الفتوحات المكية (Meccan Revelations)

On Knowledge

Unlike the secrets and specificities in the manifestations of the Names, the ascensions of the spirits, and its unity are hearts, images, spiritualities, and perceived meanings. What I witnessed of that, we have mentioned in other than this what we named "The Secrets" and their arrangement:

Praise be to God who took His servant by night, from the nearest sanctuary to the farthest sanctuary.
To the highest presence he leveled by its leveling, to the houses of the concept in the Highest Assembly.
To the exalted Lote Tree and His Chair of the most high, to His Throne, the level, the most radiant.
To the veils of the coverings until it shines, the cloud of the Unseen from the eye of the heedlessness of straying.
He was with a tongue at the three [cubits] or less, from God an approach by two bows' length or nearer.
And the eyes of the two worlds were from him [as if] weak, not a glance of what will remain in the sweeter place.
In the attraction of intimacy, a jealousy that excites him, he kindles near the Throne, glory be to Him, he blessed.
And he returned to him, the mention of the address, and he said, "Is he?" he asks in the attire of what is rightfully recited.
And he longed for the veil of the diving from under its shadow, and he was erased unto Him in the witnessing of the glass-like.
And he witnessed what the rights do not grasp, and the Merciful supported him with the Firmest Handle.
And he cast it, he surpassed he who cast with the health of his Lord, so the Merciful honored him with the clearer view.
And it is my saying, "So enter," he was taken by night to Him, between us a current before that in the course.

---

---

When God desires to carry by night the spirits of those He chooses from the heirs of His messengers and His saints, it is that He strips them from His own Essence, a day of secrets that increases upon him in his solitude. I have enacted their night journey: among them is he who is carried by night in the lightness of this, it is only his body that departs and the spirit of the other is breathed, the night journey is only by the names for them from every world. He passes them upon the types of the simple, worldly world, so he leaves with him from every world what suits it, and it is his image. God's judgment of His messengers is the clear [signs] between and among the Names, from his being in the half of the world—servants who do not witness His blockage, a witnessing of ascensions until he walks the night journey to the material, it is the station called "may God bless him." When he arrives with health, the veil of the covering is lifted from him until he is distant for the Divine Truth from the aspect of him being an appropriateness. So the servant descends in this night journey from who he is, so when he falls, he is carried by night from the aspect of what he is, from the aspect of the non-existence of a restriction in His Essence because it is in him, because he does not enter the solution of His high existence and His image. For everything, from the aspect of him being in the image of the Truth, the world is in the image of the Truth, and man is in the image of Him in the world, and man is in the image of the Truth. For the equal of one of the two equals is equal to each one of the two equals, a state when every alif of the alifs of the Truth is upon a boundary of an alif of its letters. So from the aspect that he is an alif, there is no distinction in that by essence, by the movement of man himself from the aspect that he is in the image of the Truth in his reality, he is in the image of the world, even if the world is in the image of the Truth. And since man was upon what he was upon, we found our created human nature, and they were letters appearing by entitlement in the image of the science. And since the world was upon perfection and in the image of the Truth, there was found in this man within it the shadow of the world, and he is the first by original rank in existence, for man, from the aspect of his rank, is more ancient.

As for the question to which he alludes in the essence of this being by the Names, He forgives all the Names except for the naming upon Him, God, for his gathering in the state of "There is no god but God." That affair is not that which is in the originated, so those complete Names should be... with the qualities, states, and judgments of those Names. The state from which I was connected and to which I was received is the Living, by it [is] the greatness, as if He transferred him from a state he knows the Essence, just as he, may God bless him and grant him peace, was "what he calls his Lord," so He answered him by what meaning was taken from the Praised by His name. So we spoke thus also by His action upon some of our creation, and He dominated over me by the images and the contemplation; it was what was not reached from the spirit by the speed of the disciples. The answer, when it was walking in our souls from the extracting, you complain of it, what [is] from Him of the grace of reaching the sought-after quickly, and perhaps when that was a tasting from myself.

On Knowledge

And the Image

The world is like man in his attainment of the human image, without the perceived form for the perceiver, as it is said of the one to whom it is attributed, "in the image of such and such," until he is his essence in all his aspects, except what cannot be of the Truth, for His richness from the identity of our perfection in the essence of the world, for His being added to us. [It is] an alif, nor for the Truth; He has granted him the essence of each one with a name that is not the essence of the other, nor is he the essence of the other in essence. So the beginning for the Truth is all [together] likewise, it should be transferred from us by the names of God. And when the world knew what the Truth knew, and that it was the named, and it has blessed the named, and the loss of that is from what is in his reality, so it is valid in it what is in his reality. And what was not valid for it, so we say by our naming as we said, but it is transferred from what was, and it should not. For if the beauty shines from the aspect of the removal of knowledge, there must be an intellectual grace; if not for that, the multiplicity would be lost in the essence of the One. So nothing remained in the One except His Oneness in which it is said "he is the essence of the other." This is why it is said "he is the essence of the other," he is one of the multiplicity. So whatever multiplicity is void, an alif—so they gathered upon it in its essence, and the proof only alerted to both of them, this is it, so listen. And likewise, everything beyond the form in Joseph and he prayed in the grace and the right, the friend, like that. So when truth falls upon our reason and he knows it by the place of what is in his image, the passer, and what he was upon in his image for the Truth, the one who is taken by night in him, and the one in whom he is taken by night, is not from the Names that are in him. By the essence of the night journey, a Name of the Truth speaks, whether that name is from the cosmic or spiritual objects of inheritance. For the Truth, glory be to Him, granted them the coloring of the Truth in His states, so they are in those Names, and within us is a coloring, and their identity is from the affairs which they are in for the Truth, glory be to Him; He disposes as He has right in it. It is not, and this is why we said...