response when those who ask make their request, for He is responsive only to a request.
When the request necessitates the response, the response is an effect within the responsive one. This is the divine trace. Our proof of it is, “When My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I answer the caller’s call when he calls Me” [al-Baqara 2:186]. Since the affair is of this description in itself in the divine Side, the effect also appears in the world. Were it otherwise, something would appear in the world with no support in the divine Side, so ignorance of it would be attributed to Him. It has been established that His knowledge of the world is His knowledge of Himself. The trace and mark rest upon this divine reality. The Folk’s statement that mark and trace proceed according to how they proceeded in beginningless eternity may concern their ruling in the divine Side, since the world is manifest in a form of the Real.
This chapter admits no more exposition than this. Its detail would be as lengthy as the world, and effects in the world have no end. “God speaks the truth and He guides the way” [al-Ahzab 33:4].
Chapter Two Hundred and Eighteen: On Gnosis of Contraction and Its Mysteries, Briefly and in General
