الفتوحات المكية (Meccan Revelations)

For the world, since it was in the? image? of the Truth? and the Names?

...unlike the Asrar al-Qudsiyya Sacred Secrets. It is first the ascension of the spirits, then the places of the spirits, and within it are hearts, images, veils, and extended clouds; from these, everything is derived according to its nature. We have mentioned in our Futūḥāt The Meccan Revelations entitled al-Isrā' The Night Journey the arrangement:

Have you not seen that God brought His servant on a night journey, from the nearest sanctuary to the farthest sanctuary?
Which is above all seven heavens, unto it is the al-Bayt al-Ma'mur Much-Frequented House in the Highest Assembly.
To the Lote Tree of the Uttermost Boundary and His Chair, which reaches His highest Throne to the most radiant level.
To the splendors of the Face until through Him the cloud of blindness is unveiled, from the eye of the family's heedlessness.
He was at three [cubits] or less, He drew near, from God he approached by two bows' length or nearer.
The eyes of the created ones were at a spindle, for a glance that had not touched in the clearer return.
He addresses his family with the hidden secret, He grants success near the Throne, glory be to Him, He blessed.
And He returned to him, the mention of the address, and He spoke to him; the God, glory be to Him, blesses where it is recited.
And the veil of the eye asked about the might of His nature, and the eye was erased in the glass-like Unseen.
Meanings fill the essences of creatures alone, and the Merciful supported him with the Firmest Handle.
He yielded to the traces of the direction and the Face of his Lord, so the Merciful honored him with the clearer view.
And whenever he accepted this, he was already the name; by the deputyship of Gabriel before that in the freedom.

When God desires to carry away by night the spirits of those He chooses from the heirs of His messengers, His saints, and the brothers from his descendants, He shortens the night journey to an increase of knowledge. Their right in their emergence is like the right of their Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, in his emergence from the one who took him by night. They rose and the judgment of the Name attached to them, so they looked at the Names He established in them from every world, arranging them according to the types of the angelic and cosmic worlds, leaving from every world what suits it and its image. Just as it is valid that he, may God bless him and grant him peace, in the vision of what he saw, spoke in every class of the world with what conforms to that presence. So the witnessing remains for him as long as he remains detached from the journey back from the place to which he was taken. When he reaches the destination, the veil of the covering is lifted from him, and a sweetness remains with him in every meaning with its appropriateness. He exerts truthfulness in this night journey upon what we have established. If he is tasted, he is carried by night from the aspect of what he is, not from the aspect of him being a name restricting things, for he does not influence an origin upon his image. The world and its image, just as from the aspect of being in the image of the Truth, the world is in his image. The Truth, the tongue is in the image of the world, and man is in the image of the Truth. For the tongue, in one of the two equals, has equality to one of the two equals. For when it is every thing, the least that is gathered upon the 'ḥ' [letter] of the heart, he looked from the aspect of it being 'alif' first letter of the alphabet, not from the aspect of it being by that, like man himself from the aspect that he is in the image of the Truth, not from the aspect that he is in the image of the world, even if the world is in the image of the Truth. Since people were upon it, existence fell upon it, we made them a mixture of human nature. They were letters that were purified in their origin in the image of the sciences. And the world was not in perfection in the image of the Truth in the unity of man within it, for it is the shadow of the world, so he is the perfect one by the temperament in the consideration of existence, for man, from the aspect of his rank, is more ancient.

The world, since it was in the image of the Truth and the Names, was called out in the world in the image of the Truth, as the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, said: "God created Adam in the image of the Merciful." The aspect which one does not possess to say of it "it is from such and such," we said regarding God's gathering in the alif, His being remaining until the alif. But He has gathered between each one with a name that is not its essence, and the other, which is the being of the alif—the dal and the ya and the mim are a gathering likewise, from the creation inevitably, and man by derivation, and the world as a world, and eternal, in that by equality. For it does not complete, it is not in a reality in which a secret occurs by witnessing, it was not valid to say "such and such" for its equality, so that one does not say of it "it is from such and such," nor does it bend. For I do not become noble except by an eye, so knowledge became clear. There must be an intellectual grace in the perception of the one favored, just as there was a multiplicity in the unity of the One. So nothing rose in the One except the Oneness by which it is said "it is not from these letters by which it is said he is from these letters." This multiplicity, for it is a multiplicity of the absolute alif that a speaker supports in his sections of the proof. All of this is here in the equality, and likewise what returned to the disposition in a boundary of separators and a division. The favor is in the essence of the connection from an example, so act or turn the shell upon what we have said, and the like of it is what was in the image of the world. It was only in the image of the Truth because he was carried by night to it for a meaning of His name that is not one of His names. We made the one named by the name of the one named for him, that name was from the one sent to him, the lamp, as we fulfilled his looking for it in His servants, and by it he recites the Gentle one in his states. They are the shadows of the Names, and within us are colorings that depart from the illusory affairs, and within them is the One who realizes; we will know what we are in by this, and this is what we said:

Abodes in you appear to me . . . and a meaning in you suffices me
If I ask about the secrets . . . from the heart that fulfills
It would not describe the address . . . and the matter does not bring me near
For a restriction in it in the matter . . . when you walked my constitution
Nor did we say and what they said . . . it distances between me and me
They have said and we have said . . . so it helps me and tires me
So I enrich it and it enriches me . . . and it enriches me and enriches me
So I please it and it pleases me . . . and I disobey it and it forbids me

If the night journey is by the spirit and the Names for the one asking about it in that, the essence of the Names, he said: "The Names are the most deaf upon us from which we return, and the states of the whole world." This is why in that interpenetration, it is what produces other than the essences of those Names, as it is upon us that, by consideration of the states, the judgments of those Names [apply]. The name of the Truth from which we emerge and to which we are received is the Living, by it I turn the book, I turned, and the four in the seven, just as he, may God bless him and grant him peace, was "to the believers, compassionate, merciful." So we hit the meaning, it was speaking by the whole meaning from our speech, so we helped one another and ourselves, and the souls of them and by our souls. And it was what reached from the wind, driving the ships in the erasing sea with expressions of the contents to the shores, reversing it by a command. So to whom is the grace of reaching the sought-after quickly, and God is the Guide to that, I have already believed myself.