4. An-Nisaa

O you who have faith! When you strike forth on the path of God, look clearly, and say not to him who offers you peace, “You are not of the faithful,” seeking the chance goods of this world's life. By way of allusion, He is saying that when you go on a journey, go for the sake of reaching one of the friends of God so that he may be the intimate of your days and the witness of your heart and spirit. No matter how far you go, never be at ease from seeking and do not hold back the foot of effort. The friends are the favorites of the Exalted Threshold and accepted by the Presence of Divinity. Not everyone sees them, not every eyesight perceives them. When you find them, give ear, and when you see them, cling to them, for the brightness of the heart lies in witnessing them and endless felicity in being their companion. The pir of the Tariqah Junayd was asked, “Which do you prefer? Two cycles of voluntary prayer or an hour of witnessing the poor.” He said, “An hour of witnessing the poor, for witnessing the poor is God's love, for He says, 'It is incumbent on Me to love those who love each other in Me and who visit each other in Me.' Bringing God's love to hand is an obligatory act for everyone. Leaving aside this obligatory act and choosing a supererogatory act is not the work of the clever and the conduct of the chevaliers.”

And those whom the angels receive [in death], to the end [of the verse]: al-tawaffī is to receive fully the spirit (istīfāÌ) from the body by having it seized from it, which can be in one of three ways: the reception of [it by] the angels, the reception of [it by] the angel of death, and the reception of [it by] God. As for the angels' reception [of the spirit], that is for the folk of the souls who are either fortunate, being the good folk, those of the praiseworthy attributes and virtuous character traits from among the righteous, the Godfearing, those whom the angels receive [in death] while they are goodly, saying to them, 'Peace be upon you! Enter Paradise because of what you used to do' [Q. 16:31-32]: their final return shall be to the garden of the acts. Or they are the damned, the evil folk, those of the base attributes and the wicked character traits, whose spirits are only received by the powers of the angelic realm which in this world are the equivalent of their faculties which constitute their station, veiled as they are by attributes of the soul and the pleasures of the imaginative, estimative, predatorial and bestial faculties, the disbelievers, those whom the angels receive [in death] while they are wronging themselves [Q. 16:27-28]: their final return shall be to the Fire. As for the reception of the angel of death, that is for the possessors of hearts, those who have emerged from the veil of the soul to the station of the heart and have returned to the primordial nature and have become illumined by it. The spirits of these [latter] are seized by the universal rational soul, which is the heart of the world, because of their conjunction with it; this is the case if it is the angel of death himself who seizes their spirits. If he seizes [these spirits] by means of his assistants and their powers, then they belong to the first group [mentioned above]. He [the angel of death] may seize them himself and turn them over to the angelic realm of chastisement so that they might be brought to reckoning and requited in accordance with their vices and be rid [of them]; that will be on account of [their] perfection or deficiency of knowledge, as in the case of the one who is delivered from ignorance and associating [others with God] and becomes adorned with knowledge and the affirmation of Oneness, but upon whose heart there had accumulated dark configurations and base natures because of wicked deeds and reprehensible character traits; or on account of having knowledge of the affirmation of the Oneness but ignorance of the final return, as in the case of the affirmer of the Oneness who denies the [final] recompense and is ensconced in acts of disobedience, as God, exalted be He, says Say: the angel of death, who has been charged with you, shall receive you [in death] [Q.

Except the oppressed among the men, that is, those of strong preparedness, those whose concupiscent and irascible faculties have been strengthened while their preparedness has also been strong but who have not been able to curb these by wayfaring along the path of truth; nor have they turned to their estimative and imaginative faculties and invalidated their preparednesses with corrupt beliefs. They have thus remained captive in their corporeal faculties, their preparedness illuminated by the light of knowledge but unable to remove their fetters in order to wayfare; women, those whose preparedness falls short of the level of perfection of knowledge and wayfaring along the path of realisation, those of weak faculties and the simple-minded regarding whom it was said, 'The majority of the inhabitants of Paradise shall be those simple souls'; and children, that is, the deficient who fall short of attaining the degree of perfection because of a jealousy (ghayra) on the part of the attributes of the soul that affects them; who are unable to devise a plan, because of their inability and incapacity to break the attributes of the soul or curb caprice through spiritual discipline, and are not guided to a way, because they do not know how to wayfare and because of their being deprived of the light of the guidance of the religious law.

As for such, perhaps God will pardon them, by effacing these dark configurations because these have not taken deep roots [in their souls] and because of the soundness of their beliefs, for God is ever Pardoning, of sins as long as the primordial nature has not changed, Forgiving, covering up the attributes of their souls with the light of His attributes.