The Futūḥāt Project: Quotations
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Quotations 2022-24
Quotations Archive
So praise be to God, who guided us to this;
we would not have been guided unless God guided us.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
Quotations: Book 8
23 September 2022
Even though the human being is a combination of his (human) self and his animal self, God made each one of the two to have a right specific to it.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 473)
22 September 2022
Animals are neighbors to plants, and plants are neighbors to minerals.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 469)
21 September 2022
Every human being has imagination during waking and sleeping.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 463)
19 September 2022
I have informed you before that the presences (dimensions) are three: mind (intellect, significance, meaning), physical (sensory), and imaginal. The imaginal is where meanings descend into physical shapes – I mean they are imaged there, as we do not understand them except in this way, through the image sensed.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 463)
16 September 2022
Messenger of God ﷺ said about the purification of the human being from ignorance, ‘Whoever recognizes one’s self, recognizes one’s Lord.’ Thus, by one’s recognition of oneself, one’s ṭahārah* is validated for one’s recognition of one’s Lord. The True is the absolutely wholly apart, and the wholly apartness of the creature is one’s recognition of one’s self; so nothing is purified except by itself. Therefore verify this for yourself.
*ṭahārah: becoming ritually pure. The meaning is primarily spiritual, with bodily cleanliness described by another word (niẓāfah).
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 462)
15 September 2022
There is not, then, anything but One, in root and in branch.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 461)
14 September 2022
There is nothing in the root except the single matter with God, and there is not in existence any event except the single matter; one knows it who knows it and is ignorant of it who is ignorant of it. This is what is provided by the truths.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 461)
13 September 2022
The enabled being is abundantly benefited by the relation to God through Be! – so there is nothing else than that one be or one not be.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 460)
12 September 2022
With God nothing is obligated on Him by the obligation of another – as He is the one who obligates Himself with whatever He obligates, with regard to whatever is obligated.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 459)
9 September 2022
There is nothing but it has a facet facing, and a relationship to, the True – and a facet and a relationship to the creation.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 449)
8 September 2022
Learn that part of the miserliness the self has is hoarding and her worries about a coming time of need.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 447)
7 September 2022
Glory be to Him who made a door for us in everything; if that door is opened, one finds God there. He designates in every thing a Divine facet; if He gives in tajallì, the facet of that thing is recognized.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 438)
6 September 2022
Recognition of Him is never finally concluded and never ends, so love is never concluded. The arrival of something like this recognition is from tajallì,* and tajallì never ends.
*tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 437)
2 September 2022
The trial (fitnah, in the sense of the proving, testing, whereby something is put to the test) of knowledge is greater than the trial of wealth, because the high position of wealth is happenstance, not passing beyond the ‘mouths of the people’ (i.e. not spreading far). The soul has no quality derived from wealth, but the high position of knowledge is as a jewel adorning the soul – so the trial of knowledge is greater. And knowledge m does not leave one’s person in one’s states – dependent (poor), independent (rich), in an emergency; but wealth leaves one’s person by a thief seizing it, or its burning down, or its sinking in the sea, or its being demolished, or its being destroyed in an earthquake, or a disaster (‘bad star’) in the sky, or fitnah (here, social disorder), or a sultan. Knowledge is in you, in a mighty fortress, no one ever reaching it – adhering to the human being in life and in death, in this world and the next. It is yours in every moment. If it is against you at some time, it is for you in the end. If catastrophes befall you from its side (i.e. mental, not physical catastrophes), they will not make you anxious. This is only because of its high position, in the place you did not use your knowledge. So what befell you did so only because you failed to use your knowledge; it was not from the knowledge. Then, when you are released, knowledge takes your hand and brings you to his level. And his level is known, and the One who knows it is the True; thus, He has you alight by the True to the measure of this knowledge. So do not be among the ignorant ones!*
*ignorant ones: from al-baqarah 2:67
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 432-33)
1 September 2022
The greatest do not ask anyone for anything, unless God has given them a vision about things; and they do not turn away anything they are given, because courtesy with God is that one not reject from God what He gave you.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 432)
31 August 2022
Learn that the knowers of God take of knowledge only gifted knowledge, and this is the knowledge on His Side, the knowledge of Khiḍr and his like; and this is knowledge that they put into practice by incoming thought initially, until there is no admixture of anything murky with acquisition of knowledge. In fact, the Divine tajallì* stripped of the materiality of existence – such as of spirit and body and intellect – is more complete than the Divine tajallì involving the materiality of existence.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 431)
30 August 2022
What God intends for His creatures is that they should refer to Him with questions, not to people like them, except to the extent that they are learning from them how they should be asking God. This is the definition of taqwá* set by Law.
* taqwá: being aware of God, cautious lest one step wrongly and incur rightful Divine wrath.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 428)
29 August 2022
God deals with us according to what He made Law for us – nothing else.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 420)
26 August 2022
There is no harm greater than the harm of idolatry, and there is no road greater than the road of faith.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 417)
25 August 2022
What is not within the effort of the human being is done through God, through the means of Divine creation that He obligates Himself to provide.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 414)
23 August 2022
Just as he departed from Him, so he returns to Him – with empty hands. One of them said about this idea:
When the child is born, his hand is gripped closed.
Evidence of that covetousness rides with anyone who is alive.
And the hand is opened up upon death as a warning, saying,
‘Look at me – I am departing with nothing!’
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 414)
22 August 2022
One does not see oneself as having an excellence over the one he is teaching, or deserving to be put in front of the line because of serving that person. One is not more cultured, nor more honored, nor made more instrumental (for the good) based on what one excels another in. If one is so (e.g. more honored), this is not accounted for with God.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 409)
20 August 2022
The soul of the student m finds matters his station and his state do not provide, external to what he merited. He thinks that God has opened up his understanding without any intermediary, but this opening is actually based on the state of the soul of this individual who is the teacher. In fact, the student is an orphan in the care (ḥijr, fenced-in enclosure) of the teacher.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 407)
17 August 2022
This Adamic form is a khalīfah.* Your level provides that you be a khalīfah making visible a form of the One who is acting behind you.
*khalīfah: the one from behind whom someone is acting
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 406)
16 August 2022
I was sitting one day with our teacher Abūʾl-ʿAbbās al-ʿUraybī in Seville, and we wanted, or someone wanted, to gift a favor. A person from the group who wanted to give charity said, ‘The closest ones are the most deserving of the favor.’ Following the statement of the speaker, the teacher said immediately, ‘The closest ones to God.’ How that cooled my liver!* And, by God, I heard it at that moment as coming directly from God, so much so that I imagined that this is how the Qurʾān came down, based on what I could verify for myself about it and how my heart drank it up. It was this way for everyone present there.
*The hot liver is easily frustrated and irritable; the cool liver is calm and content.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 404-5)
15 August 2022
The ʿárifūn* verify for themselves their Cherisher until their whole being is a light, and the True is their hearing and their seeing and the whole of their faculties; they become true entirely.
*ʿárifūn: those who recognize the Divine everywhere.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 404)
4 August 2022
He is closer to you than yourself.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 404)
3 August 2022
The heart m is responsible for his flock; and they are the entirety of one’s faculties, outward and inward.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 400)
2 August 2022
When you give charity to yourself when you are angry, you are actually taking ownership of yourself by so doing, because your taking ownership of your soul when becoming angry is a charity given to her in a way you do not realize. Messenger of God ﷺ said, ‘Strength is not in felling someone; no, strength is in owning yourself when angry, because anger is a blazing fire.’ So this is part of the charity of the human being for oneself.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 399)
1 August 2022
The angel does not pray for anything bad to happen to someone, and especially not to the one who has faith in His Being.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 396)
29 July 2022
If the True were not your life, there would be no life.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 395)
28 July 2022
The moment’s satisfaction is that it be given fully what is required by the moment that comes – even if that moment comes with difficulty and coercion.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 394)
27 July 2022
The first thing God split asunder was the ears of the created beings during the moment of their being brought out – that is, the moment when power connects non-being to wujūd* with His word, Be! and they come into being in themselves with just that address, obeying the imperative of God to become. This speech-unit is Presence (ḥaḍrat). The first thing that split asunder their ears while they were in the first wujūd before being born was His word, Am I not your Cherisher? and they replied, Yes! (al-aʿrāf 7:172).
wujūd: being, from wajada (‘found’).
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 386)
26 July 2022
When the human being says to himself that he should do something good or take on a generous characteristic from the fine characteristics, let him intend – with what he says to himself of this – a nearing to God.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 384)
21 July 2022
We narrate, ‘Indeed, God has 300 virtues. Whoever takes on just one of them enters the Garden.’ All of them are virtues variegated* by the human being before the created beings and toward the one it is fitting to variegate before, based on the definition set by God.
* variegated: This is the key concept with Ibn al-ʿArabī of taṣrīf: ṣarrafa is declining nouns and conjugating verbs, and reciting verses in the Qurʾān in different ways; here, taking a virtue and turning it and variegating it to respond to varying situations.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 377)
20 July 2022
The first to deserve the name ‘well-guided’ is the one who says what the Messenger said: My reward is only from God (Yūnus 10:72).
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 369)
19 July 2022
The rule belongs to the time. And whoever extracts matters before their time has made the rule of time inoperative.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 364)
18 July 2022
Sahl bin ʿAbd-Allāh was asked, ‘What is nourishment?’ He said, ‘God.’ He was told, ‘I was asking you about that perceived by sense.’ He said, ‘God.’ So when he (the questioner) kept pestering him, he said, ‘What is with you with these questions? Leave the houses (corresponding to bodies) to their owner and their builders. If He wishes, He will make them inhabited; and if He wishes, He will let them fall to ruins.’
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 363)
15 July 2022
The soul is not answerable for what she thought to do, as long as she does not actually do what she planned, with the limbs.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 358)
14 July 2022
The root, among His names, that the things emerge from is His name Holy. He is pure in Himself from any stain of the New* things. So when the things emerge manifest in their entities, and the ones who are actually owned (by God) acquire the presumptuous claim that they are owners, the relationship to ownership (e.g. ‘we own these things’) comes suddenly to the ones who did not configure and create these things. This removes them (these presumptive owners) from their original purity that they have, because they relate ownership of these new configurations to themselves. They had original purity before this happenstance stain touched them when they presumed Another’s property was their own. It is enough for the New to be New (and remain in original purity).
* The Old is timeless, outside of time and therefore never changing. The New is what has emanated from the Old into time and is therefore ever changing.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 356)
13 July 2022
The Men of the people of the path of God are given knowledge from God. We have said, Zakāt of knowledge is teaching others.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 351)
12 July 2022
He ﷺ said to Ḥakīm bin Ḥizām when he accepted Islam – and he had done good in the time of ignorance (before he accepted) – ‘You submitted to Islam by what you did previously of good.’ So God rewarded him for whatever good he had done in the time of his ignorance.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 348)
11 July 2022
Bodily actions correspond to cultivation, and the body corresponds to the land, and the self is a ruler over the land.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 346)
8 July 2022
He exalted said, Your Lord has prescribed on Himself kindness (al-anʿām 6:54) – that is, He obligated and made required. He did not make that obligatory on Himself by ‘outside’ obligation; no, He is the obligator of Himself as a graciousness from Him and an excellence for us.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 344)
7 July 2022
So He sows the seeds of guidance and prosperity on the earth of the souls, and He extracts from the earth of the souls according to what He cultivated there. Of what emerges from this earth, there is something that God has a right to and there is something the human being has a right to. What belongs to God is expressed as zakāt, and what remains belongs to the human being. The wages are set by Law, because God has purchased our souls from us; then we rent them out for wages by tenths (tithes, ʿushr). He says, Whoever brings forth something good has ten-fold like her (al-anʿām 7:160). So the good from us is the tenth that we give Him from what He cultivated in the earths of our souls, of good that grew into this right deed.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 344)
6 July 2022
The hired earth f (our bodies) is exactly the one tasked, and what is extracted from her is what appears from this work itself. The real cultivator is the True, and He is saying, Are you its cultivators or are We the cultivators? (al-wāqiʿah 56:64)
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 343)
5 July 2022
The human being is the ‘child of one’s moment’. You are not based on what passed in your time, nor based on what is in your future, even though you may intend something in the future and wish for good results from something past; you are in the time of the moment for this – all of it. You are present at the moment, not in the past and not in the future.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 340)
1 July 2022
There is no owner but God.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 340)
30 June 2022
Everyone is a slave of God.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 339)
29 June 2022
Faith is a root, and action is a branch for this root – no doubt; and this is why the faithful is never purely in disobedience at all without there being mixed in there an obedience. The mixed one is the disobedient faithful person, because the faithful one – when he disobeys some command, he is someone of faith in that being a disobedience (and so is still a faithful person, not purely in disobedience).
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 337)
28 June 2022
Fullness is wujūd, and this is the statement of the Imām Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī: ‘There is nothing in the possible more wondrous than this world.’ As the world’s wondrousness is exactly its wujūd, there is nothing but that – that is, there is nothing in the possible more wondrous than its wujūd, because it is enabled itself.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 331)
27 June 2022
Everything other than God comes together in consensus that wujūd* of other than God is in fact by God, so they refer their wujūd back to Him exalted beyond by this consensus. And there is no disagreement about this concerning everything other than God. This is a bridge for consensus in zakāt of wujūd. We return what is God’s to God. There is nothing found (mawjūd) and nothing making found (mūjid) except God.
wujūd: being, from wajada (‘found’).
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 330)
24 June 2022
May God nourish us with hitting the mark, with articulating and reporting what we have been shown and what we have been taught from the True – the knowledge given in kashf,* and vision seen, and tasting – because the bridge expressing that is a fatḥ* from God, coming through with a property of layers (to be understood). How many people are incapable of crossing over and bridging what is in themselves, and how many people’s crossings-over spoil the authenticity of what is in themselves! God is the one who gives success and there is no Lord but Him!
* kashf: unveiling
* fatḥ (pl. futūḥāt): opening, victory
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 327)
23 June 2022
When we realize that God has anchored a spirit of meaning dimension to each sensory form by means of a Divine turning-to-face based on a Lordly name, we speak of the address of the Law-giver as being in the inward invisible realm – through the property that the address has in the outward visible realm – step by step. You see, the outward of it is its sensory form. And the Divine, meaning-based spirit for its form is what we call the ‘bridge toward the inward’ – with ‘bridge’ derived from ‘traversing the arroyo when one has crossed it’.
Note: Unlike contemporary metaphor (originally meta–pherein, to carry across), the concept of a bridge (iʿtibār) between the outward and the inward maintains the validity and the value of both.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 326)
22 June 2022
There never emerges in the world any form, of shapes or something else, from anyone of God’s creation – by whatever rope (sabab, secondary cause) it may emerge – except this new entity in the sensory world has a spirit accompanying this form and shape that emerges. God is the one who brings out in the true dimension this form through a proxy of some one of His entities, such as angelic, jinn, human, or animal, or plant, or mineral. These are the rope-causes, all of them, for the wujūd of this form in the sensory world.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 326)
21 June 2022
The continuance of wujūd for the successful ones is not the way the people of the Fire are made to continue. This is why God describes the people of the Fire as neither dying in the Fire nor living – which is different from the quality of the people of felicity, because they are in eternal life.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 324)
20 June 2022
The wujūd* that the soul f is described by is not hers; rather, wujūd belongs to God, who brought her out – so wujūd belongs to God, not to her. And the wujūd of God is not her wujūd.
wujūd: being, from wajada (‘found’).
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 323)
17 June 2022
Now, iḥsān is that you ‘worship God as if you see Him’, because when you see Him you recognize that the wealth is His wealth, and the creature is His slave, and the distribution belongs to Him.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 322)
16 June 2022
So they are warned that they are agents behind whom One acts, and this is to make charitable deeds easy for them, as a kindness to them. God is saying, ‘Just as We commanded you that you spend that over which you are agents, the assets, We commanded Our Messenger and our deputies among you that they should take some of these assets that We have stored in your hands – a certain quantity that We call zakāt, with her good (goods) returned to you. Our deputies are not taking executive action over anything that is actually a possession of yours; rather, they are taking executive action over what you are agents for – just as, also, We permit you to execute the trust. So why should this be hard on you?’ The faithful person has no wealth; He owns the whole wealth, on credit and in ready money.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 320)
15 June 2022
He says, And spend from what He made you to be agents over (al-ḥadīd 57:7) – that is, you own nothing of this wealth except what you expend therefrom, and you are only the executors of it, like agents. The wealth belongs to God, so do not be miserly about it, because you would be being miserly about something you do not actually own – given that you are toward it khulafāʾ (agents behind whom One acts), and you are trustees toward what is in your hands.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 320)
14 June 2022
God sent down zakāt,* as we said, as a ṭahārah* for assets. It is difficult for the neglectful ones, the ignorant ones, because they believe that what God designated for these categories on which is due zakāt are their possessions – and that they are part of their wealth. They do not realize that what is designated is not theirs, and that it is in with their wealth, not part of their wealth. So all that is designated for them is that it be extracted. When they differentiate it, at that moment they realize that it is not part of their wealth; rather, it is in with their wealth, co-mingling. This is what they verify for themselves.
* zakāt: that which purifies; a form of alms-giving; one of the five pillars of Islam, next after the prayer.
* ṭahārah: becoming ritually pure. The word is primarily spiritual, with bodily cleanliness described by another word.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 319)
13 June 2022
The hypocrite will not be found with God.
Book 8, Chapter 70 (p. 317)
10 June 2022
God has among His creatures hidden ones who are not recognized by any but Him.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 306)
9 June 2022
The human being is a site for alteration and having differing moments in one, so one’s prayer differs according to the difference of one’s moments.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 300)
8 June 2022
Abundantly sufficient, my friend, is the state, the quality, the movement, the action, where the True sends down the greatest of things – and this is dhikr* of God – to a station of Himself! It is as if the one who enters the prayer has been clothed in the True.
* dhikr: the recitation of Divine names; the gathering for the remembrance of the Divine. The Ṣūfī training of dhikr is to populate the heart with the Divine names.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 298)
7 June 2022
Here stands this forgetful one with little shame before God and commands another to do good, while he is transgressing; and he forgets himself and does not command her (his self) to do so (do good). He corresponds to the one who nourishes another and neglects himself, while he is in the utmost need of that nourishment. His self is more deserving of it than that other one.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 294-95)
6 June 2022
Our character is that we worship Him.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 290)
3 June 2022
The degree of perfect completion is not restricted from them (fem. pl.); no, they become perfectly complete, just as men become perfectly complete. Confirmed in the report is the complete perfection of Mary and Āsiyah, the wife of Pharaoh.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 289)
2 June 2022
He exalted said, He gave each thing its character-creation (ṭā-hā 20:50). Kindness is a thing (entity), and her creation-character is her spreading out universally.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 286)
1 June 2022
The creation is imaginal forms that the True makes move, and the True is the articulation of them. They are made images, the fore-measured determinative properties circulating through them, and they are effaced in their stability itself and non-existent during the moment of their existence. These – they are the silent ones that speak and the corpses that are alive, like the life of the martyrs.
Intelligence sees what sight does not see.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 286)
31 May 2022
God has Men who meet Him in the life of this world, and they are greeted with the good tidings of peace. And then there is one who meets Him when one dies; and then there is one who meets Him at the Resurrection; and then there is one in their multitude who meets Him in the differentiated halts of the Day of Arising. And among them one meets Him after entering the Fire f and after one’s torment in her. And when the meeting occurs, God greets each one with ‘Peace’, and no one will be wretched again after that meeting.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 285)
30 May 2022
The things, all of them, are seen by the True, even in the state of their non-existence. If it were not like this, no one or another would be singled out for creation.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 280)
27 May 2022
The Prophet ﷺ says, ‘Whoever sees me (in a dream) has seen me, because Satan does not take on my form.’
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 273)
26 May 2022
God is a gentle friend to the faithful.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 271)
25 May 2022
The grave is the first of the way-stations of the otherworld. And one does not say death (is the first way-station), because death is a state, not a way-station; but the grave is a way-station.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 271)
24 May 2022
The wālī* in the true dimension is God.
* walī: the friend of God; his authority derives from proximity to God.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 270)
23 May 2022
Frailty is the object of kindness, always.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 269)
19 May 2022
Death is a means of meeting God, so each human being in one’s life is journeying and proceeds through way-stations with each breath to a meeting with one’s Lord.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 264)
18 May 2022
The people of ‘no god but God’ in every facet and in every moment will never receive an eternity in the Fire – only the one who associates partners with God or teaches others to practice shirk*, because they will not exit from the Fire, ever.
* shirk: associating gods with God; attributing God’s actions to putative gods.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 261)
17 May 2022
If the meaning sought from this prayer (at the graveside) is the spirit who oversees this body, then the spirit has ascended thereby to his Creator and he has separated from the body, so there is nothing stopping one from praying over him. If the meaning sought from this prayer is the body without the spirit, then it is the same whether he is above the earth or below the earth. The Lawgiver has not differentiated, so each one of the human beings has returned to his root. The spirit reattaches to the spirits, and the element reattaches to the elements.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 260)
16 May 2022
The body m is created from earth and returns to its root, so there is no difference between him during the moment of his separation away and protruding from the face of the earth (the body’s appearance in life), or his arrival under the surface earth (turāb f) (in death); he is from her.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 260)
13 May 2022
The True does not accept boundary; and nothing is veiled from Him, and nothing veils Him – because if something veiled Him, that veil with a boundary would have power over Him. Thus, it is incorrect that He accept any veiling. And it is incorrect that the creature be veiled from God – but one is veiled from a particular relation.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 258)
12 May 2022
The human being is tasked from one’s head to one’s feet and everything in between. One is told not to look toward what is unlawful by Law for one to look at, and for the entirety of what is singled out for one’s head in Law tasking. And one is told that one should not rush with one’s steps to what is unlawful for one to rush toward, and for, and from, and from whatever is between – that is, what God has made obligatory that one guard against in one’s discharging, such as the hand, the stomach, the opening, and the heart.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 253)
11 May 2022
Imagination and illusion have dominion.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 253)
10 May 2022
God will make peace among His creatures on the Day of Judgment.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 251)
9 May 2022
If the one praying is an ʿárif* of one’s Lord, beloved by Him – the love of the True for one whose hearing He is, whose sight He is, and whose tongue He is – then there is no one praying except one’s Lord.
*ʿárif: the one who recognizes the Divine everywhere
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 249)
6 May 2022
O sleeper, how much you are reclining in sleep –
while you are being called! So be alert!
The Divine would take your place for what He called you to, if you fell asleep.
But your heart is asleep
to what He called you to and alerted you to
In the world of existence, which will destroy you
insofar as you are dead to Him.
So look to your soul before your journey; your provision is suspect!
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 247-48)
5 May 2022
The one praying is calling, always; and the place one is praying over is the deceased or the one sleeping, always. Whoever is asleep in his soul – he is dead; and whoever dies to his Lord – he is a sleeper sleeping on the wedding night, and the True takes his place.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 247)
4 May 2022
The human being – it is fitting for one that one be in the entirety of one’s moments like the one praying over the janāzah.* One continues to see one’s essence as a funeral procession before one’s Lord. And one prays ever in the entirety of the moments over oneself with a word of one’s Lord, continuously (dāʾiban).*
* janāzah: a corpse, bier, or corpse and bier; a funeral.
* dāʾiban: also carries the meaning of ‘toiling’ and ‘exerting’.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 247)
3 May 2022
Every creature in every moment is a site of connection to a Divine truth, and the Divine truths are correlations too exalted to be comparatively excellent.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 246)
2 May 2022
The ʿárif* who is complete sees himself dead, between the Hands of his Lord, as the True is his hearing and his seeing, and his hand and his tongue praying over him.
* ʿárif: the one who recognizes the Divine everywhere
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 245)
29 April 2022
His kindness outstrips His wrath; and the kindness of God vastly extends over everything, as a grace to be verified for oneself.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 242)
28 April 2022
As the human being was created from dust, one has Presence with God – among the family of God – when they see the dust and remember what they were created from. And they reflect on His word, From her We created you, and to her We shall return you, and from her We shall bring you out another time (ṭā-hā 20:55) – meaning, on the Day of Resurrection.
Book 8, Chapter 69 (p. 238)
Quotations: Book 7
27 April 2022
The seven […] is the utmost of completeness in Divine knowledge, as it is something Divine. This is why God anchored wisdom in the presence of effects in the elemental world, from the orbiting of the seven glistening celestial bodies in the twelve zodiacal watchtowers. And He made the traversing bodies seven, so we recognize that it is the utmost of completeness in existence. He made the complete journey to be twelve, because it is the utmost grade of numbers: from one to nine, then the tens, then the hundreds, then the thousands – and this is twelve (9+1+1+1=12). Based there are the composite numbers to no end, with no addition. In this way is the journey of the seven (planets) in the twelve watchtowers – that is a measurement of the Inaccessible, the All-Knowing (al-anʿām 6:96).
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 231)
26 April 2022
The one who calls to God – obligatory on such a person is propagation only, just as He said, On the messenger is propagation only, and God knows what you reveal and what you conceal (al-māʾidah 5:99). He does not impose on creation (people) that the audience accept and be guided.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 224)
25 April 2022
Teachers are not in front of them (students) except in specific matters which it is the goal of the students to follow.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 223)
22 April 2022
The moment has dominion.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 219)
21 April 2022
There are only a few among the creatures of God to whom God provides patience in the face of testing.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 218)
20 April 2022
God does not burden His creatures except for some good, not bestowing any bad by such obligation.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 213)
19 April 2022
The Prophet ﷺ sought refuge in the testimony of the prayer from the testing of the living and the dead, because of his knowledge that the prophets are tested in their deaths just as the faithful are tested.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 212)
18 April 2022
The Qurʾān m, all of him, is pure; and his recitation is a secret conversation with one’s Lord, using His words.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 206)
15 April 2022
The creature during the prayer is an intimate speaker with one’s Lord.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 205)
14 April 2022
Intention f is linked to the fullness of the prayer. So her rule flows through the prayer, even if the one praying is distracted.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 203)
13 April 2022
God, majestic beyond delimitation, is a qiblah for hearts, So wherever you turn, there is a face of God (al-baqarah 2:115), in the true dimension, transcendentally – with no disagreement among the people of God.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 201)
12 April 2022
The ones who know, God be pleased with them, disagree about the qiblah in regard to the prostration for the recitation. Among them one says, ‘Prostrate during the recitation, in whatever direction one’s face is; the best is facing the qiblah.’ And among them one says, ‘One will certainly face the qiblah.’ What I argue for is the prostration in whatever direction one’s face may be, because God says, So wherever you turn, there is a face of God (al-baqarah 2:115). And if one can face the qiblah, that is best, in order to combine the outward and the inward.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 200-1)
11 April 2022
When the heart of the creature prostrates, he does not rise up – ever.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 200)
8 April 2022
The friend who receives knowledge from tajallì is upon insight, guarded from every doubt, because Satan – I mean the satan of humans and jinn – has no way into the heart of the one with knowledge from tajallì concerning one’s Lord. This (guarding) does not happen to any of the friends except to one whose heart prostrates, because Satan never leaves the human being alone except during the moment of one’s prostration, in the outward and the inward. If the heart of the friend does not prostrate, then one is not guarded.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 199)
7 April 2022
Satan has no way to get into the hearts of some of the friends, on account of the knowledge that is provided by the Divine tajallì* to their hearts.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 198)
6 April 2022
The guarded friend, with regard to some matter that Satan seeks to cast to him, into the heart of the friend as God wills be cast to him – he turns around its core by executing it in a way that is pleasing to God. One achieves this from a great way-station with God. If not for the greed of Iblīs for disobedience, he would not come back to this friend a second time – because he would see, with what he came with to distance by that the friend from God, an increase in it of nearness and happiness.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 198)
5 April 2022
The prophets are ‘protected from error’ from Satan outwardly and inwardly, and they are guarded by God in all of their movements; and this is where God has attributed to them solace, and they have Divine secret conversation.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 197)
4 April 2022
The central theme on this path about this heart prostration is that when there happens to the human being a state that one sees with one’s own eyes, one has become complete; and one’s understanding is complete and one’s protection from error, so Satan has no way in on one.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 197)
1 April 2022
Prostrating is obligatory on the heart m, and when the heart prostrates, he never rises – ever – which is different from the prostration of the face.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 197)
31 March 2022
The prostration is a nearing announced and a transcendence, through what the Divine merits of elevation and height over the qualities of the New* things. The like of this is not delimited to being in one time but not another; no, the relation of His greatness and His majesty to the timings is equal. It is just as the creature should speak intimately to one’s Lord through a recitation of His majestic Book in every moment – and one is praised for this, rewarded from God.
* The Old is timeless, outside of time and therefore never changing. The New is what has emanated from the Old into time and is therefore ever changing.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 196)
30 March 2022
The context of this world is a place of watchfulness, and especially with death among you pacing to and fro with every breath you take. Do you not think about where you will end up? Whither you are traveling? Where you will encamp? This world is not a safe place. The wise one who knows is the one who proceeds in each place according to what is due.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 193-94)
29 March 2022
This world is an abode of being tasked and practice, and the next is an abode of recompense. This world too is an abode of recompense for the one who is intelligent based on God.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 189)
25 March 2022
One takes knowledge and wisdom wherever one finds them, and one does not look at the site (person) which brought the knowledge. In fact, the intelligent one recognizes the Men by the True, but the non-intelligent recognizes the True by (‘impressive, big’) men. This is one of the greatest mistakes of the examining faculty.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 186)
24 March 2022
The bodily forms are shadows of the spirits (arwāḥ, sg. rūḥ), and they do not move except by the movement of the spirits, in a core movement.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 178)
22 March 2022
It is designated for the creature that one affirm God in His report about what He mentions. One is part of the people of the Earth in one’s bodily form but among the people of the heavens in one’s intelligence – so you are an angel-human and a human-angel.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 177)
21 March 2022
The ʿárifīn* do not regard any comparative virtue in things, only their linkages to the Divine truths; and if this is your regard, then you will not find anything disgusting in the world. Do not judge for God and do not carry Him to yourself; take the things according to what their truths provide for them.
*ʿárifīn: those who recognize the Divine everywhere
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 166-67)
18 March 2022
Four angels gathered at the Kaʿbah, one of them descended from the sky, the other ascended from the lower Earth, the third coming from the eastern direction, and the fourth from the western direction. Each one of them asked his friend, ‘Where have you come from?’ Each of them said, ‘From God’s Side (min ʿindiʾllāhi).’
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 166)
17 March 2022
There is no quantum gem-core in the universe – all of it, its upper and its lower – except it is connected to a Divine truth.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 165)
16 March 2022
Just as God turns to face the upper beings with an empowering measure – and this is the Divine Pen and the First Intellect – by what He provides of knowledge and happiness, so in this way He turns to face the lower beings with an empowering measure; and He makes the lower wretched and abases their alighting place with God, (both) under a single definition (of Divine Pen and First Intellect).
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 165)
15 March 2022
Whoever acts with an integrated act – it has an effect on one, in oneself and in one’s heart, of liking and seeking to start another good deed, and especially if the result in this world for the one of that deed is knowledge itself. (It is) just as he (the Prophet) said, ‘Who acts with what he knows – God gives him in inheritance knowledge that he had not known before’; and He said, If you are aware (with taqwá) of God, He will make for you a criterion (al-anfāl 8:29).
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 165)
14 March 2022
The Prophet and the prophets, peace be upon them, come from God to the creatures of God with what the creatures need, such as that in which is their ultimate happiness.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 163)
11 March 2022
My thankfulness for my Cherisher’s blessing is another blessing
from Him to me; this is why my thankfulness is sought.
My dependency on Him and what I have are nothing but blessing
from God – by the means of blessings sent one after another.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 162)
10 March 2022
The language of actions is more elegant than the language of words.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 161)
9 March 2022
The angels say, Our Lord, You vastly extend over everything with kindness and knowledge (ghāfir 40:7). Kindness comes before knowledge – because of a context of the need of the creatures for her, and being courteous with God (as He spoke of the two in this order) – because God placed her as a gift before knowledge, saying, We gave him kindness from Ourselves, and We taught him knowledge from Our Side (al-kahf 18:65).
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 160-61)
8 March 2022
Rain is one of the kindnesses of God.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 160)
4 March 2022
When one has finished the intimate conversation with one’s Lord during one’s prayer, one praises God in oneself for what has been discharged to one. And this is so that one continues with God in the generality of one’s states.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 160)
3 March 2022
The person of knowledge is held accountable for the slightest thing, because one is the manifest outward of the universe in the form of the True.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 153)
2 March 2022
As the creature is verifying by God, God is the seer and the seen, and the viewer and the viewed. The ʿayn* of the creature disappears and there remains only the Lord. The True wants the creature-entity to be seen in its ʿubūdīyah* so one will be taught what He has blessed one with, such as something He has not given to another one of the creatures. You do not recognize this until you return to yourself and a vision of your entity conjoined in a vision of your Lord. And He does not do this in any of His worship rituals except in the prayer, where He says, ‘I divided the prayer between Me and My slave.’
* ʿayn: eye, point, dot, source, well, entity
* ʿubūdīyah: the state of being a slave; servanthood
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 152)
1 March 2022
The need of the universe for God is absolute without delimitation, just as His independence from the universe is absolute without delimitation with regard to His dhát.*
* dhát: essence, core; essential identity
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 152)
28 February 2022
God says, ‘I asked you for water, My creature, and you did not bring Me water.’ The creature says, ‘How could I bring you water, when You are the Cherisher of the worlds?’ He says, ‘If you had brought water to so-and-so, you would have brought water to Me.’
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 151)
25 February 2022
Humility of each humble one is at the measure of one’s knowledge of one’s Lord, and one’s knowledge of one’s Lord is at the measure of His tajallì* to one.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 149)
24 February 2022
However much the being descends (cosmically) in fluctuation, from mineral to plant to animal to human being, weariness becomes more powerful, down to the last steps – and this is the human being – and fatigue is more universal (e.g. a stone can stay in one place much longer than a plant or human can). You see, human beings are swift in changing, because they have imagination. And there is no doubt that imaginings play with intellects, just like the verbs dance in the nouns.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 147-48)
23 February 2022
There is no dimension belonging to the human being except with regard to the form of one’s organic body (jism) and one’s configuration, because one’s bodily (jasadī, including embodied spirits) configuration – by her appear the six directions (three dimensions). So the human being is an ʿayn (source, spring, eye) of the dimensions; one is not in a dimension oneself.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 146)
22 February 2022
There is no ‘before’ for Him, because there is nothing but God and God is not described by ‘beforeness’. And He has no ‘after’, because it remains in God’s remaining, so it is not after. And He has no ‘whole’, because there is no separation and no isolation with regard to His invisibility.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 146)
21 February 2022
There is no one who does anything but God. The matters are under the measurement of the Inaccessible, the All-Knowing, the Wise Designer.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 144)
18 February 2022
The veil is ignorance and distance from the state that is appropriate for one: complete perfection.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 143)
17 February 2022
The intellect is veiled by the veil of the animal, passionate soul. This corresponds to the solar eclipse.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 143)
16 February 2022
The illumination of the Moon, as it is beneficially provided light from the Sun, is like the soul in taking from God a light of faith and kashf (unveiling). If the soul f is perfected and the tajallì* for her is authentically full-facing – and that is the full Moon night – then perhaps she will attend to her nature and display a darkness of her nature. There will be an interposition of this darkness between her and the light of the divine (inspired) intellect that is faithful, just as a shadow of the Earth interposes between the Moon – which corresponds to the soul – and the light of the Sun. So to the extent she looks at her nature she is veiled from the light of Divine faith. That is her eclipse, and this is the eclipse of the Moon.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 142)
15 February 2022
The Divine signs – some of them are conventional and some of them are unconventional. The Qurʾān mentions many conventional signs, with His word, and among His signs (is that He created you from dust), and among His signs (is that He created for you pairs among yourselves) (al-Rūm 30:20). He mentions conventional things. Then He says, In this are signs (Yūnus 10:67), but the common people do not lift their heads to see them, because of the (continuum) flow of the conventional and being seized by distraction and a lack of being present.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 140)
11 February 2022
There is no doubt that the souls are not agitated and prodded except by miraculous signs that break the fabric of the conventional.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 140)
10 February 2022
Hu is the meaning, and we – if we look at it
with reflection – are like the letters.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 137)
9 February 2022
The Oneness of the True is not evened by the oneness of each created being. Everything has a oneness; that is certain. By its (unique) one everything recognizes the Oneness of its Creator. It is the sign that God has in everything, the pointer to His Oneness.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 118)
8 February 2022
The Divine Presence f does not involve repetition, as She is to repetition too vast (infinite) – and God is Vast, All-Knowing (al-baqarah 2:247).
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 117-18)
7 February 2022
The entity continues to remain, but the moments change; and the rule of the Law changes for the entity because of the changing of the moment. There is a moment of infancy, fainting, madness, being overwhelmed by the moment, self-vanishing, intoxication, sickness: the Law has determinative rulings for them. In this way there is a state of adulthood, reviving from fainting, health, remaining (collected) in the self, sobriety, lack of being overwhelmed by a moment: the Law has determinative rulings for them. The ruling of the Law flows throughout the entirety of moments, for the one who understands the diffusing spread of the True over the wujūd (being) of the entities.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 101)
4 February 2022
And he was told, Say: Follow me and God will love you (Āl-i-ʿImrān 3:31). And when God loves you – His slave – He becomes all of your faculties and limbs and you act only through His power and His limbs; thus, you act only by God, so you are protected in your doing and in your moving and your being still.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 100)
3 February 2022
It is established in the report that ‘the human being – when one prostrates, Satan disengages from one, crying and saying, “The child of Adam was told to perform prostration and he did so, and he has the Garden; I was told to perform prostration and I refused, so I get the Fire.”’
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 96)
2 February 2022
One says, subḥāna rabbī al-aʿlā (Glorified beyond is my Lord, the Most High), three times: the first for your senses, the second for your imagination, and the third for your mind. You declare Him transcendent from being perceived by your senses and being restricted, or being restricted by your imagination, or being restricted by your mind. That is the cursing of Satan.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 91)
1 February 2022
Faith that the faithful finds in one’s Lord in oneself is purer, more just, more powerful than that something could repel it. Less than it in power and purity is what is built up from intellectual proofs. If kashf (unveiling) is joined to the faithful one or to the intellectual, it is stronger than either one of the two alone – no doubt.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 90)
31 January 2022
Open your ears and be present with all of your self; perhaps you will be one of the people who achieve and you will be one of the successful ones.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 89)
28 January 2022
The imām of the ones who know God is the True.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 82)
27 January 2022
The tajallìyāt* and the states differ with the breaths, and only a few of the ones who know God among the family of God know this. The senses and Nature are two veils of the intellect over what is provided by one level of examining intricacies of the matters, and their fine details, and their elements.
* tajallìyāt (sg. tajallì): brilliant radiances of Being; Divine self-disclosures
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 79)
26 January 2022
The decisive ruling with the one who verifies for oneself belongs to the moment (waqt) – nothing else.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 79)
25 January 2022
The address of the Law when it is connected to the outward, its bridge* is in the inward. When the address of the Law is connected to the inward, its bridge is in the outward.
*bridge (iʿtibār): lesson to the learned, parable, from literal to meaning, from physical to symbolic; in contrast with English ‘metaphor’, an iʿtibār preserves the truth of both sides.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 74)
24 January 2022
There is not in being anything but God and His qualities and His actions, and […] He is Being itself. Required of the one with this station of maʿrifah (recognition) of God is courtesy toward God, with what this maʿrifah requires.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 73)
21 January 2022
Jesus was present with his Lord in every moment.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 68)
20 January 2022
If intellectual sickness has interposed between you and the health of faith in the wujūd (being) of the True, it has interposed between you and self-evident knowledge. Knowledge of the wujūd of the Designer is self-evident with the appearance of the design to the observer. If, after reflective thinking and prophetic reports about the Divine, one does not recognize the truth of the Designer, or His quality, or what must be His, and what may be His and what is impossible, then this sickness has no doctor for it.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 64)
19 January 2022
The believer with a sick soul speaks with one’s Lord with regard to one’s faith in one’s anxieties themselves, so one’s preoccupation is from Him, to Him, and by Him; so he stays in his anxiety and his faith in God. One says, ‘Your anxious concern is God. Your looking to Him is through God, because God is wujūd and mawjūd (being and site of being), and He is the focus of worship in everything worshiped and by everything. He is the wujūd of everything, and He is what is sought by everything, and He is what is translated by everything, and He is the emergence of everything that emerges, and He is the invisible after everything is lost, and He is the first of everything, and He is the last of everything.’ The faithful one never misses a worshiping of God in every facet and in every moment, so the soul sicknesses do not disprove faith. And as for the intellectual sicknesses – they do disprove faith.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 63)
18 January 2022
Sicknesses are of three kinds: of body, of soul, and of intellect. There is no fourth. The soul f sicknesses are anxieties and preoccupation keeping her from fulfilling the rights God obligated on her. The intellectual sicknesses are doubts that misguide, undermining evidence and faith – so they are interposed between the intellect of the wise person and the authenticity of faith.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 62)
17 January 2022
The state of fighting with swords is a state of the creature with Satan during his whisperings, and when one’s own soul (nafs) whispers to one. God is, during this state, closer to him than the jugular vein (qāf 50:16). One is, with one’s match in bravery, in a tremendous battle.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 60)
14 January 2022
God said, Remember Me; I will remember you (al-baqarah 2:152). If you remember your Lord in yourself, God remembers you in Himself; and if you remember your Lord in an assembly, God remembers you in an assembly.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 58)
13 January 2022
The True is with the creature according to the moment of the creature: ‘I am according to the estimation of My creature of Me, so let one estimate Me to be good.’ Whatever is the moment of you, the creature, the True is with you accordingly, proceeding with you.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 58)
12 January 2022
The most all-overseeing state is in the otherworld, not in this world. The most all-overseeing knowledge and station are in this world and the other. God told His Prophet to seek an increase of knowledge, and He said to him, Say: Lord, increase in me knowledge (ṭā-hā 20:114) – but He did not tell him to seek an increase in state.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 56)
11 January 2022
The ignorant ones on our path speak of the nobility of the ḥāl (state, moment, emotion, trance) over knowledge, because of their ignorance of what the ḥāl is. States – the greatest of the Men in this land seek refuge from them! They are some of the thickest veils. This is why the Tribe take states to be gifts and the stations to be earnings (things acquired, not gifted). This world, according to the greatest ones, is an abode of earning, not an abode of state. What you earn will raise you up a step, but the temporary state will make you lose your time, and you will not rise with it; no, the state is one of the results of your station, and it rushes you to things of this world. Because of this, the states are gifts; and if they were earned, rising with them would occur.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 56)
10 January 2022
Idleness is a sickness of the soul.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 56)
7 January 2022
One is a traveler in a way one may not be aware of with every breath, through different moments and thoughts, and self-talk, and movements outside and inside.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 55)
6 January 2022
For each path there is a group. The complete one among us is the one who knows each path and each group, and such a person is external to them; they (the complete ones) are the greatest of the Men.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 53)
5 January 2022
When we recognize our selves, we recognize our Lord; Messenger of God said, ‘Whoever recognizes one’s self recognizes one’s Lord.’
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 53)
4 January 2022
The prayer is a bringing-closer-to-God in felicity.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 46)
3 January 2022
God is the end-point for every traveler – whether you travel from Him, or from something itself, or from one of the existent beings, or in Him, or in names of your Lord. The True is the end-point of the paths, whether the paths were intended or not intended.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 45)
31 December 2021
The one who succeeds is the one who is courteous with God during every moment.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 38)
30 December 2021
In the possible worlds, there is not any more wondrous than this universe, because of His perfect completeness based on indications pointing to Him, and its encompassing what the True attributed to Himself and to the universe.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 23)
29 December 2021
The True is witnessed in each name He has, of His names. And each of His names is that ‘by which something is known’ that does not belong to another name. Thus, there arise in the human being many congregations, because of the differences in the worlds in oneself. Each name has a property and a dominion in one’s world and in one’s congregation. The city is single. So this makes you come to be a city, a dominion, a standing, a journey – all in a single moment and an ʿayn waḥdat (single core-entity); this is what is called a human being. You are a universe of little mass, but great in meaning.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 17-18)
28 December 2021
It was asked of Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz, ‘By what do you recognize God?’ He said, ‘By His combining (jamaʿa) two opposites.’ Then he recited: He is the First, and the Last, and the Outward, and the Inward (al-ḥadīd 57:3).
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 17)
27 December 2021
You are a city in yourself; no, rather you are the whole universe.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 17)
24 December 2021
Among them [the people on the path of God] there are those whose moment alters with every breath, with knowledge concerning what they have in their hearts. They are the greatest of the people of God. They are the perpetual travelers, so it is impossible for them to be residents.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 16)
22 December 2021
One sees one’s flowing abundance in the Divine as a flowing abundance of Divine being in all beings. This is the most complete kashf* of natural substance, and the most elevated. From here, tajallì* is revealed through His Divine names – and only so.
* kashf: unveiling
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 14)
21 December 2021
Everything that is mawjūd (a site of being) is certainly distinguishable from another by some oneness that singles it out which does not belong to another.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 12)
20 December 2021
Your being is a being of the True.
Book 7, Chapter 69 (p. 8)
Quotations: Book 6
17 December 2021
God does not task any soul beyond her capacity (al-baqarah 2:286); and it is not in the human being’s capacity to know what is in the soul of another, nor to have comprehensive knowledge of the states of another.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 488)
16 December 2021
Satan is one of the ingrates – based on God’s word about him, He is among the ingrates (al-baqarah 2:34).
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 487)
15 December 2021
No soul pays the price for another soul at all.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 486)
14 December 2021
The human being is an imām of the whole (jamāʿat) of one’s essence, and there is no part of one except it is praising God.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 480)
13 December 2021
The creature ought to treat God in oneself with what is appropriate to Him – such as fearing His sublime majesty, being in awe of Him, and being self-effacing before Him.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 475)
10 December 2021
The hurrying to the good activities is set by Law, and quietness and being dignified is set by Law. Combining the two is that one should hurry with being habitually ready before the time for prayer f has come so you can come to her quietly and with dignity. You have then combined hurrying and quietness.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 474)
9 December 2021
Just as it is inappropriate that you wheel around your face with a turning that would remove you from the qiblah, in the same way you should not gaze with your heart toward someone other than the One conversing intimately with you – and that is God. And as you do not get involved in your language with anything but the word of your Lord, or His dhikr* which He made Law for you, nothing of the speech of people is valid during the prayer; and in this way, forbidden to you inside yourself is your self-talk with someone you are buying and selling with, or conversing with someone inside yourself during your actual prayer. It is the same whether it is your spouse or children or friends or sultans.
* dhikr: the recitation of Divine names; the gathering for the remembrance of the Divine.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 470)
8 December 2021
It is appropriate that you choose for leadership [of the prayer] the people of religion and goodness, the ones occupied with God, even if they are poor in knowledge. They are better for leadership than the distracted scholars, because what is sought for you praying is to be present with God. When praying, you do not need knowledge with regard to your being someone praying, only that you recognize that you are before your Lord and speaking intimately with what God made easy for you to recite in His Book – nothing else but that.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 470)
7 December 2021
Thus, consider, you who are praying, in what moment you are present during your prayer […]. Let your vision be the True as your imām with regard to what the Lawgiver described Him as – not with regard to what is indicated by a proof of the intellect – so that that you will be one of religion in your intellect and your belief system and your knowledge and your practice. If you do not, you will be deficient in your worship rituals to the extent your intellect has been inserted into them, with regard to your thinking and your examination.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 467)
6 December 2021
There is no quality which the True describes Himself as having except we are appointed to become described by it.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 466)
3 December 2021
The True gives tajallì* only commensurate with one’s ability to receive.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 462)
2 December 2021
Do not challenge yourself to cause yourself to err – saying, ‘I am the teacher of this one; I am more knowledgeable than him.’ Yes, more knowledgeable of what is required for him in instruction, but perhaps you are not more knowledgeable than him in what comes next. I have seen this myself when giving assistance to persons.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 458)
1 December 2021
How many true aspirants had a (spiritual) event, and one was anxious about it, so one turned to the teacher (shaykh) – but the shaykh did not have in him the significance of this event. The energy of the aspirant flows outward; and it is certain that, about one’s event, no one will know how to unfold its complexity except this shaykh. Then God opens it up to this shaykh, using the energy of this aspirant and his sincerity as a grace from God for the aspirant. And the teacher benefits in succession, even if the teacher is higher than the aspirant in spiritual station.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 457)
30 November 2021
God opens for the older one through the truth of turning to face the younger; so the young is instructive to the older, and his leadership is also instructive in a way one does not realize.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 457)
29 November 2021
Learn that you, the human being, are a universe in yourself, immense from the perspective of the meaning dimension even if you are insignificant in bodily size.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 454)
26 November 2021
Everyone who receives kashf (unveiling) will report based on what was given in kashf to one at that moment. The one with kashf will be informed at one moment about some matter in all its facets but will be informed about only some of its facets another time. God covers you from seeing whatever He pleases of the facets of this matter. So, with kashf you might make a ruling over the whole; the kashf is valid, but the mistake is in generalizing the ruling.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 452)
25 November 2021
The most appropriate for leadership is the person for whom the True is one’s hearing and one’s seeing and one’s hand and one’s tongue and the rest of one’s faculties. If they (people) are in this state equal, then (the most appropriate for leadership is) the most knowledgeable of them in what is appropriate to lordliness. And if they are equal in knowledge of this, then the more knowledgeable among them of ʿubūdīyah* and its accompaniments (is most appropriate). And beyond knowledge of ʿubūdīyah, or above it, no state that is well pleasing to God exists – because for ʿubūdīyah they were created. He exalted said, I created the jinn and the human beings only to worship Me (al-dhāriyāt 51:56).
*ʿubūdīyah: the state of being a slave; servanthood
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 448-49)
24 November 2021
There is not in all possible worlds any more wondrously original than this world.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 434)
23 November 2021
The observer […] imagines that existence is an indication of God, as he looks at himself and takes it as an indication. But he does not realize that even his being an observer reverts to the property of being described (the object of an adjective) with being (wujūd, m). Therefore, wujūd – he is the observer, and he is the True! If one’s dhát* were not described by wujūd, then by what means would someone be observing? Thus, it is only the True observing the True, and His end-point is the True Himself. Therefore one says, ‘I recognize God by God’ – and that is the position of the community (jamāʿat). When you multiply the 1 by the 1, the product is 1 – so understand.
*dhát: core, essential identity
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 430)
22 November 2021
It is possible that the command to Be! reach someone, and it is possible that it does not.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 429)
19 November 2021
There is no purer language than the language of the moments.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 420)
18 November 2021
The present tense is dhát-based being, there being no emptiness in it that is valid; and it is continuous. This is how the ʿarab people describe it. They say about the division of verbs that the present is called the continuing. The present is a site of being between two extremities, in the two there being no possibility of being at all.
* dhát: essence, core; essential identity
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 416)
17 November 2021
The ʿárif* looks and finds that the combination of the past and the future is empty void, as being is valid only in the present tense. And being belongs to God only.
*ʿárif: the one who recognizes the Divine everywhere
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 416)
16 November 2021
God says, ‘I am with the shattered of hearts, shattered for My sake.’
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 414)
15 November 2021
Certainly, when the veils are lifted, the brilliant Face burns up whatever the sight, the creation’s sight, perceives – I mean the natural creation.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 413)
12 November 2021
If I am not there, it is by Your making me light. And if I am there, it is by Your making for me light by which to guide me in the veils of my existence.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 412)
11 November 2021
God says, ‘I become his hearing and his seeing and his foot and his hand and his tongue’ when he hears and sees and speaks and strikes and steps – saying, ‘Make Me light, guiding by Me each one who sees Me, in the light-blocking of his land-based outwardness and his ocean-based self and inwardness.’ He gave him the Qurʾān and gave us the understanding of it. This gift is the greatest gift in a step-level which is the most radiant of levels. Its meaning is: Make me disappear from myself, and would that You become my being so my eyes will see everything through You and my ears will hear everything audible through You. Indeed, the light of every bodily part is its perception.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 411)
10 November 2021
Each limb f has a prayer using what God created her with – that is, a faculty which He composed her with and made innately created in her. When Messenger of God learned of this, he prayed that God would prepare knowledge and guidance in him and put the darkness to flight – a prayer for each part needing prayer in his body universe.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 411)
9 November 2021
He split one’s ears open when one heard Be! and one took the covenant, then the obligations (at the Footstool of Do and Do not).
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 410)
8 November 2021
The one who has a portion of good fortune in this world such as dominion and fame and wealth, and passes judgments without You and your Law – in his estimation, not in the matter itself (because no one acts but You) – this will not benefit him in the other world when the veil is removed.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 409)
5 November 2021
There is no one who praises and no one praised but You, so You are the end point of everything praised in the universe and each one praising; and that is our saying, ‘Filling throughout the skies and filling the Earth and filling whatever is between the two, filling whatever You please thereafter.’
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 408)
4 November 2021
Nothing is remote from You, not a single atomic grain in the skies and in the Earth, O You who perceives the sights but the sights perceive Him not (al-aʿnām 6:103).
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 407)
3 November 2021
Each enabled being has a special quality; and one has with God a special name, with that name a singled-out quality by which one is differentiated from every other enabled being. This is one of the most panoramic kinds of knowledge that the people of God have.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 400)
2 November 2021
Whoever sees one’s Lord in oneself sees Him in another – no doubt.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 397)
1 November 2021
You are present with the True only to the extent you know of Him.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 388)
29 October 2021
The one who knows looks at the parts of one’s cosmic universe body; and the prayer’s ruling property has universally spread throughout one’s states, outwardly and inwardly, no portion of this putting aside another – because one stands with one’s all, and one goes into bowing with one’s all, and one sits with one’s all. Thus, the whole of one’s cosmos has come together in worshiping your Lord and seeking help from Him for your worship.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 379)
28 October 2021
Every pain in this world and the next – even if it is a covering expiation for things that have been done, it is bounded by a fixed time. It is a recompense for one who has been pained, young or old, with a condition that the pain be comprehended as an expiation, not in the way of sensing pain without comprehending. This perception is not perceived except by one who has kashf (unveiling).
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 377)
27 October 2021
Pains are bounded for a fixed time; but God’s kindness f is not fixed in time, because she vastly encompasses everything (al-aʿrāf 7:156).
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 376)
26 October 2021
The general population do not recognize God’s kindness to them except when He provides something which suits their selfish interest – whether it harms them or suits their nature, and even if there is in it their wretchedness. But the ʿárif* is not this way, because Divine kindness may come to the slave in the form of something disliked – such as taking medicine that has a bad taste and smell for the sick person, where the cure is concealed inside.
*ʿárif: the one who recognizes the Divine everywhere
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 374)
25 October 2021
The one who knows (ʿālim) is the one who worships God for God’s sake; and the non-ʿālim worships Him for what he hopes to receive from God, such as some good fortune for himself from this worship ritual.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 354)
22 October 2021
He separated apart my limbs and gave to the eye a ruling command, and to the ear a command, and to the rest of the bodily parts command after command. And this is His word, And He measured out her nutrients there (fuṣṣilat 41:10) – and this is what the human intellect is nourished by, such as knowledge that is provided through the senses, by whatever of this the reflective faculty composes together in order to understand God and to understand what God commanded to be understood about Him.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 351-52)
21 October 2021
He separated apart the spiritual faculties in my dhát* just as He separated the skies, one from another; and He revealed to each sky her command, which He placed in each of the faculties of my skies.
* dhát: essence, core; essential identity
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 351)
20 October 2021
If He removed His Breath from you, you would return to the void from which you emerged.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 351)
19 October 2021
The ʿárifūn* see that with the purification of their hearts for the conversation with their Lord – if they purify using themselves and not using their Lord, more stains are added to their stains, like someone removing impurity from his clothes using his urine because it happens to be a fluid. The purification sought here is rather being free from one’s self and returning the matter, all of it, to God – because God says, And to Him returns the matter, all of it, so worship Him (Hūd 11:123).
*ʿárifūn: those who recognize the Divine everywhere
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 345)
15 October 2021
The slave – when he is present (in prayer), his presence encompasses a presence of the tongue and the rest of the bodily parts, because the ʿayn (entity) is his jamʿ (encompassment, collected together). Thus, if his ʿayn f is not present, none of his limbs will take her place, nor will anything else.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 343)
14 October 2021
There is no correlation between God and His creation except the dependency of creation on Him for their being, while He is independent of the worlds.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 342)
13 October 2021
The True is the Necessary Being in Himself, and the slave is the one who gains being from Him – because one’s origin is void (non-being).
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 341)
12 October 2021
One courtesy is attentiveness when the speaker who is confiding in you speaks; and when you insert into (interrupt) his words – that is, while he is speaking to you – then you have been ill-mannered. This is universal for every speaker with whom someone is speaking. What is between the listening and the speaking is there so as to gain some benefit.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 334)
11 October 2021
The true dimension provides that there is not anything further external to the True, or anything the True is withdrawn from such that you would seek it for some situation you have; no, He (the True) is in a single relation, with regard to the All, to Him. So, toward where shall I proceed to search for Him – when He is with me wherever I am? And in what state should I be to find Him? What is left is the intention for a direction to become close to God. In fact, anchoring the intention as a state is singled out with God. I intentionally seek Him from a singled-out state with God; I depart from it by Him to Him.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 326-27)
8 October 2021
Among the closest veils veiling God from the human being there is the image in which the tajallì* occurs. This is the closest of the veils. Indeed, hu is not the image, nor is hu other than her.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 325)
7 October 2021
As she (the earth) is in this level of humility, we were told to place on her (during prayer) the most noble part we have in our physical body – and it is the face – and that we rub it in the earth. He told us to do this as a mending for the brokenness of the earth which came about from the treading of the lowly on her, by the one who is a creature. Then, by the prostration, the face of the creature and the face of the earth meet and her fracture is mended. Indeed, ‘God is with the ones of shattered hearts.’ The creature, in that place (maqām) with this sensation (ḥāl), is closer to God than the rest of the positions of the prayer – because one has rushed to fulfill what is due another, not to fulfill one’s own due; and that is to mend the broken earth in her humbleness under the tread of the lowly on her.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 323)
6 October 2021
The Earth, all of her, is a mosque.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 322)
5 October 2021
He said, He is with you wherever you are (al-ḥadīd 57:4). And the one praying is speaking intimately with one’s Lord, and His word is, The ones who are ever in their prayer (al-maʿārij 70:23). ʿĀʾishah, God be pleased with her, said about Messenger of God, from what she knew about his states, that he ‘remembered God all his life’. And places do not have an effect on the heart being veiled from its Lord, except for the people of states; the effect on states is for the distracted, or for the ignorant one among the general population, or for the state for people of states.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 321)
4 October 2021
The human being is not present with God in every experience, since one is created innately with being easily distracted and constricted.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 321)
1 October 2021
There is no difference between the owned and the free, because everyone is a possession of God; thus, there is no freedom from God. If one links freedom to people, it will be their departure from the chains of the other, not from the chains of the True – that is, there is no way for the people to be free in their hearts, nor any such property as being free. This is the meaning of freedom along the path.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 319)
30 September 2021
You think that you have departed from Him, but truly you face none other than hu, and hu is ‘surrounding you from behind’. And wherever you are – in the Divine names and states – turn your faces – your entities – in the direction of (al-baqarah 2:150) hu – that is, do not swerve away from hu.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 311-12)
29 September 2021
God says, Your Lord has decided that you do not worship any but Him (al-isrāʾ 17:23) – that is, as a determination (not as a command); on account of this, the Divinity is worshiped. The intended aim of the worship of every worshiper is God only, and nothing is worshiped in its self except God. The error of the mushrik* is in his attributing to himself a particular method of worship not made Law for him from the Side of the True. He is wretched because of it. They say about the ones they take as gods with God, We worshiped them only in order that they would bring us closer to God (al-zumar 39:3) – so they do recognize Him.
* mushrik: one who associates gods with God
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 309)
28 September 2021
God is too vast and too majestic and too great that He should be confined in some kind of detention one puts Him in, such that He will be with a single one of His creatures some way but not another way with another. The Divine vastness rejects that, because God says, He is with you wherever you are (al-ḥadīd 57:4) … so wherever you turn, there is a face of God (al-baqarah 2:115) – and the face of everything is its truth and its dhát.*
* dhát: essence, core; essential identity
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 309)
27 September 2021
Human beings are travelers with every breath since they were created by God, in this world and in the next. It is incorrect for you that you be settled – ever. If you were to stand up unsupported for more than a single breath, the Divine action would be idled with regard to you. The True is in every breath upon the creation, in a shāʾn (al-Raḥmān 55:29) – and this is His radiant effect on every ʿayn mawjūdat (living particle) in a unique way. God has shown me the extreme fineness of the breaths, and their magnificence. No one is more honored before God than one who follows the breaths. Whoever misses an awareness of His breaths in this world and the next has missed many a great good.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 292-93)
24 September 2021
The universe is an indicator toward God, because we traverse the bridge from it to Him; and it is inappropriate that we take the True as an indication of the universe, or we would be crossing from Him to the universe. This is incorrect. There is no higher prophetic word than his saying, ‘Who recognizes oneself, recognizes one’s Lord.’ And He says, Will they not look (al-ghāshiyat 88:17) at such-and-such. The created beings are enumerated so we will take them as indicators of Him, not halt with them. This is the difference between the sacred rites of God and the signs of God.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 286)
23 September 2021
He is the First Cause, which has no cause causing its firstness.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 260)
22 September 2021
In my position, for everything I bring forth, I do not seek one word itself and not another among synonymous words which point to the same meaning, except for a particular meaning; and I do not add a single letter, except for a particular meaning. Therefore, there is not in my writing with regard to my intended meaning any embellishment, even if the observer so imagines. The mistake is with him about my intended meaning; it is not with me.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 258-59)
21 September 2021
The faithful are the ones who are level-noon (even) in their fear and in their hope.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 257)
20 September 2021
Time on this path is what you have in your moment – whatever thing it may be; whether something good or bad, an understanding or an ignorance, one does not get anchored down. It is this way for the timings in the time period: it is according to what God gives newly in the period with regard to each person.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 254)
17 September 2021
The names of the True are variegated as they come to the hearts of the friends; different kinds of knowledge come with every Now and with every breath. Such a person finds with each breath and in each time period some knowledge which one did not have before, from one’s Lord, in a place one was provided by this breath and time period – that is, a tajallì* of this particular (Divine) name.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 254)
16 September 2021
The ʿárif is ever in the Presence – as one does not differentiate between the moments, in that one always finds an increase and an excellence.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 253)
15 September 2021
The ʿárif* is the one who is in one’s prayer ever, always, and in one’s intimate conversation with God, standing right before one’s Lord in one’s movements and in one’s stillnesses. There is no moment for such a person which is designated or non-designated; no, one is of the moment.
* ʿárif: the one who recognizes the Divine everywhere
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 253)
14 September 2021
The time period is imaginary, having no being.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 252)
13 September 2021
How many pray and have from their prayer
nothing but a vision of the wall in front of them, and fatigue and weariness?
But others are graced with intimate conversation with God – ever and ever;
even if they have already prayed a required prayer, they meet the Convener.
And how not? The inner secret of the True was their prayer leader!
And even if they were led by someone else, they reached the end of the procession.
Book 6, Chapter 69 (p. 241)
Quotations: Book 5
10 September 2021
There is nothing but it is linked to a Divine truth, and by that link it is intelligible.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 234)
9 September 2021
The Law looks at the outward of the human being and is concerned with one in the abode of this world – an abode of being tasked – more than at one’s inward. But in the other world it is the opposite; there, the inner secret is assayed.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 233)
8 September 2021
God looks only at the human being in one’s heart. Thus, it is obligatory on the creature that one’s heart stay pure always, because it is the site which God looks at.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 233)
7 September 2021
People are given different natures in understanding God.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 231)
6 September 2021
Knowledge is pure and purifying, and especially knowledge which is the end result of taqwā.* Other kinds of knowledge, even if they are pure and purifying – they do not have the power of this knowledge that we are indicating.
* taqwā: being aware of God, God-fearing
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 228)
3 September 2021
Awe is a purifier from impurities, because awe is one of the special features of the ones who know God, and of ones He is pleased with.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 228)
2 September 2021
There is no way to lift off what God has set down.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 225)
1 September 2021
Nothing originates from the Holy except the sanctified, holy. We say about najāsah (impurity) that it is a correlated happenstance. Correlations are a non-thing. The impurity has no root in the ʿayn . Lo, the entities (sg. ʿayn) are pure in the root site of visible emergence from Him. Here there are mysteries we cannot discuss in writing, only orally to their people. The book may fall into the hands of its people and other than its people. Whoever understands what we have pointed allusively to has received a great treasure, there being a paying out from it as long as this world persists, and the next – that is, until the end of this world, whose existence never ends. And God is the One who supports, the One who teaches humanity the clear text.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 223)
31 August 2021
Impurity in things is correlated with happenstance. The greatest of the impure things is associating partners with God.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 223)
30 August 2021
Life in itself is pure and purifying. Everything other than God is alive, and everything other than God is pure at root. With His name Holy He created the universe, all of it.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 222)
27 August 2021
As the life of the creature is accidental, not Necessary Being, it is inappropriate that one make a flowery show of it or make arrogant claims.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 213)
26 August 2021
You are addressed and charged with regard to the existence of your core-being, a place for the address to be addressed to. But He is the One who does through you, inasmuch as you have no doing.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 211)
25 August 2021
The correct thing is that the soul f is the place of the face’s turning to the Presence of Majesty, so she is clothed by (bathed in) some light of majesty (nūr al-ʿizzat) which leads her to what (i.e. the majesty) was claimed for her. Thus, she is told, ‘Turn your face to your humility and to your weakness which you were created from. If there still persists on you lights of this ʿizzat, then you are still you.’ There arises in her that perhaps that ʿizzat lingers over her, so when her face is turned to her humility and her weakness, the lights of ʿizzat vanish from her completely; and she becomes dependent on her Creator, and she is humbled before His dominion.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 207)
24 August 2021
A condition of intention is that you make it upon commencement of an action, contextually close to the commencement.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 203)
23 August 2021
Water is knowledge, based on the commonality of water and knowledge both giving life.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 201)
20 August 2021
Just as the intellect travels with its thinking-examination through the world, the practitioner travels with his practice; and the two join together at the end-point. The extra with the one who practices is that he is upon insight with what he knows – no doubt entering in there. And one of examination does not lack doubt entering on him in his evidence. So the one of practice is more fit to have the name ‘one who knows’ than the one of examination.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 199)
13 August 2021
The ʿālim (knower) who bestows wisdom on people who are not wisdom’s people – there is no doubt that he has wronged them.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 192)
12 August 2021
And your Lord has decided that you do not worship any but Him (al-isrāʾ 17:23). With us, it has the meaning of He determined that you do not, in fact, worship any but Him. But with another who does not know the truths, among the superficial scholars, it has the meaning of He commanded that you should not worship any but Him. Verify for yourself – between the two meanings is a huge distance!
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 178)
11 August 2021
He says to the thing when He desires it to be, Be! and that thing is clothed in becoming and it is.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 177)
10 August 2021
One is a passer-through – always, with every breath.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 175)
9 August 2021
Satan never learns – because of his being veiled with his greediness for the creature’s misfortune, and his ignorance about the fact that God turns to this special creature.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 167)
6 August 2021
What life is greater and more complete than the life of the hearts with God, in whatever action there may be? Indeed, Presence with faith at the moment of [an] opposition coming to pass repels and reverts that action to something alive – in the life (realm) of the Presence, now seeking forgiveness for him until the Day of Arising.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 166)
5 August 2021
Perhaps the gatekeepers went to sleep or became distracted and left the gate unguarded; and the incoming thoughts of the lower self and the incoming thoughts of satans find no one to stop them from entering to one’s heart.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 162)
4 August 2021
There is no indicating proof of Him except Him.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 157)
3 August 2021
He is the One who casts to your self knowledge in every moment, whether you examine antecedent compilations or you do not.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 157)
30 July 2021
Sometimes knowledge is a condition for the validity of faith and an obligating condition for faith. And sometimes faith is a condition for the validity of knowledge from kashf (unveiling) and a condition obligating it. However, faith is a ṭahārah (purification) for the heart from the veil, and knowledge is a ṭahārah for the heart from ignorance and doubt and hypocrisy. So purify your heart with two purifications, rising with that through the two worlds, and receive thereby knowledge of the two handfuls grasped out of Adam.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 148)
29 July 2021
Human beings in the prayer are in different states with God during their recitation, when they are people of God who consider the Qurʾān carefully. There is a verse making you sad, so you cry; and a verse making you excited, so you laugh; and a verse which astonishes you, and you neither laugh nor cry; and a verse giving more knowledge; and a verse making you want to seek forgiveness and start entreating.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 145)
28 July 2021
Indeed, ṭahārah (purification) of the heart is being present with God.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 142)
27 July 2021
O sleeper, how long will you recline?
You are called, so be alert!
The Divine is concerned about you,
as He called you so you would not fall asleep.
But your heart became careless
to what He called you to, and attentive only
To the world of existence, which
ruins you – as much as you are dead in there.
So look to yourself before your journey to the next world –
your provision is suspect!
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 141-42)
26 July 2021
Everything which takes you away from knowledge of God and His tawḥìd (Oneness) and His Beautiful Names and what God loves us to do, and what may be, and what is impossible according to the intellect – unless it is brought up in a report with multiple chains of transmission in the Book or the Sunnah – that, all of it, undoes ṭahārah (purification) of the heart in understanding God and His tawḥìd and His names.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 139)
23 July 2021
The lights of knowings are subsumed in the light of faith as the lights of the planets are subsumed in the light of the Sun.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 127)
22 July 2021
Since anger is in the root disposition of the human being – as is fearfulness and eager desire and covetousness – the True explains to him how to discharge them when the creature falls into being described by them. Surrendering safely to these root dispositions has sites and contexts which were made Law. The courteous are responsible for them according to circumstance, but the people who have transitory states are veiled from them. And for not surrendering to these root dispositions, there are sites and contexts which were made Law. The courteous one is the one who halts when there is no ruling, until the Lawgiver, the True, gives a ruling, and He is the best of the wise judges (al-aʿrāf 7:87). When He rules, the courteous stands with what He ruled, no more and no less.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 125)
21 July 2021
There is no one who acts except God.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 124)
20 July 2021
More than one transmitted to me as a ḥadỉth from one who transmitted to him, conveyed to him by the Prophet, that he was asked, ‘O Messenger of God, who are the friends of God?’ The Messenger of God said, ‘The ones who, when they are seen, God is remembered.’
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 115)
15 July 2021
The creature is a veil before his Creator; and for this, it was related: ‘Whoever recognizes one’s self, recognizes one’s Lord.’ You are the indication of Him, the indicator and the indicated.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 115)
14 July 2021
He gives tajallì* in whatever form He wishes, appearing in that form to His creatures.
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 114)
13 July 2021
Make sure you verify for yourself that there is nothing like Him (ṭā-hā 20:110); always do that.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 110)
12 July 2021
The creature is a veil over the True, because the outward effects are perceived in deeds and are attributed to the secondary causes which the True established. This is why the creature says, ‘I did’, ‘I made’, ‘I fasted’, ‘I prayed’. And one connects to oneself all of one’s verbs, because of one’s being veiled from the verbs’ Creator in one and from one, and their coursing throughout.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 108)
9 July 2021
Our practices on this path are commensurate with the ruling force of the moment and what it provides. It is written for human beings that they are easily distracted; so, with that, it is not possible to have continuity – it is rather instance by instance. It is not in the destiny of the human animal that one be aware of God secretly and publicly with every Divine Breath. Continuity is generally not achieved, unless one takes great pains with one’s self to become present and aware in all of one’s actions.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 105)
8 July 2021
We walk with the True in the determinative property of the moment. We generalize where He makes general, and we specify where He makes specific; and we do not make a new rule – because one who makes a new rule has renewed lordliness in his self. And whoever renews lordliness in his self has made a deficit in his ʿubūdīyah* commensurate with this case; and when he is deficient in his ʿubūdīyah, to that extent the tajallì* of the True to him becomes deficient; and when the tajallì of the True to him becomes deficient, his knowledge of his Lord becomes deficient; and when his knowledge of his Lord becomes deficient, He becomes ignored to the extent of his deficiency.
* ʿubūdīyah: the state of being a slave
* tajallì: brilliant radiance of Being; Divine self-disclosure
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 103)
6 July 2021
The ear is an independent bodily part requiring the renewal of water (during ablution) on it, so one wipes by listening to the fine words, certainly. There is comparative excellence in the fine, so there is a fine word and a more fine; and the highest fineness is the dhikr* of God through the Qurʾān, where one combines two fine things. There is nothing higher than listening to a dhikr of God from the Qurʾān, like each verse where the indication is to no other than God. This is what I mean by dhikr of God from the Qurʾān.
* dhikr: remembrance, reminder
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 100)
5 July 2021
There is no repetition in the universe, because of Divine vastness.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 99)
2 July 2021
The hands have grasping, open-handedness, and even-handedness.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 98)
1 July 2021
The happenstance matters are not comparable to the roots and they do not disprove them.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 96)
30 June 2021
The human being is tasked because of the entity of capability which one finds in oneself; but one cannot verify with one’s intellect from where that capability derives: whether one is able, or one is self-determining – or even if one is compelled in one’s choice. But, with that degree of capability which he finds in himself, it is valid that he be made responsible; and because of this, He exalted said, God does not task any soul beyond what He has given her (al-ṭalāq 65:7).
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 95-96)
29 June 2021
The unseen is a root, so the night is a root. The seen is a branch, so the day is a branch. And a sign for them is the night, from which We shed off the daytime (yā-sīn 36:37) – so the day is something withdrawn from the night.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 82)
28 June 2021
The daily sustenance of the human being is not what he accumulates but is rather what he is nourished by that day only.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 82)
25 June 2021
The hypocrite is in the lowest step of the Fire, and that is the inner Fire.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 77)
24 June 2021
When the creature wants a conversation with its Lord, in whatever action it may be, designated for you is a ṭahārah (purification) of your heart from everything that expels you from a conversation with your Lord during that action. And when you are not described with having this ṭahārah for the moment of your conversation, you do not converse with Him, or you will have shown bad manners. Such a person is more suited for expulsion.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 76)
23 June 2021
Learn that God addresses the human being in one’s entirety; and He did not single out one’s outward from one’s inward, nor one’s inward from one’s outward. Yet, the greater attention of the people, most of them, is toward understanding the principles of the Law in their outward physicality; and they neglect the principles of the Law in their inwardness – except for a few people. They are the people of the path of God, and they dig deeply in that, outwardly and inwardly. There is no ruling established by the Law for their outwardness unless they see that the ruling has a connection to their inwardness, taking in this way the entirety of the rulings of the Laws; so they worship God through what they have outwardly and inwardly. They are succeeding where the majority are losing.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 73-74)
21 June 2021
There is the rinsing with beautiful sayings to erase thereby the ugly sayings, such as tale-bearing, slander, and broadcasting bad statements. So may your rinsing be with reciting the Qurʾān and dhikr of God, and restoring harmony after discord, and commanding the good and negating the bad.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 71-72)
18 June 2021
The two hands are a site for grasping and seizing, for withholding and being tightfisted, so their purification is through the means of spending, generosity, open-handedness, and lavishness.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 70)
17 June 2021
Now, my friend, place in order the practice of the sharìʿah knowledge in your being and the knowledge of the friends and the intellects – who take knowledge from God through spiritual exercises, retreats, struggles with the lower self, and detachment from the excesses of the limbs and the incoming thoughts of the lower self.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 69)
16 June 2021
The prophets and the friends and every one informed by God are upon a single statement about God. If one does not add, one does not subtract, and one does not differ and disagree. Some of them affirm others, just as water of the sky does not differ at the moment of its falling.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 69)
15 June 2021
As for the knowings of the intellect making use of reflection, alteration adulterates them, because they are according to the constitution of the one reflecting, among the intellectuals – because he looks only at the material, sensory things of existence in the imagination.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 68)
14 June 2021
Water in itself is a spirit, because it gives life in and of itself. He exalted said, We made from water everything, alive (al-anbiyāʾ 21:30) – and everything is alive, because everything is celebrating God with His praise; and nothing could celebrate unless it were alive. The water then is a root of the life of things.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 67)
11 June 2021
The True has explained for you levels of your body and your spirit so you will observe and reflect and learn that God did not create you (to be) left alone to fend for yourself, even if the duration (of apparent abandonment) is prolonged.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 65)
8 June 2021
The heart is a place of faith.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 63)
7 June 2021
Open your eyes and you will see a mystery of purity, clear,
easy for the people of wakefulness and quick minds.
How many clean people are not described with being pure,
when they shun the sea at His Side and abstain?
If their life were plunged into the salty sea
and they did not become annihilated from a sea of truth, they are not purified.
Book 5, Chapter 68 (p. 57)
4 June 2021
One of the meanings of faith is something not perceived by the senses.
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 51)
3 June 2021
I came upon our teacher Abūʾl-ʿAbbās al-ʿUraybī, one of the people of ʿUliyā (Loulé, western Andalusia), who used to be fixed on a dhikr of the name Allāh, not adding anything to it at all. I asked him, ‘My master, why do you not say, “No god but God”?’ He said to me, ‘My son, the breaths are in the hand of God; they are not in my hands, so I am afraid that God might seize my spirit while I am saying “no” or “no god”, and I will be seized by death in the wilderness of negation.’
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 50)
1 June 2021
Knowledge of us is a root for our knowledge of Him. He (the Prophet) said, ‘Whoever recognizes one’s self, recognizes one’s Lord’ – so our being stands dependent on His Being, and the knowledge of Him stands dependent on the knowledge of us. Thus, He is a root in one perspective, and we are a root in another perspective.
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 49-50)
31 May 2021
The one named Lord requires someone lorded over, and the one named God seeks someone to be god of.
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 49)
28 May 2021
As for the one who said ‘No god but God’ by his Lord, he is the one who sees that the True is Being itself – not some other matter – and that the describing of the enabled beings with existence is the emergence of the True Himself upon their cores, and that the useful benefit of being in them from God is in fact from His Being.
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 49)
27 May 2021
A proof of each messenger is in accord with what is predominant with the people of his time.
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 48)
25 May 2021
Messenger of God says, in the authentic ḥadỉth collection, ‘Who dies and knows that there is no god but God enters the Garden.’
Book 5, Chapter 67 (p. 40)
24 May 2021
And as for people like these experts who are with us today, they have no value in the eyes of any intelligent person – because they mock religion and they look down on the creatures of God. With them, no one is honored except someone who is with them in their writings – a love of worldly things having taken over their hearts, and a pursuit of fame and being on top.
Book 5, Chapter 66 (p. 34)
20 May 2021
Not a single one opposes them (the messengers), except someone who does not counsel well his self about his knowledge and its limitations and follows instead his lower self and wants to be boss over the offspring of his species – and is ignorant of himself and his capacity, and is ignorant of his Lord.
Book 5, Chapter 66 (p. 34)
19 May 2021
The messengers (from God) are followed in different times and different situations. Each one of them confirms his counterpart, never disagreeing at all about the foundations which they stand on and express – even if the ruling decisions differ. The Laws are sent down, and the ruling decisions are sent down, and the rule is in accordance with the time and the place – just as He said, For each We have made for you a law and a way (al-māʾidah 5:48). Their foundations are in harmony, with no disagreement about any of this.
Book 5, Chapter 66 (p. 33)
18 May 2021
The enabled beings on their own cannot swing the pendulum to make themselves become.
Book 5, Chapter 66 (p. 32)
17 May 2021
The intellects in the place of their reflective faculties have a boundary which they are halted before and do not cross over, and … God gives a Divine overflowing of abundant generosity onto the hearts of some of His creatures, teaching them ‘knowledge from His Side’.
Book 5, Chapter 66 (p. 31)
14 May 2021
Everyone who is in the Garden f is in goodness, and everything in her is blessed; so their movements in her are not exertions, and their actions in her are not wearying. However, the rest of sleep is not theirs, because they do not sleep; thus, they do not have the blessing of sleep at all. A blessing in sleep is what the people of the Fire are blessed with, exclusively – so what remains of sleep f, her place is Jahannam.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 17)
13 May 2021
Kindness is not a being matter; instead, she is an expression for the matter which gives pleasure and gives one goodness thereby, to the one who is the subject of kindness, and that is the matter which is an existent being.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 17)
12 May 2021
Between Him and His creation are three veils: a veil of inaccessibility, a veil of grandeur, and a veil of greatness.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 13-14)
11 May 2021
While they are there (at the Dune of musk and whiteness, during the Universal Visitation), suddenly there is a light which stuns and amazes them, and they fall down in sajdah (prostration); and that light courses through their sights outwardly and through their insights inwardly and through every part of their bodies and in the nigh-invisible realm of their souls. Each person returns to being an eye, wholly, and an ear, wholly; and one sees with one’s essence, wholly, no constriction from dimensional direction, and one hears with one’s essence the whole. This is what that light provides them. By it they can bear the seeing and the vision, and the vision is fuller than the seeing.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 13)
10 May 2021
Now, learn that the people of the Garden are in four categories: the messengers, and they are the prophets; and the friends, and they follow the messengers upon insight and with clarification from their Lord; and the faithful, and they are the ones who affirm them, peace be upon them; and the ones who know the tawḥìd of God (there is no god but hu) in a place of intellectual proof. God said, God testifies that there is no god but hu, and the angels do so, and the ones with knowledge do so (Āl-i-ʿImrān 3:18). These are the ones who are meant by the ones who know; and about them God says, We will raise the ones who believe among you and the ones given knowledge by steps (al-mujādilah 58:11).
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 11)
7 May 2021
Each created being has a special face toward its Lord.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 10)
6 May 2021
There is no required, no extra, no good deed – or forbidden or disliked thing you omitted – except it has a garden f singled out for it and a particular blessing given to you when entering her.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 6)
5 May 2021
The universe is two: a fine universe and a material universe – an unseen universe and a seen universe.
Book 5, Chapter 65 (p. 3)
Quotations: Book 4
29 January 2021
Every soul f is anxious about the void m, worried that she will be re-attached to him just as she was before.
Book 4, Chapter 52 (p. 513)
28 January 2021
One makes arrogant claims and says, ‘I’.
Book 4, Chapter 52 (p. 512)
27 January 2021
One is the weakest of the weak. God said, God, who created you to be weak – so weakness is one’s root. Then He gave you a hardness; and it is His word, then He gave (you) after weakness strength. Then He returned you to your root – that is, weakness – so He said, then after strength, weakness and a hoary head (al-Rūm 30:54). This last weakness is in fact there to prepare you for the next configuration in the next world – just as this world’s configuration was from a world-based commencement based on weakness: You have known the first configuration (al-wāqiʿah 56:64).
Book 4, Chapter 52 (p. 512)
26 January 2021
Anxiety in the human being is stronger than in the animals, except in the cockroach: the ʿarab says, ‘more frightened than a cockroach’. The reason for its strength in the human being is the intellect and thinking, by which two God distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animals. The human being is only emboldened by the power of imagination – just as, vice versa, by this force one gets more frightened and anxious in particular situations. Imagination has a powerful dominion.
Book 4, Chapter 52 (p. 511)
25 January 2021
Whoever claims he had a session with the higher angels and does not effuse abundant knowledge of his Lord, his claim is invalid; instead, he is someone of rotten imagination.
Book 4, Chapter 51 (p. 505)
22 January 2021
The jinn are the most ignorant of God in the natural world. Someone sitting with them would think that what they are reporting about – the news and what circulates in the world which they acquired by listening in stealthily on the higher angelic host – is a wonder of God. How far off is what they think! This is why you will not find anyone at all who sat with them and received from them any knowledge of God – as a rule. The most you will get from attending to the spirits of the jinn is that they might favor you with some information about specific features of plants and stones, and names and letters – it is the science called sīmiyāʾ (natural magic). So one will not acquire from them anything but knowledge deemed blameworthy by all the languages of the Laws. Whoever alleges he has their company, and he is truthful in his claim – just ask him about some issue in Divine knowledge; you will not find him having any of this based on tasting – ever.
Book 4, Chapter 51 (p. 504)
21 January 2021
By nature the jinn have a predilection in their sessions for being arrogant over people and over every creature of God. Each creature of God sees himself as being more than another, arrogantly, because he actually despises God in himself in a way he is unaware of. This is a hidden trick (that God uses, which fools people). The core of someone despising God is what he finds in himself of a feeling of arrogance over someone who does not have arrogance like this – and he (the former) presumes that he has acquired something, when really he is at a loss.
Book 4, Chapter 51 (p. 504)
20 January 2021
God breathes relief to them (the people of waraʻ, asceticism) from His name al-Raḥmān in different facets, coming from affection, and He provides them this breath of al-Raḥmān. Then they hear praises coming from stones, and in the murmur of the waters, and in the whistling of the winds, and in the articulations of the birds, and in the tasbīḥ (celebration) of God by every community of created beings, and in their conversations with you and their greetings to you.
Book 4, Chapter 51 (p. 503)
19 January 2021
May God make us among the ones who recognize men as they are according to the True, not among the ones who recognize the True by the men.
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 497)
18 January 2021
There is in Being only God; and only God recognizes God. And from this truth speaks the one who says, ‘I am God,’ such as Abū Yazīd – and, ‘Exalted am I,’ like others among the Men of God who came before.
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 495)
15 January 2021
You remove thinking-thinking from yourself altogether, because it is a dispersal of your purpose and resolve; and you seclude yourself to watch carefully over your heart, at the gate of your Cherisher. Perhaps God will open the door to Him for you, and you will learn what you had not known – what the messengers have learned, and the family of God – everything the intellects are unable to perceive by themselves and so declare them impossible.
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 492-93)
14 January 2021
Intellect-based evidence establishes with certitude that He is a single god, according to the people of examination and the people of kashf. So, there is no god but Him. Then, after this evidence of the intellect indicating His tawḥīd, and logically necessary intellectual knowledge about His Being, we see the people on the path of God – a messenger, a prophet, a friend – bringing matters about maʿrifah of godly characteristics along a path which intellect-based evidence considers impossible. But they come with a confirmation from prophetic word and Divine report. The people on the path investigate these meanings to arrive with them at a situation distinguishing them from the people of examination, who halt wherever their reflections bring them to despite their verifying the truthfulness of the reports. The people on the path say, ‘We know that there is furthermore another boundary behind the boundary of intellect-based perception, which is independent of thinking, and it belongs to the prophets; and the greatest of the friends receive these matters incoming to them from the Divine Side.’
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 491)
13 January 2021
God has commanded us to have knowledge of His Oneness (tawḥīd); He did not command us to have knowledge of His dhát. In fact, He forbade this with His word, God cautions you about His Self (Āl-i-ʿImrān 3:28); and He forbade Messenger of God from thinking and deliberating about the dhát of God.
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 490)
12 January 2021
Abū Bakr, the truthful friend, God be pleased with him, said about this station of confusion and inability – he was one of its Men – ‘the incapacity to perceive what is to be perceived is perception’ – that is, when you know that there is still further something you do not know, that is knowledge of God. The evidence pointing to knowledge of Him is an absence of knowledge of Him!
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 490)
11 January 2021
Learn, may God help you with a spirit from hu, that the reason for confusion in our knowledge of God comes from our trying to seek knowledge of His dhát* too exalted and majestic for such! by one of two paths: either by a path of intellect-based evidence, or by a path called seeing a vision.
*dhát: core, essential identity
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 489)
9 January 2021
Whoever says he knows that God is his Creator, and does not get befuddled, it is proof that he is ignorant.
Book 4, Chapter 50 (p. 489)
8 January 2021
We were brought out by kindness; we were not brought out by an adjective of coercion.
Book 4, Chapter 49 (p. 481)
7 January 2021
Where are the creatures who are in themselves with their every breath creatures belonging to God, forever? Not a single one of the weighty ones humbles himself except by some coercion he experiences – so he is, in his humility, forced to be humble.
Book 4, Chapter 49 (p. 480)
6 January 2021
The forelock of every animal is in His hand – in the majestic Qurʾān, There is not a moving creature but He is grasping her forelock. Then, to complete the verse, Indeed, my Lord is on an evened path (Hūd 11:56). This grasping by the forelock with the ʿarab is considered to be (signify) lowliness and humility – this is the conventional position, according to us. And those whose state is a vision of their Lord before their sights gripping them, their forelocks in His grip, and who see their forelocks among all the forelocks – how would they imagine having any pride or arrogance over any of His creation, with this kashf (unveiling)?
Book 4, Chapter 49 (p. 478)
5 January 2021
No one is more patient with offense than God.
Book 4, Chapter 49 (p. 477)
4 January 2021
Not a single one in God’s creation arrogates greatness against God’s command, except the weighty ones; and not a single one in God’s creation disobeys, except the weighty ones.
Book 4, Chapter 49 (p. 477)
2 January 2021
The Qurʾān was sent down upon the heart of Muḥammad ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wasallam. It never stops being sent down upon the hearts of his mother community, until the Day of Arising for Judgment. Thus, its descent onto the hearts is new, never growing old – so it is the perpetual revelation.
Book 22, Chapter 329
1 January 2021
You receive knowledge upon certainty which you did not have, because you heard the Qurʾān from Me; and from Me you heard its elucidation and the interpretation of its meanings, and what I meant by that word and by this verse and chapter. You show the finest behavior toward Me in your listening so, and by so giving Me your ear.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 357)
31 December 2020
What is fitting for you is to put your attention toward Me and empty your ears for My word, so that I will be in this recitation just as I recited it to him (the Messenger) and I had him hear it; so it would be Me who clarifies for you My word, and I will translate for you its meaning. This is My night conversation with you. You should take knowledge from Me, not from your thinking and the lessons you have learned. Therefore, pay no heed to the Garden or the Fire, nor to the Accounting or the Day of Compensation, nor to this world or the next – because they should be contemplated not with your intellect or from studying verses with your thinking. No, direct your hearing to what I am saying to you, and you will be an eye-witness present with Me. I will take charge of your education Myself; and I will say to you, ‘My creature, I meant by this verse such and such, and by this other verse such and such.’ It will be this way until the dawn breaks.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 356-57)
30 December 2020
I Myself recite My Book to them in their own languages, and they listen. This is the hushed night conversation of Mine, and the one truly worshiping is the one delighting in My word.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 356)
29 December 2020
No one recognizes Me, or knows the measure of My statement, or knows why I come down to you in the night except the ʿárifìn (who recognize God everywhere) who verify for themselves – the ones who are met by one of their friends and he says to him, ‘My friend, remember me in your seclusion with your Lord.’ This worshiping creature answers him and says, ‘If I remember you, then I am not with Him in seclusion.’ Only they recognize the measure of My coming down to the sky of this world in the third part of the night, and why I come down, and whom I seek.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 356)
24 December 2020
Each group (when each group is waiting together on the Day of Arising for Judgment, for their Lord, as recounted in the ‘long ḥadỉth of Muslim’) believes something about God; if He radiates a tajallì to them that differs and contradicts that thing, they refuse it. But if He transforms Himself before them – with a sign or mark which this group had previously been given as a confirmation that ‘this is God’ for themselves – they will confirm Him.
Book 4, Chapter 48 (p. 467)
23 December 2020
God informs us that He is independent of the worlds so that we will learn that He created us only for us, not for Himself (because He is independent); and He created us only for His worship so that the reward of this practice and its excellence would revert to us – not because He needs it.
Book 4, Chapter 49 (p. 476)
22 December 2020
The world, all of it, is in linkages, one to another: causations and things caused by, and reasons and things for some reason.
Book 4, Chapter 48 (p. 468)
21 December 2020
It is true that each community has a Law f and a way, her prophet and her messenger bringing the Law, abrogating and confirming. We know for certain that His relation to what He gave as Law to Muḥammad is different from His relation to what He gave another prophet. And of course. If the relation were one in every perspective, and each particular Law required just that, the Law would be one, single – from every perspective.
Book 4, Chapter 48 (p. 464)
19 December 2020
The teacher Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, the author of Qūṭ al-qulūb (Nourishment for the Hearts), says – and others among the Men of God do – ‘God does not give a tajallì* at all in a single form to two individuals, nor in a single form twice.’
* tajallì: a moment of brilliant radiance of God’s Being; a self-disclosure of God.
Book 4, Chapter 48 (p. 466)
18 December 2020
It is impossible for something to occur contrary to what is already known to God.
Book 4, Chapter 48 (p. 454)
17 December 2020
The knowledge of the prophets and the friends is said to be ‘behind the bounds of the intellect’, there being no entrance for the intellect to infiltrate with its thinking. The intellect has only to accept – if one has sound intelligence not overwhelmed by imagination-based, reflection-based doubt.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 449-50)
16 December 2020
Indeed, ‘wise’ is an expression for the one who combines knowledge which is Divine, Nature-based, discipline-based, and semantic. There is nothing more than these four levels of knowledge. The path differs for acquiring these knowledges, between active thinking and being gifted them – and the latter is Divine effusion.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 449)
15 December 2020
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s statement is true: ‘There is not in existence anything more wondrous than this universe’ – because there is nothing more complete than the image upon which the complete human being was created.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 445)
14 December 2020
For the people of the Fire … there only occurs to them a terrifying thought of torment greater than what they are in the midst of, and lo, it comes into being in them or to them – that torment – and it is the thought itself that afflicts them.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 445)
12 December 2020
The other world is ever being created from the universe.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 444)
11 December 2020
The angels are equal to us in the ascension by means of knowledge, not by means of deeds performed. It is the same as our not ascending in the next world by means of deeds performed, because there will be no tasking there. In the next world, we will therefore be equal to them in ascension.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 443)
10 December 2020
It is not possible for created beings in the universe to have knowledge of their place – except by Divine notification, not by virtue of simply being in the place. Everything other than God is enabled; and one of the qualities of the enabled is that you do not receive your designated place based on your dhát (core, essential identity), but rather you receive your designated place based on His preference – commensurate with what came before in His knowledge of what will be.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 442)
9 December 2020
The last breath is your known place which you die in.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 441)
8 December 2020
Fasting is … more complete than prayer, because its end result is meeting God and seeing Him. The prayer is a conversation, not a vision – and the veil comes along. God says, It is not for the human animal that God speak with one except through revelation or from behind a veil (al-shūrā 24:5). And similarly, God spoke to Moses with words (al-nisāʾ 4:164) – and this is why he sought the vision. So speech is connected to the veil; and the intimate conversation is a speaking. God says, ‘I have divided the prayer between Me and My creature into two halves: her one half is for Me and her other half is for My creature; and My creature will have what it asked for.’ The creature says, All praise belongs to God, Cherisher of the worlds (al-fātiḥah 1:2); and God says, ‘My creature is praising Me.’ But the fasting is not divided: the fast belongs to God, not to the creature; in fact, the reward goes to the creature, while it belongs to God.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 439)
7 December 2020
Sadness is the light-blocking darkness of the soul.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 440)
4 December 2020
Patience is reining in your self.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 439)
3 December 2020
Messenger of God said about his Lord, ‘His veil is Light.’
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 437-38)
2 December 2020
And He said, and the one protected from one’s own anxiety (al-ḥashr 59:9) – thus, anxiety is related to the very soul of the human being. The root of that is that when you are given the generous benefit of being from God – and you are innately created for acquiring benefit, not for giving benefit – then your truth does not provide you (with the tendency) to give charity. Thus, when you are charitable, your charity is a proof that you have been protected from the anxiousness of yourself which God made instinctual in you. This is why he (the Prophet) said, ‘Charity (is) a proof’.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 437)
1 December 2020
God made human beings instinctively parsimonious. He said, Truly human beings are created anxious – meaning, anxious down to the root of one’s configuration – And when evil touches one, worried; and when good touches one, holding back. (al-maʿārij 70:19-21)
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 437)
30 November 2020
You should learn that the respirations (anfās) of the human being are precious aspirations (nafīsah), and the last gasp (nafas) when it leaves does not return.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 437)
27 November 2020
Consider the most noble, commanding vista of the ṣalāt and what is most excellent in her: of the words, it is the dhikr of God; and of the actions, it is the bowing.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 436)
26 November 2020
With the worship rituals, it is only the prayer that connects the creature to places of the nearest beings to God, those of the muqarrabīn (the close ones): it is the highest station the friends of God can be, among the angels, messengers, prophets, friends, and believers.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 435)
25 November 2020
Creatures who pray but whose prayer f does not make everything less than her disappear have not prayed, and for them the prayer was not a light. Anyone who placed the recitation secretly inside himself but did not see God remembering him in Himself has not placed it secretly inside. In fact, even if you seem to have placed it inside silently, but in yourself there is present whatever is present of the beings of creation – such as spouse, children, friends, something from this world or the other world, or the angels are present there in your incoming thoughts – then you have not placed your recitation secretly inside; and you are not someone whom God remembers in Himself, because a correlation is missing. When God remembers the creature in Himself, not a single created being is informed of what is in Him – in His remembering His creature. This is why it is necessary for the creature to be in what one is placing inside secretly – because you speak in your prayer with your Lord only, at the moment of your recitation and your celebrating praise and your entreaty.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 435)
24 November 2020
The ṣalāt (f, prayer) is a light – God giving good news with her that when He converses with you from the name of Light, you are alone with Him; and all existence disappears with seeing Him during your conversation.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 434)
23 November 2020
God said that when you pray, He converses with you – He is Light; so God converses with you from the name Light, not from another name. So just as light negates all light-blocking, in the same way the prayer cuts off every preoccupation – which is different from the rest of the rituals: nothing universalizes a leaving-off of everything else as the prayer does.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 434)
21 November 2020
There is no worship f made Law by God for His creatures except she is an observation post looking at a Divine name or a Divine truth; from this name, God provides to your worship what you receive in this world in your heart, such as His alighting places, His knowings, and His recognitions; and in your states, such as His miracles and His signs; and in the other world, in His Garden, your stairs, and your seeing the Creator at the Dune at your observation post.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 434)
20 November 2020
It is related in a sound ḥadỉth that Messenger of God said, ‘The ṣalāt (prayer) is a light, and charity a proof, and patience an illumination, and the Qurʾān evidence for you or against you. Each person will himself buy on that day (of Arising) his self’s manumission or her destruction.’
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 433)
19 November 2020
As for the lower alighting places, they are given by body-based deeds from the upper places, like prayer, jihād, fasting, and every sensory deed – and what is given by soul-based activities also. They are spiritual exercises, such as bearing with offense and being patient with it; and contentment with just a small amount of self-based pleasures; and being satisfied with what is available, even if it is not enough; and restraining the self from complaint. Every action of these exercises and exertions brings you to a special end result; each action has a state and a station.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 433)
18 November 2020
You will find the ones who know God not seeing in their dreams what the student seekers see, the ones in the beginnings of the lights. Beginners are present with the beauties of their deeds and their states, but they (the ones who know God) see the final results. The ones who know are sleeping in dreams of failures and missed opportunities, as the Higher Side merits. They will see only dreams that cause them worries, glooms, and terrors and lightning flashes and every frightening thing – because the dream follows the physical. And as the lower self f is instinctively all for pleasurable things, and the pleasure that had come from turning in repentance has disappeared, in her new state of recognition and the final result, she leans affectionately toward her beginning – on account of the pleasure that she associates with that early place, despite her person’s elevated station now. This tender leaning is a relief from the anxiety and sorrow which his (the person’s) recognition of God gives him. He is like someone who takes pleasure in safe things. This is the reason for the leaning tenderness of the possessors of the end points toward their beginnings.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 432-33)
17 November 2020
Nothing is sweeter than safety after fearfully dreading!
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 432)
16 November 2020
As it is not possible for the turner for forgiveness to receive the onset of turning for forgiveness except after being warned – after the sleep of distraction – thus, you recognize what there is of deeds which bend you toward your destruction and your perdition. You are frightened, and you see that you are in the thralls of your lower self and that you deserve to be executed by the sword-cut of your terrible behavior. The gatekeeper says to you, ‘The king has a tracing (way); if you throw off from yourself these oppositions and return to him, and if you halt before his boundaries with his tracings – he will give you safety from his punishment, and he will be most gracious to you.’ And part of His goodness to you is that every terrible deed you brought forth – its form will be restored to beauty.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 431)
14 November 2020
The signs are not themselves objects of meaning: it is only what they point to.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 353)
13 November 2020
God has designated for each site of being (mawjūd) its step-level in His knowledge.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 430)
12 November 2020
Learn that the universe is shaped spherically, so human beings yearn for their beginning. Our exit is from non-being to being by Him, and to Him we return – just as He said, To Him returns the affair, all of it (Hūd 11:123).
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 430)
11 November 2020
When I saw the True characterized as the First,
I came to an ocean of beginning f, scooping out
With thirsty pleasure, drinking a drink
shown to me in the utmost moment of recognition.
O her coolness, so pleasurable to drink,
soothing the hot liver; so take her as a halting place to stop and learn.
Indeed, in that drink in the heart there is a pleasure;
you will see her Cherisher, in the moment characterized by a flush of self-wonder.
Book 4, Chapter 47 (p. 429)
10 November 2020
As for His word, Given to you of knowledge is only a little (al-isrāʾ 17:85) – it is not a key text for the gift. But the statement has two facets: a facet demanded by what We gave you, and a facet demanded by a little (qalīl), derived from istiqlāl (being able to do something alone, independently). That is, ‘We did not give you of knowledge except what you could bear by yourselves; and what you would not be able to bear, We did not give you, because you would not be able to bear it by yourselves.’
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 424-25)
9 November 2020
All prophet-based things (nubuwwāt) are knowings gifted, because prophecy is not acquired.
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 424)
8 November 2020
We know that there is further a knowledge we acquire from our reflections, and from our senses; and then further a knowledge we do not acquire by anything on our part; no, it is a gift from God sent down to our hearts and into our innermost secret – and we find it coming without any external reason.
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 423)
7 November 2020
Do you see that with the world, even though it relies on God, it is not necessary that God be part of the world?
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 422)
6 November 2020
God did not describe knowledge as little except the knowledge which God provides His creatures; and it is His word, given to you – that is, it was provided to you, and He made it as a gift.
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 422)
5 November 2020
God says, Given to you of knowledge is only a little (al-isrāʾ 17:85) – and our teacher Abū Madyan used to say, when he heard someone reciting this verse, ‘The little we are given is not ours; rather it is loaned to us, and most of it we do not get to. We are the ignorant, forever.’
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 421)
4 November 2020
Knowledge of the things is a single knowing;
multiplicity is in the things known, not in His dhát.
Book 4, Chapter 46 (p. 421)
3 November 2020
Learn that the ones who reach are in step-levels. Among them is one who reaches to the essential (dhát-based) name hu not pointing to anything but God, in a place hu is a pointer to the dhát – like proper names with us not pointing to another meaning, with this being understood. This is one’s all-consuming state, like the guardian angels in the Majesty of God and the cherubic angels: they do not recognize anyone else but Him, and He does not inform them of other than Him, exalted is hu beyond. And among them is one who reaches to God in a place of Divine names which made him arrive to God – or in a place of the name which was a tajallì to him from God, and he receives it from the name which made him arrive to Him, exalted is hu beyond!
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 413-14)
2 November 2020
Among the people, the one who returns is instead the one who returns before reaching the summit of the steep mountain and the panorama looking over what is behind her. The motivation impelling the return despite this achievement is seeking perfect completion (kamāl). But one does not descend; instead, one invites the people from one’s place there – and it is His word, upon insight – so one testifies and one teaches the one invited, using the vision verified by oneself.
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 413)
1 November 2020
Our teacher Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf bin Yakhluf al-Kūmī used to say, ‘Between us and the True sought is a steep mountain f path difficult to ascend; and we are at the lowest part of the high mountain road, from the perspective of our nature. And we keep on climbing in this steepness until we reach her heights; and when we look over what is behind her from there, we do not return – because behind her is what cannot be returned from.’ It is the statement of Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī, ‘If they reach, they do not return’ – meaning, if they reach the summit of the steep mountain.
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 413)
29 October 2020
One of the greatest of the Men: when he was told, ‘So-and-so presumes that he has arrived’ – he said, ‘To a scorching hell.’ He means by this comment someone who presumes that God is bounded, to be connected to.
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 412)
28 October 2020
Our teacher Abū Madyan often said, ‘One of the signs of the integrity of seekers with reference to their search for what they desire is their fleeing from creation.’ This was the state of Messenger of God in his leaving and going apart from the people, into the cave of Ḥirāʾ, for purification. Then he would say, ‘And one of the signs of the integrity of their fleeing from creation is their presence with the True.’ And Messenger of God never ceased purifying himself through separating himself apart until the True suddenly came to him. Then he would say, ‘And one of the signs of the integrity of their presence with the True is their return to creation.’ He meant the state of his being sent out with the message back to the people; and he meant (for inheritors) being sent back with a guidance from – and a preservation of – the sharìʿah (the Law, the way to the water) for them.
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 411-12)
26 October 2020
The complete inheritors among the friends among us are the ones who are cut off to be solely occupied with the sharìʿah* of Messenger of God – until the moment when God opens their hearts for them, in a Divine tajallì* in their inwardness, to understand what God sent down to His Prophet and His Messenger Muḥammad.
* sharìʿah: the way to the water
* tajallì: a moment of brilliant radiance of God’s Being; a self-disclosure of God.
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 411)
25 October 2020
When the Master takes the hearts of His creatures
to Him, and concludes as He pleases, and evens,
Whom He wills stays at His side honored,
and He returns the one who wished toward what he hoped for.
Book 4, Chapter 45 (p. 409)
24 October 2020
There were moments during the state of my being absent from myself when I saw my very being placed inside the most universal light and the most magnificent radiant brilliance of the great (cosmic) Throne in prayer. I was stripped of movement, secluded from my self f. I saw her in front of me doing the rukūʿ and the sujūd.* I was aware that in fact I was this one doing the rukūʿ and the sujūd, watching as the sleeper sees the dream – while the Hand was on my forelock. I was captivated by this! I knew that it was not not me; but it was not me, either. This is where I learned to recognize the tasker, the tasking, and the tasked – the active verb (tasking) and the passive noun (tasked).
* rukūʿ: bowing during prayer; sujūd: prostration during prayer
Book 4, Chapter 44 (p. 405)
23 October 2020
If he (the Prophet) were not a messenger meant to propagate the message and manage the political affairs of the community, God would have made (his and) even the intellects of (all) the messengers disappear because of the power of what they were seeing. But God, All-Powerful and Supporting, fortified them with capacity, in a place in which they were strengthened to receive what was coming to them from the True and to make it reach the people and put it into practice.
Book 4, Chapter 44 (p. 400)
22 October 2020
So these (the bahālīl, the simple-minded) are the ones called the hidden intellects – meaning, that their hiddenness was not caused by a poor constitutional mixture arising from a physical cause, such as poor nourishment or starvation or something else; instead, their intellects are hidden because of a Divine tajallì onto their hearts, and one of the instant, sudden assaults of the True. The sudden attack takes away their intellects. Their intellects are seized, and they become blissful with seeing Him – wholly given over to His Presence, strolling about aloof in His beauty. They are intelligent people with no intellects, and they are known to the outside world as insane (majānīn, sg. majnūn – from jannah, concealed) – that is, the ones covered up, concealed from the management of their intellects. And this is why they are called hidden intellects.
Book 4, Chapter 44 (p. 399)
21 October 2020
People have no knowledge that with God exalted, True, there is a sudden attacking which renders someone alone with Him in his inner secret. He obeys Him in His command, and his heart is readied for His Light in a way people are not aware of. The True suddenly makes him unaware, with this attack, and voided of knowledge and prepared for a stupendous matter. He takes away his intellect in the passings away; and He keeps this matter which suddenly attacked him in front of his sight, so he wanders aimlessly in its vision and goes on with it.
Book 4, Chapter 44 (p. 398)
20 October 2020
Be filled with grain already received;
do not pile up your wheat for the morrow.
Book 4, Chapter 44 (p. 397)
19 October 2020
If you are eager to obey,
do not wear the garb of the future (and its preoccupation).
Be like the generous laughers in their state:
they flow with the moment as the truly intelligent do.
Book 4, Chapter 44 (p. 397)
18 October 2020
The majority of the weighty ones are ignorant of this knowledge, they do not recognize the levels of these Men, and they do not commend them or turn their attention to them.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 393)
17 October 2020
It is related that the sparrow on the Day of Arising for Judgment will say, ‘O Lord, ask this one: “Why did you kill me ʿabathan?”’ And it is that way for the one who cut a tree without any benefit, or transported a stone with no advantage accruing to a single one of the creation of God.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 392)
16 October 2020
As for the praise the animals and the plants and the minerals offer, it is because these species know the movements that are called ʿabathan,* compared with the ones not so called. Everyone who moves among them with a movement that is ʿabathan according to the one affected by it – but not according to the mover – the animal, plant, or mineral observer who is witnessing this ʿabathan movement knows that he is indeed someone forgetting God.
* ʿabathan: of no account, worthless, for sport; see also the cognate bāṭilan in ṣād 38:27.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 390)
15 October 2020
These Men say, ‘There is no might nor power except through You.’ They make no claims about what they are doing – magnifying God. They attribute this to God, so the angels praise them.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 390)
14 October 2020
These Men: God praises them, and the holy Divine names praise them, and the angels praise them, and the prophets and the messengers praise them, and the animals, plants, and minerals, and everything praises them – celebrating God with God’s praise. And as for the weighty ones, they are ignorant of them; only the people receiving Divine notification recognize them, and they praise them but do not expose them. As for people who do not receive Divine notification, among the weighty ones, they are with them (these Men) just as they are with the general population – thinking of them only because of things they want from them, nothing else. These Men have the unknown station amidst the common people.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 390)
13 October 2020
And he (the Prophet) said, ‘Take a fatwā from your heart, even if the muftis have issued you a fatwā.’ He had them strike forth into their hearts, as he knew what is in them – the inner secret of God, the encircler of hu – for arriving at this station.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 388)
12 October 2020
In hearts there is a Divine protection from error, none notified of it except the people of murāqabah (mindfulness, guarding oneself by being watchful and vigilant); and in there they have a protective concealment.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 388)
11 October 2020
This is the condition of the ones of waraʿ, traveling about their affairs and with their movements according to the ways of the general population. They do not exhibit to them anything that might distinguish them. They hide themselves by using the conventional ways and means of the world, no one involved in these ways and means being commended for doing so. The Men have no righteous name applied to them which would place them apart from typical righteousness – nor any reliance on God, or asceticism, or piety, or anything which might occasion a particular praiseworthy name. Nothing points to them being pious, despite the fact that they are people of piety, and reliance, and asceticism, and beautiful virtues, and contentment with what God gives, and munificence, and altruism.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 387)
10 October 2020
As for the people of examination, they are supported – each group of them – by what their proof concludes in their presumption. The Men, though, are masters who understand the intentions (maqāṣid) of the Law. They flow with the Law to its intent, and this is part of the blessing of waraʿ and the respect with which they treat the Divine Side – as things truly are, not figuratively. Because of their good manners, God opens up their understanding to His Books and what His messengers bring from Him – that is, what cannot be conveyed to perception by intellects; they are simply not able. No, these (the Men) take from God, not from their thinking.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 387)
9 October 2020
Even though they (the people of waraʿ, piety, asceticism) are verified in possessing its meaning (piety, asceticism) and in displaying its properties over their outward behaviors – such as showing kindness to the creatures of God and being gentle to them and behaving beautifully to them, and relying on God, and standing up for the limits that God has set – they present to the world that everything seen in them is actually something God did, not something they do.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 386)
8 October 2020
They (the people of waraʿ, piety, asceticism), God be pleased with them, avoid every situation in which there is competition among beings. They seek out a path which no one who is not of their kind or of their station will share with them. They will not compete with anyone for anything which they have confirmed in themselves as truly theirs and which they are described by.
Book 4, Chapter 43 (p. 386)
7 October 2020
The fityān (youthful warriors, sg. fatā) have strength and power, but they do not use coercive force – except over themselves only.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 377)
6 October 2020
For each community there is a special Divine gate – their Lawgiver being the keeper of that gate – through which they enter upon God. And Muḥammad is the keeper of the gatekeepers, based on the universality of his message – which is different from the rest of the prophets, peace be upon them. They are his gatekeepers, from Adam to the last prophet and messenger.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 376)
5 October 2020
It is well established with the people of kashf (unveiling) among the people along our path that minerals and plants and animals have all been created by God innately knowing Him and celebrating Him with His praise.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 375)
4 October 2020
The fatā is someone in whom no ʿabathan movement (that of which no account is to be made; ‘for sport’; and in the verse below, the cognate bāṭilan: useless, worthless, of no account) originates, as a whole. The meaning of this is that God was heard by him to say, We did not create the heavens and the Earth and what is between the two bāṭilan (for nought) (ṣād 38:27) – and any movement that originates in the fatā is something that would be ‘between the two’. In this way, each movement existing between the skies and the Earth of every mover has been created by God, so it is not ʿabathan – because the Creator is Wise (and apportions and places everything with an often hidden wisdom). The fatā is someone who moves or stays still based on wisdom in himself. Whoever has this as his state in everything he does, his movement will not be ʿabathan – not in his hands, not in his legs, not in smelling or tasting, and not in touching or hearing, nor in his sight – nor inside him. He knows each breath in him and what is appropriate for it and what his master’s ruling is for it. And someone with this quality will not be ʿabathan.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 372)
3 October 2020
The fatā is one who has no adversary – because what he must, he does; and what is his, he forsakes. So he has no adversary.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 372)
2 October 2020
The hypocrite has the lowermost level of the Fire.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 371)
1 October 2020
There is no escaping that every human being has hierarchical seating: there is someone greater, lesser, or equal – whether in age or in level or in both. The fatā is the one who honors someone great in knowledge or age; and the fatā is the one who is kind to the least in knowledge or age; and the fatā is the one who prefers someone equal in age or in knowledge over himself.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 371)
30 September 2020
When we saw that the matter was of this definition – that there was no universal methodology and that it was not possible, either intellectually or following cultural custom, for the human being to stand, in this world or wherever it may be, in a place in which two mutual antagonists would be well-pleased – we knew that it was necessary for the fatā to give up his likes based on his lower self and refer instead to the Creator, who is his Lord and Master.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 370)
29 September 2020
You are appropriately called a fatā* only if you know the values of the beings and the value of the Divine Presence. You treat each being according to its true value, when interacting; you place prior whoever should be placed first, and you place later whoever should be placed later.
*fatā: youthful warrior; one of the people of futuwwah (spiritual chivalry).
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 369)
28 September 2020
It was related that Abraham, when he saw a hoary head, he asked, ‘O Lord, what is this?’ He said, ‘The dignified bearing.’ He said, ‘O my God, give me more dignified bearing.’
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 369)
27 September 2020
God did not create in nature anything stronger than air; but He created the human being stronger than air – if one is faithful. This is how the prophetic report from God has it, with the angels: ‘When the Earth was created and spread out’; the ḥadỉth continues. At its end, ‘“O Lord, did you create anything stronger than the wind?” He said, “Yes, the faithful one who gives charity with the right hand when the left hand knows not.”’
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 368)
26 September 2020
Youthful warriors strong and true, they experience no fatigue;
they have a footstep in every excellence and goodness.
Their states during their sessions are divided up,
so they are between gravity toward the people and kindness.
If there comes their match, they wish for him their best;
and the youthful warriors feel no regret in this.
They have secrets of knowledge, all marks and signs,
but they have not a sesame seed amount of marking on their side.
Book 4, Chapter 42 (p. 367)
25 September 2020
The coming into being of the world: In its dhát (essence) it is void, non-existent; it acquires being only because it is receptive to being, and it is so only because it has been enabled to be.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 361)
24 September 2020
Among the people of the night, there are those who acquire the stairs, the ascension, and the nearing. The True meets them on the path while He is descending to the sky of this world. He sinks down to them and places His shield over them. The True meets each intense wish f of each ascender during that descent in the place He finds her.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 358)
23 September 2020
The night is between Me and you. And when the dawn breaks, I settle back onto My Throne, overseeing the matter and setting forth the clear signs; and My creature walks back to his daily life and to conversation with his friends. But a door has been opened between Me and him, amidst My creation, from which he may observe Me and from which I may observe him – while the people remain unaware. I converse with him using the people’s languages, while they are unaware; and he takes from Me upon insight, and they do not realize it. They think that he is speaking to them, but he is speaking to no one but Me. They presume that he is responding to them, but he is responding only to Me.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 357)
22 September 2020
Direct your hearing to what I am saying to you, and you will be an eye-witness present with Me.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 357)
21 September 2020
You should take knowledge from Me, not from your thinking and the lessons you have learned.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 356)
20 September 2020
They (the people of the night) are the good league with respect to God, but they are harsh warriors with regard to themselves.
Book 4, Chapter 41 (p. 351)
Quotations: Book 3
19 September 2020
When you strive for your truth, you find yourself a purely devoted ʿabd (slave, creature): incapacitated, a corpse, weak, nothing, no being do you have.
Book 3, Chapter 40 (p. 339)
18 September 2020
This world is not the place for idlāl (taking liberties, being proud). Do you see ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlī, with his idlāl? When he was present with his impending death, and there remained for him a few breaths in this abode – that much time – he put his face on the earth, and he informed (his entourage) thereby that what he was upon at that moment was the truth which is appropriate for the creature to have in this abode. The reason for this was that he had been, in various moments, someone of idlāl – because of what the True had informed him of, of events that would happen. But Abū Suʿūd bin Shibl, his student, was protected from that idlāl – and he stayed with the obligatory ʿubūdīyah (the state of creature-/slavehood) required with each breath, until he died. There is no report that he changed his state upon his death, as the state changed in his teacher ʿAbd al-Qādir.
Book 3, Chapter 39 (p. 327)
17 September 2020
God is not confined by space or defined.
Book 3, Chapter 39 (p. 323)
16 September 2020
The Divine power flows throughout every thing – so nothing is benefited except by Him, and nothing is harmed except by Him, and nothing speaks except by Him, and nothing moves except by Him.
Book 3, Chapter 37 (p. 303)
15 September 2020
You see, those who give oblique meanings to the Qurʾān: the first thing they lie about is that they did it based on God – but it is not from God. They speak of God what they know not, so no fruit is harvested and no stability is gained – because the false dies off, having no stability. Then they report in their words about matters connected to the sūrah of the Qurʾān which they want to dispute, by matters related to wordings, about what does not happen and what is not. It is false, and falsehood is non-being, and nothingness does not face against being. The Qurʾān is a report predicated on a being-based matter, true in the matter itself; so, inescapably, the antagonist is unable to bring forth anything like it. So if you adhere to the True in your actions and your statements and your states, you have been distinguished from the people of your time, and from all who do not journey along your path.
Book 3, Chapter 37 (p. 302)
14 September 2020
The family of God do not occupy themselves with this art – that is, the knowings (of reflective knowledge) – so as not to waste time. The life span of the human being is precious; thus it is appropriate that the human being not cut into one’s time, which should rather be spent sitting with one’s Cherisher and speaking with Him – as He made Law for you to do.
Book 3, Chapter 21 (p. 50)
13 September 2020
Their distraction which their natures require, as with all human beings, is rather connected on their part as a distraction from what belongs to them. So they are awake to what is sought from them, distracted from what belongs to them – such that they do not exit the ruling force of distraction, because it is part of human nature. For other than this group, heedless distraction turns them away from what is wanted of them.
Book 3, Chapter 32 (p. 220)
12 September 2020
The one who recognizes (the ʿárif) eats sweets and honey; but the great one who verifies for oneself (the muḥaqqiq) eats bitter gourd, very perturbing, taking no pleasure at all in tasting it as long as one is in this abode, because of one’s full occupation with what God addressed one with – that is, thankfulness for it. I met one of them in Dunaysīr (Kochisar, Turkey), ʿUmar al-Firqawī, and another in the city of Fes, ʿAbd-Allāh al-Sammād. The ʿárifūn, viewed next to these, are like infants who do not think, enjoying and taking pleasure with their rattles. So what do you imagine compared with the aspirants (students, murīdīn), and what do you imagine compared with the general population?
Book 3, Chapter 33 (p. 238)
11 September 2020
This is what belongs to the Great in themselves: good speech, and a view only to the beautiful, and attentive listening only to the good. If there arises in them – in a prophet or blessed friend – some moment different from this, then it is from a Divine command; it is not their own speech.
Book 3, Chapter 36 (p. 295)
10 September 2020
As timelessness is an illusory matter – illusory with regard to the True – the time period as well, with regard to the True, is an illusory matter.
Book 3, Chapter 22 (p. 76)
9 September 2020
When you empty the world of its safeguarding by God, the world has no being, so it vanishes; but when the safeguarding of God suffuses through the world, the world continues existing. Thus, by His self-manifestation and His tajallì* the world continues.
* tajallì: The brilliant radiance of God’s Being
Book 3, Chapter 25 (p. 126)
8 September 2020
Our teacher Abūʾl-ʿAbbās al-ʿUraybī, God be kind to him, was ʿĪsawī (based on Jesus) at the end part of his life – and ʿĪsawī was my beginning. I mean the end part of our teacher in this path was ʿĪsawī. Then, I was transferred to the opening of the solar Mūsawī (based on Moses); then, after this, I was transferred to Hūd; then, after this, I was transferred to the rest of the prophets, peace be upon them; then, after this, I was transferred to Muḥammad – and in this way was my situation on this path. God strengthened it for me and did not swerve me off the evened road. God granted me – on account of this configuration, configured during the above transfers which God configured me as, in this path – a face of the True in every thing. Thus, there is not in the universe, according to us, in our view, anything in existence except there is in it for us some eye-witness of a True entity based on whom we exalt hu – nor do we cast aside anything from the world of being.
Book 3, Chapter 36 (p. 285)
7 September 2020
One of the signs of the ʿĪsawīyīn (those based on Jesus) is: if you want to recognize them, then observe every person who has kind compassion toward the world and affectionate concern for the people, whoever it may be, and whatever religion one may have, and whatever naḥlah (religious culture) one shows – and an unreserved approval of them for God’s sake. They do not articulate anything that would constrict anyone’s chest concerning the creation (people), all of them, with their addressing the creatures of God.
Book 3, Chapter 36 (p. 293)
6 September 2020
Everything faith accepts is given in kashf to the family of God – because it is true, all of it.
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 262)
5 September 2020
No one is more honored in the next world than the one who reached the utmost of humility in this world, at the Side of the True and the truth. And there is no one more humiliated in the next world than the one who reached in this world the utmost of honor and pride in himself – even if he was maṣfūʿan (slapped with the open hand) in this world. I do not mean by ‘honored in this world’ that he was in this world a king – only that he had the description in himself of being proud. And it is this way for humility. As for the one who was literally a king, or something else, we do not consider whichever station and whichever state the True set up His creature in literally; instead, it is the metaphoric expression for his (true internal) state (that we consider).
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 275)
4 September 2020
The one who was a pure slave in this world is in the next world a pure sovereign. And the one who was in this world described with sovereignty, even if he was a sovereign only over his own limbs – he is deficient in sovereignty in the next world commensurate with what he received full measure of in this world. And if he established justice in this (area), and expended and discharged however God obligated him, according to Law, and he believed that he was a sovereign over this area (operating externally to the Law) on account of negligence coming forth in him – then the calamity that this is will revert to him and have consequences for him.
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 275)
3 September 2020
And glory be to hu beyond! hu is not negated from being perceived by any one of the perceiving faculties which He created, except the sight. He said, Sights do not perceive hu (al-anʿām 6:103) – and this is forbidden by Law. But He did not say hu is not perceived by hearing, or intelligence, or by any other of the faculties the human being is described as having – just as He did not say, either, ‘Indeed, other than the sight perceives Me.’ No, He left the matter in ambiguity.
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 271)
2 September 2020
The world, all of it, according to them (several of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachers), is verses (signs), explained in detail. With the general people, the signs according to them are only the non-customary ones, and only these (they think) will alert them to the greatness of God.
God has made the customary verses for different kinds among His creatures. Among them are the verses for the intelligent, such as His word, Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the Earth and the differentiation of the night and the day, and the ships which course in the ocean, for the benefit of the people, and what God sent down from the heaven of water, and made alive through it the Earth after she had been dead, and scattering throughout every animal; and the alteration of the winds and the clouds subjugated (to them) between the heaven and the Earth – signs (verses) for a people who think intelligently (al-baqarah 2:164). There are more verses for the intelligent, all of them (considered) customary. And there are verses for the ones of certainty, and verses for the ones of the kernel, and verses for the ones of intellect, and verses for the hearers – they are the family who understand (directly) from God. And there are verses for the people (worlds, ʿālamīn), and verses for the ones who know (ʿālimīn), and verses for the faithful, and verses for the ones who reflect, and verses for the family of remembrance.
These, all of them, are kinds God has blessed with different qualities and different verses, each one of them verses cited for our sake in the Qurʾān. If you study them and ponder them, you will learn that they are verses and indications of different matters, referring to a single entity. Most people neglect this study, and this is why there are numerous kinds (of verses).
Book 3, Chapter 32 (p. 214-15)
1 September 2020
The path of felicity … is faith in God and in what was sent from God.
Book 3, Chapter 33 (p. 227)
31 August 2020
Consider the step-level f of the faithful, how honored she is, and the level of the people of kashf, how great she is, where her people catch up to the messengers and the prophets, peace be upon them, with the Divine knowing they are distinguished by – because the ones who know are the inheritors of the prophets; and they do not inherit dīnārs or dirhams – they inherit knowledge.
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 266)
30 August 2020
With the messengers, God’s blessings on all of them, from Adam to Muḥammad, there is no disagreement transmitted from them concerning the qualities and adjectives they relate to God. In fact, all of them are of a single tongue about this. The books they brought, all of them, articulate about God with a single tongue. Not two among them disagree; they affirm each other, one of them the other – despite the long time periods (separating them) and not having met. And despite the sectarianisms contending among the intellectuals, the messengers’ ordered arrangement has not been disordered.
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 265)
29 August 2020
Anger is the light-blocking darkness of the heart.
Book 3, Chapter 33 (p. 235)
28 August 2020
The intellectuals are people of afkār (mental examinations, thinking-thinking). Their statements about God differ commensurate with their observation. Then the god which is worshiped with the intellect is stripped of faith; it is as if it were – rather, it is – a god established according to what that intellect’s observation provides. Its truth differs according to the view of every intellect – and the intellects are oppositional and contradictory. Each group among the people of intellect calls the other ignorant of God; even if they are among the islāmīyīn (‘Islamic’) interpretive intellects, each group calls the other kāfir (disbeliever).
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 264)
27 August 2020
Authentic knowledge is not provided by reflection, nor by what the intellectuals confirm with regard to their reflections; … authentic knowledge is rather what God casts onto the heart of the learner; and it is a Divine light by which whoever He wishes is singled out among His creatures – that is, angel, messenger, prophet, friend, faithful one. Who has no kashf (unveiling) has no knowledge.
Book 3, Chapter 35 (p. 263)
26 August 2020
If the builders of this world were given kashf (unveiling) from God, opening their sight so they could see this world as a bridge, they would see the river over which it was built – that it is extremely perilous; and they would not build what they build, such as lofty castles. But they do not have eyes to see that this world is a bridge of planks over a great, tremendous river, nor do they have ears to hear the statement of the Messenger, the one who knows what God reveals to him: ‘This world is a bridge (inna al-dunyā qanṭarah).’
Book 3, Chapter 33 (p. 237)
25 August 2020
The words of ingratitude return their noxiousness to their speaker.
Book 3, Chapter 26 (p. 140)
24 August 2020
This world is a bridge to be traversed, not settled in and populated! – just as it is with you, the human being, at the time you see something in your dream: you traverse; you interpret; you do not settle into a life populated there in the dream, because when you wake up, you will not find anything you saw in your dream, whether you saw something good or something bad – not houses, buildings, or tables – and no fine experiences or vile ones. But certainly the one who knows may interpret (traverse) for you metaphorically what you saw and will say to you, ‘Your dream indicates such-and-such.’ Similarly, the life of this world is one of being asleep. When you pass on to the next world by dying, nothing transfers with you – that is, whatever was in your hand physically here, such as a house and a family and wealth. It is just as when you awake from sleep: you do not find anything in your hand now which had reached you in your dream when you were sleeping. This is why He said we are indeed asleep in the night and the day; and in the other world will be the awakening, and there the ‘dream’ will be interpreted and crossed over.
Book 3, Chapter 32 (p. 219)
23 August 2020
The people of literalism have their own intelligence, no doubt, but they are not ones of the kernels.
Book 3, Chapter 32 (p. 215)
22 August 2020
‘Sleep’ is what the sleeper is in during the state of one’s sleep; and when one wakes, one says, ‘I saw such-and-such,’ indicating that the human being is asleep as long as one is in this configuration in this world – until one dies. The True does not express the customary waking, according to us, generally; rather, He takes the human being as being asleep in one’s sleep and in one’s being awake, just as was related in the prophetic report – that is, his (the Prophets’s) word, ‘The people are asleep; when they die, they awake’; so he described them as sleeping during the life of this world. The general population do not recognize sleep customarily as being anything but what happens typically, which they call sleep. But the Prophet alerted us; no, he made it quite clear that the human being is asleep as long as one is in the life of this world, until one wakes up alert and aware in the next world.
Book 3, Chapter 32 (p. 217)
21 August 2020
The lover is distracted from the air by his inner secret,
loving the One who creates the air and subjugates it.
The ‘árifūn, their intellects are a hobble,*
keeping them from every worldly thing; they are content, pure.
They are from His Side greatly honored,
but to humanity their states are unknown and covered over.
*The intellect (ʿaql) is like the hobble (ʿiqāl) binding the camel’s legs, allowing one to move enough to forage, but keeping one from wandering off and hurting oneself and others.
Book 3, Chapter 25 (p. 120)
20 August 2020
Our path is to clarify the source-arguments of each group, and from where they take up their creedal positions, and what was given to them in tajallì,*and whether this has an effect on their ultimate felicity or has no effect. This is the lot of the people of the path of God based on knowledge of God, and we do not occupy ourselves with refuting a single one in God’s creation.
* tajallì: A moment of brilliant radiance of God’s Being; a self-disclosure of God.
Book 3, Chapter 31 (p. 205)
19 August 2020
As nearing comes through journeying and traveling to Him, one of His attributes is Light, in order to guide us to the path – just as He exalted said, He made for you the stars, for you to be guided by them through the light-blocking places of land – and land is the outward journey, traveling with actions and deeds based on the body – and sea (al-anʿām 6:97) – and sea is the inward journey in the meaning dimension, traveling with actions based on the soul.
Book 3, Chapter 27 (p. 147)
18 August 2020
God says to the one among us who puts into practice what God has made Law for one, that God will teach you and God will take charge of your education, with knowledge that will be the result of your practice.
Book 3, Chapter 30 (p. 186)
17 August 2020
In the fold of gratefulness is a blessing from God for the afflicted.
Book 3, Chapter 29 (p. 170)
16 August 2020
When you say, ‘God,’ the world vanishes.
Book 3, Chapter 25 (p. 126)
15 August 2020
Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz [said], ‘God is not recognized except by His joining together of two opposites.’ Then he recited, hu is the First, and the Last, and the Outward, and the Inward (al-ḥadīd 57:3) – meaning, from a single perspective, not from different relational perspectives as the people of examination among the superficial scholars see it.
Book 3, Chapter 24 (p. 111)
14 August 2020
God does not repeat a tajallì* to one individual and does not share it to two individuals – given the Divine infinite vastness. In fact, the ‘like things’ and the ‘similar things’ are presumed so by the observer and the hearer only because of the similitude of one moment to another, which is difficult to distinguish – except for the people of kashf (unveiling) and the proponents among the theologians who argue that the chance event does not persist over two time periods.
* tajallì: A moment of brilliant radiance of God’s Being; a self-disclosure of God.
Book 3, Chapter 24 (p. 110)
13 August 2020
There is no spatial interval between the True and the world which can be thought of at all except the differentiation of features and truths. Thus, ‘God was and there was nothing with hu’ – exalted beyond. It never ceased to be this way, and it never will cease to be this way: ‘nothing with hu’.
Book 3, Chapter 24 (p. 107)
12 August 2020
If you can perceive, my beloved, His Being,
and who you are, you are a master.
Book 3, Chapter 24 (p. 103)
11 August 2020
The One who beneficially provides being is Himself Being.
Book 3, Chapter 22 (p. 69)
10 August 2020
The greatest of the friends, when they are left alone to choose for themselves and for their souls, not one among them chooses visibility at all, because they know that God did not create them for their own sakes, nor for anyone in His creation to cling onto them, from the first intention. He created them for Him, exalted beyond.
Book 3, Chapter 23 (p. 98)
9 August 2020
He created the organic body f to be an abode for play and affection,
and He built her and provided for her effusively and fashioned her as the clay in His Hands to form Adam.
Book 3, Chapter 23 (p. 95)
8 August 2020
A group of the knowledgeable ʿárifìn – and their state is much better than any below them – say, ‘God created us for us’; but the one who verifies for oneself – and the real creature – does not say this. Instead, one says, ‘He created us for Him, but not from a need He has for me. I am an enigma of my Lord, and I am His symbol.’
Futūḥāt, Book 3
7 August 2020
He exalted said, This house of the hereafter, We gave it – that is, We transferred ownership of it – to the ones who do not intend high arrogance on the Earth (al-qaṣaṣ 28:83), because God made the Earth to be lowly and tractable; and the creature is tractable, and the lowly does not claim high elevation. Whoever transgresses one’s measure is destroyed.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
6 August 2020
Whose soul is thirsty for fighting the lower self
drinks from the most sweet waters.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
5 August 2020
Wondrous the accounts of the sky-joined souls!
Futūḥāt, Book 3
4 August 2020
This book is not based on reflective knowledge; rather, it is part of knowledge ‘received by instruction’ and ‘drawn nigh’. No other scale is required than this, even if there is in there (in the book) an anchor – because it is not altogether free from reflective knowledge.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
3 August 2020
The first word composed was the word kun (Be!).
Futūḥāt, Book 3
2 August 2020
With the numbering of step-degrees in the dimension of meaning, all of them – prophets, friends, faithful, messengers – are equal, no stairway exceeding another stairway by a single step. The first step is al-islām: it is submission. The last step is annihilation in the ascent and persistence in the disembarkation. Between the two steps, first and last, there remain faith, goodness, knowledge, consecration, removal of impurities, independence with regard to creation, dependence on God, humility, dignity, flexibility, strengthening in flexibility; and annihilation if you are outside, and persistence if you have entered inside.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
1 August 2020
You have at the moment of your advancing up the stairs of ascent a Divine tajallì* commensurate with the stairs of your ascent, because for every person among the people of God there is a stairway specific to you, none other ascending on it.
* tajallì: vision of God’s radiant unveiling; a self-disclosure of God.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
31 July 2020
This world f is only one of many way-stations for the traveler; and … she is a bridge to be crossed; and … human beings, if they do not adorn themselves here with knowledge and generous characteristics and attributes of the higher beings – such as purity, and being transcendent from natural lusts which turn one away from sound observation, and acquiring Divine knowledge – then there is no way to felicity.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
30 July 2020
The observer is occupied with what his view is attached to and the goal he is seeking, so he is veiled from the knowledge of the moment; he is amidst an increase of knowledge, but he does not realize it.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
29 July 2020
Learn, may God assist you, that every living being and everything described with perception has, in fact, in every breath new knowledge with regard to that perception; but the individual perceiving may not be among those who pay attention to what knowledge really is – though it is in fact knowledge.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
28 July 2020
The kings, even if they are exalted in their ranks,
they share in the same mysteries and night
conversations as the common people do.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
27 July 2020
God is not a cause of an effect that is not He Himself.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
26 July 2020
The True does not have a fixed identity-attribute except wāḥdat (one, single). It is impossible that there be with Him two, and three, and so on; if there were, His dhát (Essence) would be composed of two things, or three, or four – and composition involving Him is impossible. Therefore, a fixed attribute that is additional over the wāḥdat is impossible.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
25 July 2020
There is not in the cosmos anything but a single, prime Being,
all too transcendent to be withstood, or handed over.*
* When the command comes to Be!, no entity withstands its becoming,
and no entity can maintain (hand over) its being from one moment to the next.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
24 July 2020
Whoever seeks the path, with no indication from
the Divine, has sought the impossible.
Futūḥāt, Book 3
Quotations: Book 2
23 July 2020
Just as it is impossible for anything with an organic nature-based body to receive nourishment from anything but what is from the same nature it has, similarly it is impossible for anyone to know things which are not like one at all. Do you see that the soul f does not accept from intellect m anything but what she shares with him and what is like her? What is not shared is never known by another. And there is not with God any such one who shares with Him, and this is not possible from any facet; so no one knows Him, from one’s self or from one’s thought. The Messenger of God said, ‘God is veiled from the intellect as He is veiled from sight. Even the highest angels seek Him as you seek Him yourselves.’
Futūḥāt, Book 2
22 July 2020
Be true and be safe, be given disclosing kashf (unveiling), and come up, join in!
Futūḥāt, Book 2
21 July 2020
Human perception is bounded by the fact of being human and what humanity’s own essence provides – there is an acquisition there (we receive something by being human). But really there is nothing but to prepare the intellect for accepting what the True gives of His maʿrifah, majestic is hu, exalted. So one never knows by the mode of proof anything but the understanding that there is being, and that He is One to be worshiped, and nothing else. The perceiving human being cannot perceive anything unless there is a resemblance; if there is not that, then he does not perceive anything at all, or recognize anything at all. As he does not recognize anything unless there is a likeness of that thing to something already known, he does not recognize anything except what is like it and similar to it; and al-bārīyʾu (the Creator, who created from no previous template) is exalted beyond, not like anything, and there is nothing like Him. Therefore He is not known, ever.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
20 July 2020
We empty our hearts from intellectual ratiocination and we sit with the True with dhikr (remembrance of God) – in a setting of courtesy, disciplined self-awareness, and being in the Divine Presence, and spiritual preparation – in order to accept what comes to us from Him. We do this so that it will be the True who takes charge of our education, through kashf (unveiling) and verifying for ourselves, since we indeed have heard Him say: Then be aware of God, and God will teach you (al-baqarah 2:282).
Futūḥāt, Book 2
19 July 2020
They do not recognize any but Him, just as they are not recognized except by Him.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
18 July 2020
Attainment of perception of Him comes from His effusive generosity and grace and gift – as the ʿárifīn recognize Him, the people of direct vision – not from the intellectual faculty in the place where it speculates.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
17 July 2020
All people are addressed commensurate with their understanding of these things, and according to the strength of their mastery and their insight.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
16 July 2020
There remains for us only to say that the True is mawjūd (a site of being) by Himself and for Himself, with absolute Being, without being constrained by anyone. He is not the effect of anything nor the motive cause for the sake of anything else; no, He is the Creator of the causes and effects, the King, the Holy, who is always. The universe is mawjūd by God, not by itself or for itself. It is a being defined by the Being of the True in Himself. The universe truly has no being at all, except by means of the Being of the True.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
15 July 2020
There is not in the Heaven or the Earth any place in which there is not an angel, and the True does not stop creating angels from cosmic breaths, as they keep being breathed into spaces.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
14 July 2020
There is nothing except it praises with His praise.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
13 July 2020
Ibrāhīm bin Masʿūd al-Ilbīrī said:
The man journeys to his sought goal,
but the sought-after means of subsistence is in the journey.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
12 July 2020
The soul is gathered on the Last Day according to the image of her knowledge, and the organic body according to the image of one’s behavior.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
11 July 2020
The human being is the universal, the All-Word, the master manuscript of the universe.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
10 July 2020
It is a deep ocean the aspirant is sent to, its understanding arising from the gate of kashf (unveiling) – because from the perspective of kashf it is easy, but from the perspective of the intellect it is difficult indeed.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
9 July 2020
He made your self a pointer to and proof of yourself, and then He made your being a pointer to you as a pointer to Him, with regard to you who are distant.
Futūḥāt, Book 2
8 July 2020
The place that most looks over all, to ascend to on the path of God, is ignorance of Him and recognizing ignorance of Him, because such recognition is a truth of ʿubūdīyah (the state of creature-/slavehood).
Futūḥāt, Book 2
Quotations: Book 1
7 July 2020
If you journey you will arrive; and God will guide us, and you.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
6 July 2020
Whoever wants to connect to Him connects only by Him and by you – by you in the place He seeks you, and by Him because He is a site of your search.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
5 July 2020
If you are ignorant of you, you are not you.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
4 July 2020
How strange! They think they are at the lowest of the low when actually they are where they should be, at the highest of the heights.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
3 July 2020
The Youth said: ‘I am the ripened meadow, the universal harvest, so lift my veils and recite what is contained etched in my lines.’
Futūḥāt, Book 1
2 July 2020
If you prepare yourself, and ready yourself, and polish the mirror of your heart and make her radiant, you will receive this generosity ever and ever, and you may receive a glimpse of something that cannot be constrained in time, because of the vastness of that intelligible orbit and the constriction of this physical orbit. How would something which cannot conceivably even have a terminus come to an end, or to a final resting place at which to halt?
Futūḥāt, Book 1
1 July 2020
The True is ever generous, incessantly effusing generosity.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
29 June 2020
You appear to one You preserve after his annihilation.
He is without existence, because You are he.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
The ʿárif is … the constant companion of the moment and cheered by it.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
The minimum step on the path is patient submission to what you do not know, and the highest step is certainty in its validity.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
If the ocean is deep,
then the shore of the heart is deeper still.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
The True is sought out through the True.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
Extract and dust off the opals and the pearls!
Futūḥāt, Book 1
Knowledge of something leads to encompassing it and finishing with it, and this, in regard to the Divine Side, is impossible. So knowing Him is impossible. It is not correct that one know part of Him either, because He is not partitioned. So there remains knowledge only of what is from Him, and what is from Him is you; so you are known.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
Inescapably, all meanings are centered in the self; then they are disclosed and revealed with the nows, moment after moment.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
The cosmos is anchored in God and is the anchoring of the possible to the Necessary Being Itself and of the designed to the Designer.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
You seeker for the Being of the True – to perceive hu,
return to your dhát (essence); in you is the True, so stay there!
Futūḥāt, Book 1
Do not seek the True inside or outside the fence. Both the entrance and the exit are based on New qualities. Thus, observe the All in the All and you will find the All.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
There will appear to you strange wonders which will bewilder the intellect with the splendor of their beauty.
Futūḥāt, Book 1
You are a cloud veiling your Sun, so recognize first a truth of yourself.
al-Isrāʾ, quoted in Futūḥāt, Book 1
You are the ones circling the heart of the being of the universe, and you correspond to the mysteries of the ones who truly know.
Futūḥāt, Book 1