3. Aal-i-Imraan

[Surely those who disbelieve, and die disbelieving,] the whole earth full of gold shall not be accepted from any one of them, because at that instant only subsisting luminous matters are accepted, as the Hereafter is the world of light and subsistence wherein perishing matters of darkness shall have no effect or bearing. Besides, was the cause of their disbelief and their being veiled anything but their love of these wicked and transient thingsḍ So how then could these constitute the cause of their salvation, nearness, acceptance and remorse when they are the very cause of their destruction, distance, loss and privationḍ

You will not attain piety: any act that brings a person closer to God is piety (birr). The only way to become closer to Him is to absolve oneself (tabarrī) of all that is other than Him. Thus when one loves something he becomes veiled thereby from God, exalted be He, and is guilty of a subtle associationism (shirk) because his love is attached to something other than God, as God says Yet there be people who take to themselves compeers besides God, loving them as God is loved [Q. 2:165], preferring that their souls love these over God. Such a person has become distant from God on three accounts: the love of other than the Truth; association of others [with God]; and preferring one's soul over the Truth. But is such a person were to prefer God over his soul and voluntarily give away that [love of others to God], expending it [for God], then that distance would disappear and nearness would ensue. Otherwise, he will remain veiled, even if he were to expend many times over of something else, and will not attain piety because God knows what is being expended and [knows of] his being veiled by something other than Him.

All food was lawful to the Children of Israel, that is, [to] those possessing intellect, by virtue of [its] being the foundation, since the intellect judges that things were created for the benefit of servants absolutely and hence what pertains to the category of things eaten was created to be consumed; save what Israel, the spirit, forbade for himself, through rational consideration by trial and comparison, ascertaining what is harmful and what is beneficial at the level of differentiation after the undifferentiating stipulation that it is all lawful was made. For the intellect judges that what is harmful or what brings about ruin should be forbidden; before the Torah was revealed, that is, before the divine [prescriptions of the] law was revealed in the Torah and all of the other divine scriptures. People fell into disagreement after they had been one community following the religion of the Truth, as has been mentioned. God then sent prophets to guide them and to put right the states determining [both] their livelihoods [in this world] and their final return [in the next], and to make them return the [path of] truth and agreement. What divine wisdom required that it be forbidden was indeed forbidden, in accordance with their imbalanced states and the foolish natures of their hearts and their diseased souls, in the way of things to which they were accustomed and things which turned [them] away from the Truth and constituted veils between them and God, and which incited caprices and passions and all manner of corruptive acts and temptations that prevented them from [realising] their perfections and [achieving] guidance.

Therein are clear signs, in the way of forms of knowledge, gnoses, wisdoms and realities, the station of Abraham, that is to say, the intellect which is the foothold of Abraham the spirit, meaning the locus wherein the light of that [house] is joined to the heart; and whoever enters it, of the wayfarers and the perplexed who wander in the deserts of ignorance, shall be secure, from the misguiding enticements of scheming demons and [from] the afreets of the insinuations of the soul and the snatches of the satans of estimation and the jinn of imaginations and the slaughter by the beasts of prey of the egocentric faculties and their attributes. It is the duty of people towards God to make the pilgrimage to the House, [to] this [House], and to circumambulate it, if he is able to make his way there, of the wayfarers who are prepared and who are sincere in their will, and have the means of the provision of piety and the mount of powerful resolve, to the exclusion of others who are of a weak preparedness and who stay behind because of weakness and [spiritual] sickness and [because of] all barriers pertaining to character traits or those egocentric or corporeal [barriers] that are accidental. As for the one who disbelieves, that is, the one who has veiled his preparedness despite its having the capacity [for spiritual growth] and who turns away from it out of the caprices of the soul, God is Independent of, him, and of, the worlds, all of them. In other words, He is not concerned with him because of the latter's distance [from God] and his being unreceptive to His mercy [existing as he does] under the ignominy of the veil, which is that privation [from God] entails being forsaken and rejected.