The Foundations of the Quranic World - 1. Man, God's Vicegrent
In both worlds, everywhere are the marks of love; man himself is a mystery of love.
Love’s secret belongs not to the world of wombs, not to Shem or Ham, Greece or Syria:
a star without East and West, a star unsetting in whose orbit is neither North nor South.
The words I am setting tell his destiny, their exegesis reaches from earth to heaven.
Death, grave, uprising, judgment are his estates, the light and fire of the other world are his works;
himself is Imam, prayer and sanctuary, himself the Ink, himself the Book and the Pen.
Little by little what is hidden in him becomes visible; it has no boundaries, its kingdom no frontiers.
His being gives value to contingent things, his equilibrium is the touchstone of contingent things.
What shall I declare of his sea without a shore? All ages and all times are drowned in his heart.
That which is contained within man is the world, that which is not contained within the world is man.
Sun and moon are manifest through his self display; even Gabriel cannot penetrate his privacy.
Loftier than the heavens is the station of man, and the beginning of education is respect for man.
Man alive in heart, do you know what thing life is? One seeing love that is contemplating duality:
man and woman are bound one to the other, they are the fashioners of the creatures of desire.
Woman is the guardian of the fire of life, her nature is the tablet of life’s mysteries;
she strikes our fire against her own soul and it is her substance that makes of the dust a man.
In her heart lurk life’s potentialities, from her glow and flame life derives stability;
she is a fire from which the sparks break forth, body and soul, lacking her glow, cannot take shape.
What worth we possess derives from her values for we are all images of her fashioning;
if God has bestowed on you a glance aflame cleanse yourself, and behold her sanctity.
You from whose faith the present age has taken all fire, now I will tell you openly the secrets of the veil.
The joy of creation is a fire in the body and society is lightened by that light,
and whosoever takes any portion of that fire watches jealously over his private passion;
all the time he fixes his gaze on his own image lest his tablet should receive any other image.
Mohammed chose solitude upon Mount Hira and for a space saw no other beside himself;
our image was then poured into his heart and out of his solitude a nation arose.
Though you may be an unbeliever in God, yet you cannot gainsay the Prophet’s glory.
Though you possess a soul illumined as Moses, yet without solitude your thoughts remain barren;
by isolation the imagination becomes more vivid, more vivid, more questing, more finding.
Science and passion are both stations of life both take a share of the impact of events.
Science derives pleasure from verification, love derives pleasure from creativeness.
Display is very precious to the verifier, to the creator solitude is very precious.
The eye of Moses desired to behold Being— that was all part of the pleasure of verification;
thou shalt not see Me contains many subtleties— lose yourself a little while in this sea profound.
On all sides life’s traces appear unveiled, its fountain wells up in the heart of creation.
Consider the tumult that rages through all horizons; inflict not on the Creator the trouble of display—
solitude is the protection of every artist, solitude is the bezel in the artist’s ring.