The earth that you walk upon, dear disciple, is the visible realm. The first heaven, with respect to you, is the unseen realm. This first heaven and all its inhabitants and angels are unseen for you.

The Beloved Prophet (s) described this station by saying that, “The nearest that a servant draws unto his Lord is when he is in prostration, so make supplications abundantly [in this state]”.

The Pact (ʿahd) denotes the pure proclamation of divine oneness (tawhid), and the Litany (wird), it is a luminous flow (sarayan nurani) that extends from the heart of the Shaykh to the heart of the disciple.

He is neither conjoined with concrete entities, nor is He disjoined from them. For this reason, the reality of turning toward His Presence is not a directional or spatial orientation.

Outward existence imprints its marks upon the canvas of being. Whoever looks at outward existence with the physical eye will behold it as an engendered realm of being insofar as he affirms his own attribute of being. He will observe the individual "ships towering aloft" (Rahman 55:26) upon the visual appearance of the ocean of existence and subsistence.

Know, may God grant you success, that the majestic and sublime Essence of the Real precedes all relations and disclosures. It is above all verbal expressions, hallowed beyond all allusions. There is no way to say anything about It in any respect, for It ... is not associated with any ontological relationship. It is the object of silence because the vital breath of the letter cannot violate its sacred precinct. Thus, it cannot be qualified by an attribute nor characterized by a description.

Light is what discloses that which was concealed, and manifests that which is hidden. It is hallowed beyond quantity, quality, direction, color, and space. It is the supreme spirit that annihilates shadows. It is manifest in itself, and makes other things manifest. It is the simple and uncompounded substance (al-jawhar al-basiṭ) that is known by self-evidence. It is the riding animal (maṭiyah) of the knowers of God to the Lord of the worlds. 

The Olive Tree is the unqualified liminal reality between the Real and the created. It sustains itself and contains its own oil. The Seal of the Chosen One (khatam al-Muṣṭafa) flows through each of its branches. The Olive Tree is beyond the qualifications of necessity and possibility. It is the site of disclosure of the Perfect Human Being (al-insan al-kamil), the manifestation of the all-comprehensive totality (jami‘ al-jamiʿ), and the Vicegerent (khalifah) who brings together the separation of all of existence. 

The Resplendent Planet is the locus of manifestation of the Universal Soul (al-nafs al-kulliyah). It is the site of disclosure where the individual dots (niqaṭ) of reality join to the discontinuations of the Imaginal realm, thus assuming a shape in the sensory realm. The Resplendent Planet is where pure meaning becomes sensorial; it is where the spiritual realm (malakut) becomes physical (mulk); and the [two-dimensional] circle becomes a [three-dimensional] sphere.

The Glass Container is the subtle entity of the heart which surrounds and protects the Lamp (misbah) of eternity from the winds of temporality and the sensory impurities of spatial qualification. The zujajah, the glass, is the site of manifestation of the descents of the unseen into the visible realm. 

The miṣbaḥ is the innermost secret of the kernel of the heart. It is a subtle point of light that reaches the heart of the servant. It occurs from a Divine Name or an Attribute at the hands of a Shaykh who has attained and who enables others to attain (shaykh waṣil muṣil).

The niche is the breast of the one who finds repose in the nearness of the Real. It is the one who is receptive of the allusion of the divine command to “recite” (iqra’) that issues from the presence of union, so that his breast may expand to the vastness of the pure meanings of the Lord.

The servant’s first foot upon the Path is receiving inner visions and clearing away the darkness of existent things from his heart. Thereupon the flashes and gleams become manifest for him in a single flash. He then becomes firmly fixed in witnessing these lights and gains firmness therein.

We call Āyāt al-Nūr, the Verse of Light, āyāt al-fatḥ, the verse of opening. This is because it brings together all the levels of witnessing, al-mushāhadah, and of opening, al-fatḥ, that is hallowed beyond the disclosures of forms and of shapes.

The innermost secret is the subtle reality of divine mercy. This virgin reality is hallowed beyond the aspirations of servanthood which may deflower it. It is deposited within the kernel of the seed of the heart. The fruit that it yields is the eye-witnessing of the life-breaths of God’s exclusive singularity that flow through the locus of manifestation of the Essence when it first became determined as a distinct entity.

The provision of the Supreme Pen is light. The root of the human being is light, and his purpose is to acquire light. The veils between God and His creatures are light, and those who deny the light are journeying through the light. For where could there be darkness? Lo! Darkness is nonexistence, and nonexistence does not exist!

Iblis was a racist. He is a disclosure of the attributes of distance from God, and distance from God is none other than darkness. Iblis is the engine that drives the human soul into its darkest recesses, which God describes as the “lowest of the low” (asfal al-safilin).

The knowers of God recognized his spiritual allusion. What it means is that the one whose heart is with God is not confounded by the realities of the names.

in the beginning there were two gazes: a gaze from the Real toward creation, and a gaze from creation toward the Real. This is so that you know, O nonexistent one, that it is by the measure of the Creator’s love for you that you love the Creator.

Inner vicegerency (khilafa) is hidden from most people because it is generated and actualized by the names of the Real…You should also know that inner vicegerency is the allegiance of the cosmos to the one who, in his essence, is made by God to be a realizer of the names of the Real. Such is the one whose form combines the two bows.