الفتوحات المكية (Meccan Revelations)

...that He does not rule in you by what He desires, but by what He has legislated for you. Then, when it was said: "Judge between people with the truth, and do not follow passion" Quran 38:26—meaning, do not judge by everything that occurs to you, nor by what everyone among you desires, but judge by what God has revealed to you. God, the Exalted, said: "The best of the successors are His successors." Say, O Muhammad, judge with the Truth, meaning, push away everything that [your ego] desires. Let your judgment on the day of division in the Name be by what you have legislated for them, and by what We have sent to them; for that is what you desire, as We have sent you only as a bringer of good tidings. You have accepted our charity among them, and the argument is established against them when the Truth judges in every nation by what He sent His messenger to them. This is why it is the conclusive argument, and that is the warning to the creation regarding passion or the absolute in what they are in their own selves. Then the warning occurred for the judgment and the plot, just as He is doer of what He wills. Then, He did not judge except by what He legislated, and it is more difficult than that He, the Exalted, be asked about that, until His judgment in it is from a question of essence, just as the judgment of the servant is by what is evident from the law, from the command of his Lord in that. The absolute passions are nothing but volitions. You have known why passions were based and why the forbidden was based.

Then, know that passion, even if it is absolute, no ruling occurs to it except by a requirement. For from the aspect of the receiver, the effect occurs; the receiver must be determined. For by passion, he may desire standing and sitting from the same entity which he accepts alternately, in the state of the existence of each one of them in that entity. The receiver does not accept except that, so passion became a collection, not the absolute. When it accepted alteration and the receiver, we knew that this acceptance has a formal essential statement. The reason for its diversification is in the shadow, and the ruling of the receiver in passion appeared by its appearance and the absolute will. Whoever is described by it, then to him belongs the likely "vicegerency" God referring to the human soul's capacity as a divine representative. The speaking soul, or the successor, said: "Whatever you will," creating within it spiritual, meaningful powers that make it understand, even if these powers are the essence of the one described by them, like the divine names and attributes, whose multiplicity returns to relations in one essence that does not accept multiplicity in its essence, and to the existing entity that has number. So it was from the powers that God created in this successor—in the Perfect Man—and the animal, and it is the absolute animal, the human—powers called imagination, and powers called thought, and a power called the thought. He distinguished the three presences in this successor and appointed him over them: the presence of the sensible things, and the presence of the meanings abstracted in themselves from materials, even if some of them do not appear except in materials presence of the khayal imagination. He made the imagination a presence intermediate between the two ends of the sensible and the meaningful. It is the treasury of the hidden things that the senses perceive. He placed in it a formative power under the rule of the intellect and the wahm delusive faculty/estimative power. The intellect and the wahm act in it by command. And powers in these three: the authority of the wahm over the intellect. He did not place in the power of the intellect, from one aspect, except in non-material, like the attributes attributed to Him, which are transcendent from being material, or in some material. So its knowledge of what is attributed to it is not material, nor is it attributed to a material.

So there was no power in the intellect, with its knowledge of this—since it informed it—to change except by forming. This forming is from the ruling of the wahm over it, because it is its ruling. The sensible rises to the imagination by what it perceives, and leaves the formed image in the imagination—what its state is, which has no existence in the sensible from the aspect of its totality. But from the aspect of the parts of that totality, if the formative power has formed that from the command of the intellect, the power of thought has imitated the intellect in the knowledge of what it commanded, and the knowledge is restricted to that. If what the formative power formed was from the command of the wahm, from the aspect of what the intellect acted upon from the ruling of the wahm—knowing the wahm itself—that image does not remain, for the wahm is quick to vanish, it has no absolute [stability], unlike the intellect, so it prefers its sensible, its support. Since the ruling of the wahm is dominant over the creation, due to the authority of the wahm over the intellect, it affected it that it does not accept a meaning of knowledge definitively? that it is not a material, nor in a material, except by forming. So that which is formed is not from the image which it judges, except the wahm. So the intellect became restricted by the wahm, without doubt, in what it solves of knowledge by reflection. As for its knowledge of the necessary, the wahm has no authority in it. By it, one knows that there are meanings that are not materials, nor in essences of materials, even if it does not accept them by reflection except in materials from behind a thin veil that the wahm gives it. When the Truth knew what He mounted upon the created world, from what we have mentioned, He sent the messengers to the people and the angels. They stood in the presence of the imagination, specifically, to gather between the two ends: between the meanings and the sensibles. It is the appointment of the message. They said to some of the people of this presence: "Worship God as if you see Him" referring to the Hadith of Ihsan. Then He alerted this addressed one, charged with other than this estimation, to another matter, more subtle than it, because He knew that there were men who knew that there were meanings abstracted from materials. So He said to him: "If you do not see Him"—meaning, stand with your evidence which informed you that you do not see Him—for it means: "God sees you." Meaning, hold fast to modesty from Him, and standing when He charged you. So he entered into the address to the ruling of the wahm, more subtle than the first ruling. He alerted this charged one to know that He sees him, either by His beauty or by the word of the Law. In every way, the wahm must be determined. For the servant is in a state where God sees him, so He brought him out of him. It became correct? when He distinguished him with his knowledge that "there is nothing like unto Him" Quran 42:11 by other than Him. This freedom flows in the luminous, fiery, and earthy world, because the world did not appear except by what is in the divine knowledge, and what is in the knowledge does not change. The divine essence informs by its essence of its restriction, and the saying of other than the absolute, and from it, by the occurrence. So you knew the cause of freedom in existence, what it is. God, the Exalted, said: "The word is not changed with Me" Quran 50:29, meaning what the knowledge judged and the Book preceded by it. We have finished with knowledge and the Book, since it had the ruling, and the successors are only the locus of knowledge and the Book. So the world and the Book are two veils upon the Truth, which is independent of the worlds. So the return of the created order is to knowledge and the Book. So passions are correct with their absoluteness by what the intellects produce with their restriction. So no for us? ruling is safe at all without the wahm in this origin, because the origin is for them, birth upon what is in present?.