The Wise Lord, the renowned and tremendous all-compeller, the enactor, the knowing keeper of servants, is reminding the children of Adam of His favors. He is teaching them about His good Godhood and His holding to the Covenant. He is saying, “I created you, and I sculpted your beautiful faces. I drew your tall statures and gave you two seeing eyes, two listening ears, and a speaking tongue. I am the Lord who makes being from nonbeing, who brings forth what is from what was not, and who makes things newly from the outset. The painter of faces is I, the adorner of beauties is I, the one who pairs everything with its companion is I, the maker of every being in a fitting way is I. I created heaven, earth, and the inanimate things to manifest power. I created the angels, satans, and jinn to manifest awe. I created Adam and the Adamites to manifest forgiveness and mercy.
7:11 We created you, then We formed you, then We said to the angels, “Prostrate yourselves before Adam.”
“For 700,000 years Gabriel, Michael, Seraphiel, the Cherubim, the Circlers, and the Row-keepers circumambulated the Kaaba of All-Compellingness saying ‘The Glorified! The Holy!’ They never gained access to or recognized My names of love, loving-kindness, and friendship. They never had the gall to claim friendship with Me, but I claimed friendship with the dust-dwellers: We are your friends [41:31]. He loves them [5:54]. I derived several of My names from My friendship and loving-kindness toward them: the Forgiving, the Loving, the Clement, the Ever-Merciful. To the angels, I showed only severity and all-compellingness. I kept them behind the veils of awe. To the dust-dwellers, I showed only clemency and mercy. I kept them on the carpet of expansiveness.”
Among the angels, Gabriel was honored and foremost, and he was singled out for the special favors of proximity. His name was Servitor of the All-Merciful. He was standing constantly on the carpet of justice with the attribute of awe. He had never seen the carpet of bounty and expansiveness. Before Adam the Chosen came, there was no separation or union, no rejection or acceptance. These wonders and storehouses all pertain to the register of passion. Other than Adam’s heart, there was no oyster shell for the pearl of love. Everyone came by the road of creation, and he alone came by the road of love: He loves them, and they love Him [5:54].
From the angels there was nothing other than glorifying and hallowing—their work was one color. The wonders of service, the courteous acts of companionship, the storehouses of affection, the subtleties of love—all appeared with Adam, for he was the chameleon of predetermination.
Then We said to the angels, “Prostrate yourselves before Adam.” The angels were commanded to prostrate themselves before Adam. The secret here is that the angels were looking at their own ceaseless worship with the eye of high regard and giving great weight to their own glorifying and hallowing. That is why they said, “We glorify Thy praise and call Thee holy” [2:30]. The Majesty of Unity, the Side of All-Compellingness, showed them Its exalted and endless unneediness toward the obedience of all the obedient and the worship of all the heaven-dwellers. It said, “Go, prostrate yourselves before Adam, and do not give your prostration any weight in the Exalted Presence. I still had not written out an existence for the existent things when My majesty witnessed My beauty. In My own Selfhood, I was enough for Myself. Today that I have created the creatures, I am the same Exalted One that I was. I have no need to join the faith and obedience of newly arrived things to My beginningless majesty.”
Listen to another subtle point from the secrets of We created you, then We formed you, then We said to the angels, “Prostrate yourselves to Adam”: The Adamite is body and spirit, and what lies beyond body and spirit cannot be brought into expression.
He said to the body, “We created you,” and He said to the spirit, “then We formed you.” This is just what He said elsewhere: “We created man from an extraction of clay” [23:12]; again He said, “Then We configured him as another creature” [23:14].
Know also that these houses of the creatures were brought out from seventy thousand curtains of light and darkness. The report speaks of this: “God has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness.” Whatever is light is the seed of the goodly word [14:24] and whatever is darkness is the seed of the vile word [14:26] Then all were covered with dust, and dust became the curtain for all. In all this one wonders who is the storehouse of secrets? For whose home is that hidden pearl prepared?
In the age of Adam the chosen, the exaltedness of the religion shone from the tower of his eminence. Everyone came to see with his own coin, and Adam was the touchstone. And Adam disobeyed [20:121] was the blackness of the touchstone. All struck their coin against the touchstone so that it would be clear what their coin was. With the coin of fancy, the Higher Plenum saw that We glorify Thy praise [2:30]. Iblis the Abandoned saw that I am better [38:76]. Right there he was a verified thorn and a false rose. He pulled out the rose and threw it away, and the thorn remained in the eye of fancy.
For seventy thousand years, that abandoned and rejected one was the guest of fancy. In himself, he was sure that his quarry was gold and he was the Red Sulfur. When he struck his coin against the touchstone of Adam’s limpidness, his coin came out counterfeit. In his own quarry, he saw naphtha and tar; in place of gold, he saw black jet. It has been said that Iblis deserved to be cursed and abandoned by the Court of Unneediness for five things, and in contrast, Adam found the Real’s generosity, the light of guidance, and the acceptance of repentance for five things.
One is that Iblis “did not acknowledge his sin.” Pride did not let him come forward with acknowledgment. But Adam came back with the attribute of incapacity and acknowledged his sin. Second, “He did not regret what he had done” and did not apologize, but Adam regretted his own deed, apologized and pleaded. Third, “He did not blame himself.” In that disobedience, he did not take himself on and did not blame himself, but Adam turned back on himself and blamed himself for abasement. Fourth, “He did not see that it was necessary for him to repent,” nor did he apologize or plead. But Adam knew that repentance was the key to felicity and the interceder for mercy, so he considered it necessary for himself. He hurried and did not look back until he saw the face of acceptance. Fifth, “He despaired of God’s mercy.” That ill-fortuned one did not know that one despairs of the base, but the Exalted Lord is not base. And just as there is no despair, so there is no security, for one feels secure from the incapable, and God is not incapable. So, when that wretched one despaired, the door to repentance was shut to him. But Adam did not despair. He bound his heart to mercy and forgiveness. He wept and moaned at the threshold of Unneediness until mercy and forgiveness arrived.
