6. Al-An'aam

He is the Vanquisher over His servants, by His disposal over them as He wishes and His annihilation of them in the source of nondelimited union, since there is nothing that will not be vanquished therein. And He sends over you guardians, namely, their faculties wherein is imprinted every state in accordance with the extent of its firm-rootedness or lack thereof, manifesting itself on them upon their being stripped off from the body and assuming a form that corresponds to it, being either subtle and spiritual leading it to the spirit and to reward, or dark and corporeal leading it to chastisement. Indeed these forms will be manifested upon their limbs and organs, becoming configured according to their configurations and will speak against them through their deeds by the tongue of the state; and [these guardians] are also the heavenly faculties, to which we have alluded and the engraving therein of all particular accidents, that are manifested on them in their entirety upon their separation from the body, leaving out neither small nor great but having counted it against them [cf. Q. 18:49], these being the very messengers that receive them upon death.

The 'restoration' shall also be to the source of the nondelimited union for the reckoning. He is the swiftest of reckoners, since their reckoning takes place at the same time as their death.

Say: 'Who delivers you from the darknesses of the land, that are the veils of the corporeal coverings and the ego-centric attributes, and, the darknesses of, the sea, that are the veils of the attributes of hearts and the reflection of the intellects; you call upon Him, to remove these [veils], openly, in your souls, and secretly, in your inmost consciousness, �Verily, if He were to deliver us from these, veils, we shall truly be among, those who are thankful for the grace of deliverance through uprightness and fixity.

Say: 'God delivers you therefrom, by removing those veils by means of the lights of the self-disclosures of His attributes, and from every distress, that is, [from] what remains in your preparedness of the potential for your perfections, [delivering you therefrom] by bringing these out, even if a remnant of the remnants of your existence should be a distress for you because of your preparedness for annihilation and for the deliverance of yourselves from this [remnant] totally by the potency of [your] preparedness and the perfection of [your] yearning, then He would deliver you therefrom, yet you, after coming to know this noble station and what has been kept in store for you, associate, with Him your souls and your caprices worshipping them.

Say: 'He has the power to send forth upon you a chastisement from above you, by your being veiled by intelligibles and spiritual veils, or from beneath your feet, by your being veiled by the veils of nature, or to confound you in parties, or to mix you together as separate parties, each party following the religion of one of your faculties which they take as their imam and by which they counterpose the other party, so that confusion and chaos or fighting ensues between you; or [He mixes you] as parties with differing creeds, each party following the religion of a false messiah or a human devil or a jinn which they adopt as their imam; or He makes your souls as parties by making each one of your faculties hold sway over your hearts so that it [the soul] seeks its own particular pleasure through that [faculty], with one drawing him to wrath while the another [draws him] to lust or covetousness or otherwise. The heart thus becomes overwhelmed and incapacitated between them, captive in their hold, every time it resolves to actualise the pleasure of this [faculty], the other one prevents it. Confusion and chaos ensues between these [faculties] within your existences since they are not disciplined by the rule of one subjugating master who is able to vanquish them and to govern them with a unified command and establish each one of these [faculties] in its [proper] station where it would reside obedient and compliant, so that the kingdom of existence stands in order and the dominion is established for the master of the heart. According to this [last] interpretation, every one of them would constitute a party or separate parties following different religions and not any one individual.

For every, thing concerning which a tiding comes, there is a locus in which it will occur and reside. And you will come to know', when the coverings of your bodies are removed from you and the pain of this chastisement reveals itself upon you in the forms deserved by your souls.

When you see those who engage in discourse about Our signs, that is, Our attributes, by manifesting the attributes of their souls and affirming that they possess knowledge and power; turn away from them, for they are veiled and are idolaters. And if Satan should make you forget, by seducing you with falsehoods and superstitions and through the evil insinuations of your soul such that you manifest yourself through some of its attributes and end up corresponding to these [idolaters] in genus, inclining to companionship of them, then do not sit after, having remembered by Our reminding of you, with the folk, who have committed evil against their souls by placing their attributes in place of My attributes and veiling these [souls] with their attributes. For companionship of them has influence and you are on the verge of succumbing to becoming veiled by the misfortune of their company by means of variegation.

And upon, those who are affirmers of Oneness, who disengage from the garments of their attributes and shun their configurations, there shall be no [obligation to] account for those [others] who are veiled, in any way [whatsoever]: in other words, they shall not become veiled as a result of their mixing with them and thus end up being equal to them [in veiledness]. Rather, We have mentioned them so that perhaps they will guard against keeping company with them and [against] any variegation which they might fall into or [against becoming involved in] their evil fate, their affair and their account and keep company with them. Instead, let them remind them from time to time with the minimum of interaction so that perhaps they might guard against acts of idolatrous association and being veiled and be delivered by the blessedness of the companionship of those [God-fearing ones]. Or [it means] that they are not accountable for the deeds of those [veiled ones] and their evil consequences; but let them mention these [deeds] to them with censure and prohibition that perhaps they might guard against such [deeds].

And forsake those who take, that is, shun those whose religion and habit are caprice and diversion, since they pay no attention to this [Reminder] because of the firm-rootedness of that conviction in them and [because of] their being deluded by the sensory life. Turn away from them and warn by means of the QurÌān lest a soul should be veiled for what it has earned when the religion and custom of such [a soul] is not like that and in whom that conviction has not taken a firm rooting, but [a soul] which nevertheless commits by natural inclination deeds that are similar to the deeds of those [veiled ones] and might thus become veiled because of them. For such [a soul] will be influenced by this [Reminder] and will take heed and desist: so warn such [a soul] lest it should become like them and be prevented by its deeds from guidance whereafter, once it has been veiled by what it has earned, no ransom will be accepted from it. The draught of boiling water constitutes the intensity of its yearning for perfection because of the potency of its preparedness; the painful chastisement is its privation from that [perfection] because of its being veiled by its deeds and configurations.