109:1 Say: “O unbelievers!”
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās said that no surah is more difficult and harsher for Satan than this surah, because it is sheer tawḥīd and disavowal of associationism. Tawḥīd is of two sorts: the tawḥīd of attestation and the tawḥīd of recognition. The tawḥīd of attestation is to say one, and the tawḥīd of recognition is known one. “To say one” is to bear witness to God’s oneness and purity in Essence and attributes. In Essence, He is pure of spouse, child, and partner, and in attributes, He is pure of similar, equal, and pointer. His attributes are not intelligible, their “how” is not understood, comprehended, or limited. They are outside of imagination and understanding, and no one knows how they are. “To know one” is to know that He is one in blessings and bounties, that the giver and bestower is He, and that He is one in apportioning and beneficence. It is He who is one in word and deed, He who is one in bounty and gentleness, He who is one in mercy and favor. He is one—gratitude and favors belong to no one but Him. No one has power and strength but He, and no one has withholding and bestowal but He.
When the rays of the sun of tawḥīd shine on the faithful, tawḥīd-voicing servant, his mark is that he is watchful over his rest and his movement. He does not take one breath without the permission of the Shariah and the Tariqah. He weighs his outwardness in the scales of the Shariah and pulls his inwardness into the playing field of the Tariqah. He keeps his center point pure of relying upon either of them, for, as has been said, “The felicitous person is he who has an outwardness conforming to the Shariah, an inwardness following the Haqiqah, and a secret core quit of relying on his Shariah and his Haqiqah.” If he should rely one iota on himself, this is sheer Zoroastrianism and utter Judaism.
O chevalier, if you fill up everything from the highest of the high to what is beneath the earth with acts of obedience and worship, that would not be equal to letting go of one iota of your selfhood so that you do not see yourself. As long as you do not consider yourself last of all in the whole world, you will not be worthy of this road.
Abu’l-Qāsim Naṣrābādī was asked, “Do you have anything of what the past shaykhs had?” He replied, “I have the pain of not finding it.” In short, you must have a heart in which there is either the pain and affliction of not finding or the happiness and exaltation of finding. “God hates the healthy and carefree.”Jesus son of Mary did not settle down anywhere and traveled around the world. When he was asked about the cause of that, he said, “I hope that I will put down my foot in a place that was reached once by the feet of someone sincerely truthful and that the place may then intercede for my sins.” If the pain of all the world’s friends and sincerely truthful were collected together, it would not reach the pain of the feet of pure Jesus, yet such was his need and burning in this road! “Our treasuries are full of acts of obedience, so you must have a bit of poverty and brokenness.”
