5. Al-Maaida

And when I revealed to the disciples, that is, [when] I inspired into their hearts, those luminous ones who had cleansed their souls with the water of beneficial things and purgative deeds, until they accepted your call, due to the purity of their souls, and loved you with complete volition, due to their correspondence to you in terms of the light of [their] primordial nature and the purity of [their] preparedness: �Believe in Me, with a true fatih, by affirming the unity of the attributes and [by] effacement, and in My Messenger�, by being mindful of the dues of the self-disclosures of these [attributes] at the level of differentiation; they said, �We believe; bear witness, O God of ours, by Your all-inclusive knowledge that encompasses all things, that we are obedient to You, submitting the existences of our attributes to You.

When the disciples said, when your companions made a request of you, saying: is your Lord able, that is, [is] your witness from the world of Lordship [able] - for the lord of each person is the name that nurtures him and perfects him. Every person worships only what he knows of the world of Lordship and he knows only what he has attained of [an understanding of] the levels of the divinity, drawing therefrom an effusion of knowledge and drawing down therefrom blessings and draws therefrom spiritual reinforcement, which is why, despite their affirmation and their submission, they said 'your Lord' and not 'our Lord', since 'their Lord' is not able, to send down on us a Table from the heavenḍ', a law from the heaven of the world of the spirit that subsumes various types of knowledge, wisdoms, gnoses and judgements, wherein is nourishment for the heart and nutrition for the soul, its life and its tastings. He said: 'Fear God, beware of Him lest the attributes of your souls manifest themselves, and take Him as your shield with regard to the character traits and acts that issue from you, so that you are delivered from the [evil] consequences of these, are victorious and prosper, for if your faith is realised, you have no need of any new law.

They said, 'We desire, to profit, from it, and to implement it and draw strength from it, and that our hearts be reassured, because knowledge is the nourishment of the heart and its source of nutrition, and that we may know, your truthfulness in what you inform of your Lord, your prophethood and your authority therein and thereby, and that we may be among the witnesses thereof', who are present, possessors of knowledge, to inform others who are absent about it, to teach them and to call them to God by it.

but whoever disbelieves, [whoever] is veiled from this religion after it is sent down and has become clear, I shall surely chastise him with a chastisement wherewith I chastise no other being from among all the worlds', by virtue of the path having become clear and the religion and proof having been clarified and their preparedness existing, so that when they deny it they are doing so only out of obstinacy. Chastisement in the case of knowledge is more intense than chastisement in the case of ignorance, since the sensing of the fact that one is veiled from that [truth] necessitates a severe painfulness [in the chastisement].

['O Jesus, son of Mary] did you, call people to [worship of] yourself or your mother, or [it means: did you call people] to the station of your heart and your soul. For the one in whom there remains the existence of egoism and the remnants of the soul and caprice, or in whom there is variegation by the existence of the heart and its manifestation in its attribute will call creatures either to the station of his soul or to the station of his heart, and not to the truth. He [Jesus] says, 'Glory be to You!: an affirmation of the exaltedness of God above [that He should have] partnership and an absolution for him [Jesus] of the existence of any remnants [in him]. It is not mine to say what I have no right to, since I possess no existence in reality and as such it is not mine nor is it right that I should say something that I am not entitled to in reality, as statements, acts, attributes and existence all belong to You [alone]. If I indeed had said it, You would have known it, that is to say, had there issued from me any [such] statement then it would have been by Your knowledge, but there is no existence for that which You do not have knowledge of and there exists only what exists by Your knowledge. You know what is in my soul, encompassing as You do all things and so my knowledge is but a part of Your knowledge; but I do not know what is within Your Self, that is, Your Essence as I do not encompass all things [in my knowledge].

I only said to them, and I only commanded them that which You have charged me with saying and which you have obliged me to [say]: �Worship God, my Lord and your Lord�. In other words, I only called them to the union in the form of differentiation, the relationship of whose lordliness to all is equal. But they fell into error and saw that [lordliness] in only some of the differentiations because of the narrowness of their [spiritual] receptacles. And I was a witness over them, a watcher, present, looking after them and teaching them, whilst I was amongst them, that is, while there remained in me the existence of some remnant, but when You took me [to You], [but when] You annihilated me totally in You, You were Yourself the Watcher over them, given my having been annihilated in You, and You Yourself are Witness over all things, [You are] present; through You a thing comes into existence, for otherwise that thing would not be.

If You chastise them, by maintaining the veil [over them] forever, verily they are Your servants, deserving of the veil and of privation. You are most entitled to dealing with them as You wish, and if You forgive them, by removing the veil, You, only You, are the Mighty, the Powerful One able to do that and Whose might is not compromised by bringing them near or by the removal of their veil, the Wise', exacting what You exact in the way of chastisement through veiling and privation, or drawing [them] near [to You] through gentleness and forgiveness by Your absolute wisdom.

[God says] 'This is the day, when your truthfulness shall profit you and the truthfulness of every truthful person [shall also profit him], constituting as this [truthfulness] does the ferment of perfections and the specific quality of the spiritual realm. Theirs will be the Gardens, of the attributes the token of which is the fruit of satisfaction, for satisfaction can only be after the annihilation of will and their will can only be annihilated after theirs are overcome by God's will which then annihilates theirs. That is why God's being satisfied with them is mentioned before their being satisfied with Him. In other words, since God, exalted be He, willed that they be pre-eternally in the manifestation-locus of His will and in the locus of His satisfaction, being satisfied with them in terms of locus and as deserving of that [locus], He strips them of their will by appointing His will in its place, giving It to them in place of theirs, so that He is satisfied with them and has satisfied them - that is the great triumph', that is, the prospering that has an awesome status. Had it been the annihilation of the essence [meant here], this would have been the greatest triumph and the most awesome prospering.

To Him belongs what is in the upper world and in the lower world, both in its exoteric and its esoteric aspect; and all that is in them: His names, His attributes and His acts, and He has power over all things, if He should desire it, He annihilates by the manifesting of His essence, or if He should desire He brings into existence by concealing Himself in His names and attributes.