41:1 Ḥāʾ Mīm
In other words, all that will come to be has been decreed [ḥumm]. God is saying: “Whatever is be-able has come to be, whatever is doable I have done, whatever is runable I have run, whatever is choosable I have chosen, whatever is acceptable I have accepted, whatever is liftable I have lifted, whatever is throwable I have thrown. Whatever I wanted, I did; whatever I want, I do. When I have accepted someone, I do not look at the disloyalty I see from him. Rather, I pardon and pass over. I do not turn away from what I have said. With Me, the word does not change [50:29].”
Whomever He wanted He wanted in the Beginningless, and whomever He caressed, He caressed in the Beginningless. He did the work in the Beginningless, and today He shows what He did. He spoke the words in the Beginningless, and today He lets you hear the spoken words. He sewed the robes of honor in the Beginningless, and today He conveys them: Each day He is upon some task [55:29]. “My servant, you know Me today, but I am not of today. Your knowledge is today, but I am eternal. For some time I have been speaking to you of the mysteries, but you hear now. In the Beginningless I made the eternal hearing your deputy in listening to the beginningless word. In the Beginningless I made the eternal knowledge your deputy in knowing the beginningless attributes. When a guardian has an infant’s property, he has it as the infant’s deputy. When the infant reaches adulthood, he gives the property back to him. You were the infants of nonexistence. The eternal gentleness took care of your work and acted as your deputy. O you who await the arrival of Our gentleness! O you who look for the marks bearing witness to Our Unseen! Nothing drives friendship into your heart other than the ruling power of Our secret. No one strikes the knocker on the door of your heart other than the messenger of Our kindness.”
41:2 A sending down from the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.
This Qur’an was sent down by the Lord whose name is the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. He is the All-Merciful through kindly acts, the Ever-Merciful through lights; the All-Merciful through blessings, the Ever-Merciful through protection from sin; the All-Merciful through self-disclosure, the Ever-Merciful through befriending; the All-Merciful through alleviating acts of worship, the Ever-Merciful through verifying the most beautiful and an increase [10:26].
When the ocean of mercy sends up the waves of generosity and forgiveness, all slips and acts of disobedience cease to exist and come to nothing, for the slip is the attribute of what was not and then came to be, and the mercy is the attribute of what always was and always will be. How can what was not, then came to be, stand up to what always was and always will be?
41:10 He set in it unshakables from above it and He blessed it.
In form, the unshakable mountains are the pegs of the earth, but in reality, the friends are the pegs of the earth. It is through their blessing that rain comes from heaven and plants from the earth, and through their supplicating God, the trial is repelled from the people. The mountains are the pegs of the earth in terms of form, but God’s friends are the pegs of the earth in terms of reality. The arrangement of the work of the world is tied to the towering mountains, but the straightness of the states and means of people in terms of meaning is tied to the blessedness and supplication of the friends. In the body, they are present with the people, but in heart, they are absent from the people and present with the Real.
Abū Yazīd Basṭāmī said, “It is forty years that I have not spoken to anyone. Whatever I have said, I have said to the Real, and whatever I have heard, I have heard from the Real.” It is from here that Muṣṭafā said, “I spend the night at my Lord; He gives me to eat and drink.” He was present with the people in his person for the sake of discharging the Shariah and expanding the creed, but in his secret core, he was with the Real because of the overpowering force of love and the continuity of contemplation. When love overpowers, the lover does not become separate from the beloved. Master Abu ʿAlī Daqqāq said, “Paradise has no business with me, and hell has nothing to do with me, for there is nothing in my heart but joy in the Real’s subsistence.”
41:30 Those who have said, “Our Lord is God,” then gone straight—the angels will descend upon them saying, “Fear not and grieve not, and rejoice in the Garden that you were promised.”
Those who have said, “Our Lord is God,” is an allusion to the tawḥīd of attestation; then gone straight is an allusion to the tawḥīd of recognition. The tawḥīd of attestation belongs to the generality of the faithful, and the tawḥīd of recognition belongs to the recognizers and the sincerely truthful. The tawḥīd of attestation is that you say that God is one. The tawḥīd of recognition is that you be one for God.
Once Abū Yazīd Basṭāmī was standing in the station of knowledge and giving forth marks of the tawḥīd of attestation. A disciple said, “O shaykh! Do you recognize God?”He replied, “In the whole world is there anyone at all who does not recognize or know God?”At another time he was drowned in the ocean of the tawḥīd of recognition, incinerated by the fire of love. He was asked, “Do you recognize God?” He replied, “Who am I to recognize Him. In the whole world, is there anyone who recognizes Him?” Who am I in my passion for You that a rose should bloom in the clay of my house from joining with Your face?
The tawḥīd of recognition, which was expressed here as going straight, is that you reach the utmost limit of realization in assenting, you stroll into the gardens of the realities on the footing of truthfulness [10:2] and certainty, and you have a firmly fixed footing on the avenue of the Straight Path. You bind the collar of disengagement to the neck of solitariness, smell the rose of the recognitions from the garden of the subtleties, topple the celestial and terrestrial worlds, and say with the tongue of selflessness,
“Adam set up the banner of passion in the world
and toppled a hundred worlds of knowers.
Having breathed for a time in his own soul
he gambled away paradise and lost both worlds.”
“Companionship with the Real is two words: response and going straight response to the Covenant, and going straight in loyalty. Response is the Shariah and going straight is the Haqiqah. One can grasp a thousand years of the Shariah in an hour, but one cannot grasp an hour of the Haqiqah in a thousand years.”
The angels will descend upon them saying, “Fear not and grieve not, and rejoice in the Garden.” These great ones went by the road of straightness and took the ball of tawḥīd to the goal in the playing field of surrender. At the time of the soul’s extraction they are clothed in the robe of generosity. The angels come down from heaven and give them good news: “Fear not that friendship will be extracted, and grieve not for the sins you have sent ahead, and rejoice in the beauty of the solicitude at the beginning.”
Do not fear, for there is no fear that you will be extracted from the realm of love. Do not grieve, for you will not be taken to task for sins. Be happy, for your only escort and companion is beginningless solicitude. “Fear not, for you were fearful for a long time, and grieve not, for you were among the recognizers, and rejoice in the Garden. How excellent is the wage of the doers! [3:136].” Do not fear, O fearful, for the day of fear has come to an end! Do not grieve, O recognizers, for the time of comfort has arrived! Be happy and joyful in paradise, for the message and news of happiness have come from the Friend! O chevalier! Take care not to suppose that the yearning of those who went straight on the road of the religion, who yearned for the threshold of the Lord of the Worlds, and who were drowned in the ocean of certainty will decrease by one iota when they arrive tomorrow at the contemplation of the Possessor of Majesty. In the liver of a fish there is a heat that will not become less by one iota even if you gather all the oceans of the world. Today they are in yearning itself, and tomorrow in tasting itself on top of yearning’s burn.
Tomorrow, all the shariahs will be scratched out by the pen of abrogation. It is permissible that prayer, fasting, hajj, and struggle come to an end and be abrogated. But it will never be fitting for the pact of love and the covenant of recognition to be abrogated. When you enter paradise, every day that passes will open you up to a world of recognition of the Real that was not there before. This is a work that will never come to an end, and may it never come to an end!
