28:85 He who made the Qur’an obligatory upon thee shall restore thee to a place of return.
Outwardly, the place of return is Mecca. The Prophet often used to say, “The homeland! The homeland!” and God made his request into reality. In secret and allusion, however, the meaning is this: “He appointed for you the attributes of dispersion so that you may convey the message and spread the Shariah. He will restore you to togetherness through your realization of annihilation from creation.” As long as Muṣṭafā was busy conveying the message, spreading the Shariah, and laying down the foundations of the religion, he was in the station of dispersion for the sake of the people’s salvation. With this verse, he was taken from the narrow pass of dispersion to the vast plain of togetherness, the drinking place of His elect. Thus he said, “No one embraces me in my present moment save my Lord.”
When someone’s togetherness is sound, dispersion will not harm him. When someone’s lineage is sound, recalcitrance will not cut it off. Speaking of togetherness is not the work of the tongue, and expressing its reality is calumny. How can the one destroyed by the ocean of trial explain? What mark has he who has drowned in annihilation itself? This is the talk of the heart’s resurrection and the spirit’s plundering. With the onslaught of union, what can be done by heart and eyes? When someone is bewildered in the breeze of his own union, his spirit has long been in hock to beginningless love. May he be lost-hearted, for he is wailing in the tracks of the heart! May he be lost-spirited, for he regrets traveling to the Friend!”
28:88 Everything is perishing but His face; to Him belongs the decree, and to Him you will be returned.
Whatever was not, then came to be, is under the sway of disappearance and the blow of annihilation. Yesterday it was not and tomorrow it will not be. But in the Essence and attributes of self-sufficiency, the Unity’s majesty subsists and lasts. He is alive before all the living, the Lord of life and the living, inheritor of the world and the world’s folk, subsistent after the world’s folk and the world—the return of everything and all creatures is to Him everlastingly.
“O God, O knower of everything, maker of every work, and keeper of all, no one is Your partner and none are without the need for You. You work with wisdom, you act with gentleness. There is neither injustice nor games. O God, the servant knows nothing of the whyness of Your work, and no one rules over You. You have made the suitable things and have wanted the riches. Not from anyone to You, not from You to anyone—all are from You in You, all is You, and that’s it.” Is not everything but God unreal? God, and that’s it—attachments cut, causes dissolved, traces nullified, creatures negated, and the one Real subsisting in His rightful due.
