness of vices and corrupt beliefs and the love of this world and the pollutants of lusts, with the medicine of the souls; and I bring to life, the dead of ignorance by means of the life of knowledge, by the leave of God. And I will inform you too of what things you eat, [of what things] you partake in your pursuit of lusts and pleasures, and what you treasure up in your houses, that is, in the houses of your unseens in the way of motives and intentions. Surely in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.

Likewise, confirming that which was before me of the Torah, that is, of the Torah of exoteric knowledge, and to make lawful for you some of that which was forbidden to you, of the inner lights; I have come to you with a sign, a proof, from your Lord, namely, the proclamation of Oneness concerning which no prophet has ever disagreed with me. So fear God, if you oppose me, for I am upon the truth, and obey me, when I call you to the proclamation of Oneness.