by certainty in this verse. The truest meanings are those subsisting in meanings. For us this question belongs to the intellects’ bewilderments, concerning which we judge nothing. Some among us place it with the impossible, while others consider it possible and occurring.
In general, certainty is rare in customary natural affairs, for habit steals away the natural disposition, especially in matters sustaining the natural body. When one lacks the means of reaching what sustains it, he suffers pain. Pain does not impair certainty, for it is not its opposite.
Yet scarcely does anyone in pain fail to become disturbed and move within himself, especially through the pain of hunger, thirst, cold, and heat. Disturbance opposes certainty, for certainty is the soul’s rest in the One who holds these affairs that remove these pains. The person suffering naturally desires their speedy removal.
(Certainty’s Attachment to the Divine Side)
In this case we follow a path concerning certainty different from what the people of the path imagine: disturbance does not impair certainty when certainty’s stirring to remove those pains is directed toward the Real’s side, not toward the causes that customarily remove them. If the Real wills, He removes them through those causes, by bringing those causes into existence for the person; if He wills, He removes them otherwise. Certainty’s object of attachment is thus the divine Side alone. This may be frequent among God’s men.
The degrees of
