watchful within it. Know and realize this, and you will know your Lord’s affairs within yourself, in the existent things your sight perceives, in what your thought and intellect reach, in what He causes you to witness in your witnessing, and in the unseen things disclosed to you within your own being or wherever they may be. From here you know your passing thoughts.
For watchfulness came the prescribed balances. They are five: obligation, recommendation, permissibility, forbidding, and disapproval.
Watchfulness has degrees among the knowers possessing intimacy and connection, amounting to seven hundred and seventy-four. Among the knowers possessing courtesy there are three hundred and seventy-nine; among the People of Blame possessing intimacy, seven hundred and forty-three; and among their people of courtesy, three hundred and forty-eight. It has relations to the worlds: two to the world of dominion, one to the world of sovereignty among the people of courtesy in both groups, and three to the world of might among the people of intimacy.
(An Introduction to Considering This World as a Watchful Mother)
Know that, on the night I recorded this chapter, God the Exalted acquainted me with something I had not possessed, in an isthmian occurrence that came to me. I was told within it, “Have you not heard that this world is a watchful mother?” I said, “Yes.” I was told, “Then give her a section in this chapter.” I sought God’s choice concerning this.
Notes
Translator’s note TN4149-1: The watchful mother is umm raqūb, from the same root r-q-b developed through watchfulness. The degree totals are 774, 379, 743 and 348. Dominion, sovereignty and might render the world-names mulk, malakūt and jabarūt.
