6. Al-An'aam

Say: “As for me, my Lord has guided me to a straight path.” The straight path has a beginning and an end. The beginning is the Sunnah and the congregation, and the end is the intimacy of finding and the continuity of contemplation. The Sunnah and the congrega- tion are that you accept the verses and reports about the unperceived attributes with spirit and heart. You come forward with assent and surrender and you stand with the name and the outwardness. You do not wander around it with imagination. You avoid self-exertion, interpretation, and reflective thinking about it. You stipulate it in its entirety, without addition or subtraction, without judgment, declaring similarity, or concealment. And you convey it exactly as you received it. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “Everyone who enters by the door of surrender and assent is given one of three drinks: Either he is given the drink of recognition, so his heart comes to life through the Real, or he is given poison through which the commanding soul is slain beneath his own severity, or he is given a wine through the finding of which the spirit becomes drunk and per- plexed. From here begins the finding of the Haqiqah and the intimacy of companionship. He finds the pleasure of service and the sweetness of obedience. He joins with the joy of recognition and reaches the repose of whispered prayer. Then he falls into an occupation that cannot be expressed until he becomes all life in that.” O life of the spirit, what is it with me that I know nothing of my state? The spirit from You fills me, but my heart's blood is empty of You. * You are not empty of me, but I do not see Your face, You are a spirit with me, but I do not see You.

Say: “My prayer and my sacrifice, my life and my death, belong to God.” He who knows that he is in God knows that he belongs to God. When he knows that his soul belongs to God, no portion of him remains for other than God. He surrenders to God's decree, he does not protest against God's predetermination, he does not oppose God's chosen ones, and he does not turn away from embracing God's command. This verse about MuṣṬafā alludes to the station of union. Union is joining with the Real and being released from oneself. The mark of this work is a heart alive through meditation and a tongue loosed in remembrance. One becomes a loan to the creatures, a stranger to oneself, at ease from attachment, at rest with the Real. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, ever since You called me, I have been alone in the crowd. When You said 'Come!,' my seven bodily parts heard. What comes forth from the Adamite? The Adamite's worth is clear: His purse is empty, he treads on air. “This work was before Adam and Eve, a bestowal before fear and hope, but the Adamite undergoes trials because of seeing. He alone is joyful who is free of seeing causes and disloyal toward his own self. Though the millwheel of the states is turning, so what? The pivot of His will is in place.” O friend, I have become all yours. In truth these words have no lying, no deceit. Were you to jump right out of your own selfhood, I would likely be there in your place, my dear.

No associate has He, in that, [either] in the union or the differentiation. And to this I have been commanded, that is, I have been commanded to see nothing other than Him at the source of the union, or in the form of the differentiations, so that I might strive for Him as He has described me, exalted be He, in His words The eye did not swerve, nor did it go beyond [the bounds] [Q. 53:17], and so He is the one who commands and the one commanded, the one seeing and the thing seen, and I am the first of those who submit', of those who yield to the annihilation in Him, by submitting my countenance to Him according to that level within the differentiations of the Essence, for otherwise there would be no first or last, submitter or disbeliever.

Say: 'Is it any other than God, whose affair is as [described] here, that I should seek for a lord, and hence demand the impossible, or [should I] seek as a goal [something] other than the Essence that subsumes all of the attributes, that is the All qua all, for it then to turn out to be merely a subject of a lord and not a lord in itself, when He is the Lord of all thingsḍ', all that is other than Him, in consideration of the differentiations of His attributes, being subject to the Lord. Every soul earns only, something that is of evil consequence, against itself: for the earnings of the soul constitute an idolatrous association with His acts, exalted be He, and every individual guilty of such association, the evil consequence [of his action] shall be upon him by virtue of his being veiled, and no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another, by virtue of the fact that the configuration of that burden is firmly rooted [only] in that [particular soul] and adheres to it [alone], such that it [that soul] veils itself therewith: how then can it [the burden] pertain to another [soul]ḍ