Witnessing the Alif in all Letters

The Alif is a line that you can extend for as long as you please. That is why it manifests in all the letters, just as the number one manifests in all numbers. The one who gains proximity to the Alif observes all letters as Alif, but then when he looks again he reads them as Lām, and then the third time he reads them as Hāʾ. This is specific to the people of witnessing (ahl al-mushāhada). For example, if the letter Ḥāʾ appears to you and you observe it carefully until you trace it back to the treasury of the Alif, and you remain with it by virtue of love (ḥubb), then afterwards it will seem to you that it has become a Lām, and your yearning for it will increase, because the numerical value of Lām is seventy, according to the number of veils between the Real and creation. Then you will pierce through them, and you will look at the same letter as being annihilation (fanāʾ) with no existence, and at yourself the same way, and you will look at it in the Hāʾ of the name. And through this wayfaring you will read ‘Ilāh’ (Alif Lām Hāʾ).

In this manner, when the flowing of the Alif in the Ḥāʾ manifests to you, you will know its three levels of jabarūt, malakūt and mulk. That is to say, when you write the letter Ḥāʾ you can divide it into three parts. The upper part of the Ḥāʾ is jabarūt, the middle hollow is the malakūt, and the lower bow is the mulk. No one tastes the sweetness of the intermediary (wāsiṭa), or knows the Lām, except the one who becomes ‘for God’ (liʾLlāh) by withdrawing from all things other than God, becoming oblivious to the lower self, and arriving at the soul at peace (al-nafs al-muṭmaʾinna). At that time, by virtue of the rectitude (istiqāma) of the spirit, upon gazing at the Lām one sees it as an Alif because of the purity of one’s gaze, and by virtue of being oblivious to the non-existent forms. As for the one who remains with the forms, he will remain veiled.

Now, when one becomes liʾLlāh, one begins to understand why the people of God call it the Ḥāʾ of the Throne (al-Ḥāʾ al-ʿarshiyya). One begins to understand why it has the value eight in the science of numerology (ḥisāb al-jumal). One understands why God swears by it in His Holy book seven times, adding to it the Mīm al-Muḥammadī: Ḥāʾ Mīm. All of this you realize through direct witnessing; and this discourse is addressed to those who are qualified to hear it. It is in this way that you engage with all the letters: you look at them as a Hāʾ, then as a Lām, then as an Alif, and then you discover their reality.

— Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari

Taratil al-Ha'iyya