9. At-Tawba

Surely God has bought from the faithful their souls and their possessions so that they may have the Garden.... So rejoice in your sale you have made to Him. In the tasting of the recognizers and the path of the elect, this verse is a place for the joy of the friends and a playing field for the secret cores of the sincerely truthful. It is felicitation for the faithful, a fitting felicitation and an appropriate bestowal of eminence. It is a felicitation that is the heart's intimacy and the spirit's message, the ornament of the session and the capital of the indigent, the adornment of tongues and the life of hearts. It is a generous felicitation, from a gen- erous Lord-generous in Essence, generous in attributes, generous in love, generous in caressing, generous in bestowal. The servant himself is bestowed by His bounty, and then He buys back what He Himself be- stowed. He makes the transaction, but He bestows all the profit on the servant and accepts the loss for Himself. This is beautiful doing and generosity, loving kindness and gentleness. In the Torah of Moses God said, " The Garden is My Garden and the possessions My posses- sions. Buy My Garden with My possessions! If you profit, that is yours, and if you lose, that is Mine. O children of Adam, I did not create you to profit from you. I created you only so that you would profit from Me. " In the Beginningless, before the servant's existence, the Lord of the Worlds bought him. He was the seller and the buyer. He Himself sold and He Himself bought. In the Shariah of MuṣṬafā, it is not permitted for the buyer and seller to be the same, unless it be a father, for whom it is permitted on condition of tenderness, negation of suspicion, perfect loving kindness, and fatherly love. What then do you say about someone who is more clement and merciful toward the servant than a father, a God whose loving kindness has no bounds and whose love is greater? Given that it is permitted for a father, it is more appropriate and more complete in the case of the loving Creator. Moreover, the Exalted Lord knew that the servants are bad-tempered, breakers of the Cov- enant, and disloyal to it.

It is not for the Prophet, and those who believe, to ask forgiveness, to the end of this [verse]: in other words, when they discovered the mystery of divine predestination (qadar) and stood aware of what God has decreed and determined and came to know what sequels of affairs will be, it was not for them to request the opposite of that. Thus they were satisfied with the matter that God has ordained, even if in their natures there was something that entailed the opposite of that. And this is because they have detached themselves from the entailments of their natures. Thus if natural kinship and formal relationship entails excessive compassion and gentleness towards someone who corresponds to them and is connected to them in that respect but they witness God's judgement against him that he should be subjugated and chastised, their religious zeal drives them to endure patiently if they do not possess the station of satisfaction. Nay indeed, separation on the basis of religion prevails over them against natural kinship and they therefore declare themselves innocent of him and do not request from God what is the opposite of His wisdom and His command. That is why they say: 'The aspiration of the [mystical] knower has no effective power after his knowledge has been perfected'. In other words, when a person is certain that everything happens by His determination and that it is impossible for something to happen in contravention of what God has determined in pre-eternity, he will know that what God wills will be and what He wills not will not be, and neither his aspiration nor anything else can have an effect on anything and hence he does not unleash his aspiration on any matter, unlike the veiled one who ascribes effective agency to something other than God and does not know the mystery of [divine] determination.

And God would never, send them astray from the path of submission and obedience to His command and of satisfaction with His judgement, after He had guided them, to the cognitive affirmation of Oneness and to seeing that everything happens according to His decree and His determination, until He had made clear to them, all that which they ought to be wary of in every one of the stations of their wayfaring and [every one] of the levels of their arrival. So, if they engage in some station of theirs in something which it had been made clear to them that they ought to be wary of, then He will send them astray because they will have been engaging in what is the sin of their state, which is a wickedness in terms of their religion. And refuge is sought with God from error after guidance. Surely God is Knower of all things, knowing the intricate details of the sins of their states, even if no one [else] should discern them, and consequently He requites the guided ones from among His friends for these [sins], as mentioned in the lordly ḥadīth: 'Warn the truthful ones that I am a jealous One'.

O you who have faith, be wary of God and be among the truthful! This is a command, a bestowal of eminence, and a felicitation: a command of God, a bestowal of eminence through good news, and a beautiful felicitation; a lovingly kind command, a heart- holding bestowal of eminence, a magnificent felicitation. He is commanding to bring the servants near to Himself, bestowing eminence so that the travelers will give their hearts to His love, giving felicitation so that they will seek His companionship. The servants who get the work done are those who have His love in their hearts. Those who reap the Real's fruit are those who have living hearts. Those who remember Him are those who receive eminence from the Real. They pass their days in the world with the world's folk like strangers. O you who have faith! This is a call of generosity and an infinite caress. The ears for the Real's call are the seven members of the body. When He discloses Himself, the sorrows of the two worlds are forgotten. He put the call of generosity in front so that hearing it, the servant would find it easy to carry the burden of the decree. What is the decree? " Be wary of God and be among the truthful! " He commands to godwariness, and He commands truthfulness in godwariness. Godwariness is the basis of the submission, truthfulness the perfection of faith. Godwariness is the beginning of familiarity, truthfulness the mark of love. Godwariness is the capital of the wor- shipers, truthfulness the mark of the light of recognition. Godwariness belongs to the travelers in the world of the Shariah, truthfulness belongs to the pain-stricken in the world of the Tariqah. When someone comes to possess the good fortune of godwariness and he is shown the beauty of truthful- ness, his mark is that he strikes fire into the hut of his own existence, launches the ship of createdness in the ocean of nonbeing, makes his children into orphans, bids farewell to his near ones and family, and cleanses his inwardness of habits and customs. His outwardness comes to be adorned with the light of the Shariah, his secret core filled with love for the Real, his heart emptied of love for this world, his secret core of desire for the afterworld-he has no joining with this world or the folk of this world, and no ease with the afterworld. Remembering the two worlds is no doubt to be pregnant. If you claim to be a man, do not be pregnant. You were good-do not be bad for the sake of talk. You were a man-do not be a woman for color and scent. [DS 326, 325]