to the Most Holy Presence in His joy at His servant’s repentance and His welcoming delight toward whoever comes to His House. These are divine states in which one must have faith. Their manner cannot be understood except by someone whom God singles out for them and whose movement in listening is divine. They belong to the sciences that can be attained but cannot be expressed.
The report of the descent to the lowest heaven every night does not resemble this joy or welcoming delight. This joy arises from a created cause whose existence has appeared and to which the Real listened, whereas the descent to the lowest heaven concerns something anticipated, rather than something that has occurred. The first thus belongs to the domain of listening, while the second does not. Know this.
We have linked listening to what properly belongs to it and established its reality. We have left no section or division of it unmentioned, using the most concise expression, so that one may stop at it. Its stories are many and need not be related. This book of ours is founded upon establishing the principles of things, rather than upon stories, for books are full of those. “God speaks the right, and He guides the way” [al-Aḥzāb 33:4].
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty-Three: Knowing the Station of Leaving Listening
God, God! No intellect gives Him a form,
while imagination worships Him in human form.
Revealed law leaves Him unrestricted at one time and confines Him at another,
while created existence affirms Him in all forms.
Notes
Translator’s note TN4804-1: The compact phrase ẓahara wujūduhu samiʿa al-Ḥaqq ʿalayhi is rendered as the Real’s listening in connection with the manifested created cause. Its precise syntactic linkage is not explicit.
