he may fall into a prohibition graver than that of which he repented. Let him not be heedless of this.
Royal medicine is used only by the masters among those who know God, the men of God whose hearing, sight, and tongue the Real is. It is His saying after “Let not some of you backbite others” [al-Hujurat 49:12], “Would one of you love to eat his dead brother’s flesh? You would abhor it.” This is a general address. He then says, “Be wary of God.” This is the medicine, meaning: take Him as protection between yourselves and these blameworthy matters, including backbiting.
(Godwariness as Taking Protection)
When you take Him as a shield, the arrows of these acts strike it in turn. It is strong: the arrows do not penetrate it, and the one guarded through it is within its protection. The Real does not become protection for the servant until the servant clothes himself in Him, just as one seeking protection clothes himself in shields such as fortified armor. The form of his clothing himself is that the Real becomes his hearing, tongue, all his faculties, and his members as they act in what they are for. He thus becomes entirely light.
God therefore pointed in His Book to these royal, sovereign diseases,[12] as in His saying, exalted is He, “He inspired it with its depravity” [al-Shams 91:8]—backbiting belongs to depravity—“and its Godwariness,” meaning what it takes as protection from this depravity. He did not make depravity one of its attributes, but made it something placed within it
Notes
[12]
(The newer edition also gives “diseases,” al-adwaʾ, here. The transmitted reading is retained and has not been replaced conjecturally by “medicines,” al-adwiya.)
Translator’s note TN4100-1: The text’s adwaʾ means diseases, not adwiya, medicines. The anomalous wording is retained both here and in the following page, in accordance with the original editorial note. Godwariness is interpreted through taking the Real as protection or a shield.
