with his ears directed toward Him, his eyes lowered to the ground, the eye of his insight unobscured, his concern gathered together, and himself diminished in his own estimation. His members come together in a gathering from which a buzzing can be heard. He does not sigh, while his eyes remain fixed without movement, and familiarity does not give him presumptuous intimacy.
If he sits with Him in a specified direction, just as He spoke to him in a specified direction from an imaginal presence—like the right side of the Mount, in the blessed spot, from the tree—his hearing should remain where He has specified it. If he releases his hearing because another reality gives him freedom from restriction, when He, exalted is He, has restricted Himself to a particular side, the sitter has behaved discourteously and is not in a gathering of awe. The person in a gathering of awe is not a person of annihilation, but a person of presence or of making present. He neither gives preponderance nor wounds, neither raises a balance nor is called a human being, for the human being is a composite of opposites and differing things.
Question One Hundred and Eleven: What is the description of the dominion of bounties?
The answer:
Spiritual. For only inanimate things in particular are characterized by being a possession: they are the most obedient of creation to God, glorified is He, acknowledging that they are God's possession, glorified is He. Everything other than God is God's possession, but the excellence in being a possession is to know that one is a possession and to deal with God as one who belongs to God,
Notes
Translator’s note TN3719-1: The direction fixed by a particular divine address governs the courtesy of that encounter, even though another known reality may indicate divine freedom from directional restriction. The description expressly distinguishes this gathered presence from annihilation.
Translator’s note TN3719-2: Mulk al-ālāʾ is rendered “dominion of bounties,” in continuity with the following questions on dominion. The argument also repeatedly uses milk, possession or belonging: the decisive excellence is recognizing oneself as God's possession. The unvoweled spelling allows these related senses; it does not require reading malak, angel, in this title.
