📘 Have they not seen how God originates creation, then makes it return?In terms of the outwardness, originating creation and making it return are this world and the next world. In terms of the inwardness, these allude to the changing of the moments and the recurrence of states for the possessors of hearts. Sometimes they are in contraction, sometimes expansion, sometimes awe, sometimes intimacy. For a time absence dominates over them, for a time pres- ence; for a time intoxication, for a time sobriety; for a time subsistence, for a time annihilation.When the servant is in contraction and awe, he manifests servanthood by craving forgiveness and fearing punishment, just as the Exalted Lord said: �They were supplicating Us in eagerness and dread� [21:90]. Then, when he steps into the world of expansion, he sees the marks bearing witness to intimacy. He is freed from his own power and strength and disengaged from his own desires and aims. He lives in the opening of disengagement and his aspiration's goal and kiblah becomes desiring His face [6:52]. In this state his soul will be like what Shiblī said because of drunkenness and selflessness: �At the resurrection, everyone will have an antagonist, and I will be Adam's. Why did he make my road steep so that I was held back by the mud?�When he was in expansion he spoke like that, and when he was in contraction he used to say, �My abasement suspends the abasement of the Jews.� Once again he would be given over to expansion and intimacy such that he said, �Where are the heavens and the earths that I may carry them on one of my eyelashes?�This then is the meaning of the recurrence of the states alluded to by originating and making return. The proof text of this in the exalted Qur'an is His words, �You shall surely ride stage after stage� [84:19], that is, state after state.Part of the conduct and traveling of MuṣṬafā was that one day he would say, �I am the master of Adam's children.� Then in the state of contraction he would say, �I do not know what He will do with me or with you. Would that MuḤammad's Lord had not created MuḤammad!� Again, in the state of intimacy, he would say, �I am not like any of you-I spend the night at my Lord; He gives me to eat and drink.

📘 Do the people reckon they will be left to say, �We have faith,� and not be tried?Do the people reckon they will be left simply to claim to have faith without trial being demanded from them? That will never happen, for the worth of every man lies in his trial. So when the mea- sure of someone's meaning is more, the measure of his trial will be more.The Prophet said, �Surely the people most severely tried are the prophets, then the next best, then the next best.� He also said, �When God desires good for a people, He tries them.�The lordly likeness from the Presence of Lordhood is this: Trial from Our threshold is a robe of honor for the friends. Whoever seeks a level above others in the station of friendship will smell more of the rose of tribulation in the pleasure-garden of the friends.If you want to know this, then look at the state of that master of Adam's children, the one emulated by the folk of the Shariah, and the foremost and chieftain of the folk of the Haqiqah. When that paragon walked into this street, he was not left without heartache and grief for an hour. If he sat for a while cross-legged, the address would come, �Sit like a servant!� If once he put a ring on his finger, the whip of rebuke would come down: �What, did you reckon that We created you aimlessly?� [23:115]. If once he placed his foot on the ground boldly, the command would come, �Walk not in the earth exultantly� [17:37]. If one day he said, �I love ʿāÌisha,� he would see what he saw.When his trial reached the extreme from the words of the hypocrites, he complained inwardly to God. He was addressed: �O paragon, when someone's heart and spirit witness Me, does he complain of trial?� All the venom in the treasuries of the Unseen was poured into one cup and put in his hand, and then a curtain was lifted from his secret core. It was said, �O MuḤammad, drink this venom while contemplating My beauty! And be patient with thy Lord's decree, for surely thou art in Our eyes� [52:48].Were the Beloved's hand to pour poison for me, poison from His hand would be sweet.*Your curse, O Friend, is my praise and laudation, Your iniquity my justice, Your cruelty loyalty.

📘 He chastises whom He will and has mercy on whom He will.When He wants He acts with justice toward someone and drives him away from His kindness, and when He wants He acts with bounty toward him and calls him to His gentleness. All is tied to His beginningless will, and He issues the decree without any cause. It is not that He shows bounty toward someone because of his obedience, nor that He acts with justice toward someone because of his disobedience. That is a work that was taken care of in the Beginningless, a decree that went out as God wanted.The Pir of the Tariqah said, �Alas for the apportioning that has gone before me! Alack for the words spoken by the Self-Seer! What profit if I live happily or distraught? I fear what the Power- ful said in the Beginningless.�He chastises whom He will through abandonment and He has mercy upon whom He will through giving the success of beautiful doing. He chastises whom He will through ingratitude and He has mercy upon whom He will through faith. He chastises whom He will through dispersion of the heart and He has mercy upon whom He will through the togetherness of aspiration. He chas- tises whom He will by casting him into the darkness of self-governance and He has mercy upon whom He will by giving him to witness the flow of predetermination. He chastises whom He will by his love for this world and being held back from it and He has mercy upon whom He will by his renunciation of it and its expansion for him. He chastises whom He will by His turning away from him and He has mercy upon whom He will by His turning toward him.

📘 You will not be disablers in earth or in heaven, and you have no friend or helper apart from God.You will not be disablers in earth or in heaven. On the contrary, everything turns around in His grasp, and He brings to pass for them the decrees of His predetermination-whether they deny or voice His tawḤīd, whether they turn toward Him or away from Him.

📘 And those who disbelieve in the signs of God and the encounter with Him-they have lost hope in My mercy.In this world the punishment of the unbelievers is completed when they lose hope in God's mercy. To the faithful He says, �No matter how many foolish things you have done and how much you have sinned, despair not of God's mercy [39:53].�Know that the influence of God's mercy for the servants is greater than the influence of His wrath. In the Qur'an, there are more mentions of the attributes of mercy than the attributes of wrath. In the report has come, �My mercy takes precedence over My wrath.�Mercy and wrath are both attributes of the Real, and it is not permissible for you to say that one is before and the other after, or that one is more and the other less. If you say that one is more, then the other must be decreased; if you say one is before, than the other must be newly arrived. Hence, what is meant by this is mercy's influence. In other words: �The influence of My mercy overtakes the influence of My wrath.� It is because of the influence of His wrath that the unbelievers have despaired of His mercy, such that He says, �they have lost hope in My mercy.� It is because of the influence of His mercy that the faithful hope for His forgiveness and place their hearts on His mercy, such that He says, �They hope for God's mercy� [2:218].The unbeliever who has despaired of God's mercy with his idol before him is like a spider who builds a house, frail and without outcome. It has no foundation to keep it in place, walls for refuge, or roof to cover it. It is of no use in cold or in heat. It is so frail and weak that with the slightest wind it moves up and down and is ruined. This is the likeness of the idol-worshipper. He fancies that he is doing something or that he has a refuge: They were reckoning that they were doing beau- tiful artisanry [18:104]. They reckon that they are on to something [58:18]. �He who hopes that the mirage is water will only remain long enough to know that it was an imagining.�

📘 Whoso hopes to encounter God, God's term is coming, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing.When someone passes his life hoping for Our encounter, We will permit him to gaze upon Us and he will be delivered from absence and separation. And He is the Hearing of the moans of the yearners, the Knowing of the longing of the enraptured lovers.The price of seeing the Friend is the spirit. If you find that for one hundred thousand spirits, that is cheap. Who is more victorious than the servant who sees the Friend face-to-face? Hoping to see the Friend is the attribute of the Men.Great is the aspiration of the eye that wants to see You-is it not enough for an eye that You see him who sees You?Wait until tomorrow, when the servant will sit at the table of everlastingness, drinking the wine of union. He will see blessedness, nearness, and the most beautiful and will arrive at hearing, drink- ing, and seeing. This is just what the Exalted Lord says: �Faces that day will be radiant, gazing upon their Lord� [75:22-23]. The faces of the faithful and the self-purifiers, the faces of the sin- cerely truthful and the witnesses, will be like glowing moons, shining suns, garden violets, fragrant jasmine, red anemones, flashing lightning, rising suns, the vast paradise. On whom will these faces be gazing? They will be gazing upon their Lord, upon their creator, upon their nurturer. What is the attribute of that day? The day of proximity and union, the day of kindness and bounteousness, the day of giving and bestowal, the day of gazing on the Possessor of Majesty. In hoping for this station the yearners dedicated their bodies, and for the sake of this way station the passionate put rings in their ears.The recognizers will have three eyes in vision: The eye of the head will see, and that is for pleasure. The eye of the heart will see, and that is for recognition. The eye of the spirit will see, and that is for contemplation. He will fill the eye of the head with the light of bounty, the eye of the heart with the light of proximity, and the eye of the spirit with the light of finding.