in intellectual existence. Every multiplicity of these possesses a oneness specific to it. In every case the Real required His servant to remain after his Creator’s rank, just as He, glorified is He, placed our knowledge of Him after our knowledge of ourselves. Our temporally originated knowledge of Him follows in existence our temporally originated knowledge of ourselves.
(Self-Knowledge and Indication of the Real)
He placed comparison in excellence among the world’s parts so that we might know comparison in excellence through tasting from ourselves, and from this know the Real’s excellence over us. Our knowledge of Him comes after our self-knowledge so that we know our self-knowledge is only to indicate our knowledge of Him. We know that we are sought for Him, not for ourselves or our entities, since the indication is sought for what it indicates, not for itself.
For this reason indication and indicated never come together. Creation and the Real therefore never come together in any aspect. The servant is servant through himself, and the Lord is Lord through Himself. Servanthood is possible only for one who knows it and knows it contains nothing of Lordship. Lordship is possible only for One who knows it and knows it contains nothing of servanthood.
(Prayer and the Meaning of Coming After)
(The Real) required His servants to remain after His Lordship and prescribed prayer for the servant so that He might name him musalli, the one praying and coming after,[1] the one after his Lord’s rank. He attributed prayer to Himself, exalted is He, to make known that the affair requires temporally originated knowledge of Him to come after temporally originated knowledge of the creature. He said, ‘He is the One who sends prayers upon you, as do His angels’ [al-Ahzab 33:43], and, ‘Pray to your Lord’ [al-Kawthar 108:2].
Notes
[1]
(The author uses musalli here as ‘the one coming after,’ upon which he builds the consideration of the servant’s rank and his knowledge of his Lord coming afterward.)
