Watchfulness is an imaginal descent for bringing near. The rank of the knowers of God requires that “Nothing is like His likeness” [al-Shura 42:11], so forms and likenesses disappear. The Deity’s affair is neither restricted nor held within bounds. The affair is unknown, and it becomes clear that it was not known when we believed we knew it. No positive affair is attained in knowing Him, but a realized negation and an intelligible relation yielded by effects existing in the entities.
There is no how, where, when, position, relation, accident, substance, or quantity, which is magnitude. Of the ten there remain only a realized receiving of an effect and a determined agent, or a manifest act from an unknown agent, whose effect is seen, whose account is not known, whose very entity is not known, and whose being is not unknown.
Whom, then, do you watch? There is none upon whom an eye falls, none whom imagination contains, none whom time bounds, none whom attributes and rulings make multiple, none whom states qualify,[30] none whom positions distinguish, none whom relation makes manifest. How is one who does not admit attributes to be watched? Knowledge removes imagination.
(Watchfulness and the Form of Belief)
He is the Watcher, not the watched; the Preserver, not the preserved. What a human being preserves is only his belief within his heart. That is what he has contained of his Lord.
If you watch, know whom you watch. You have not departed from yourself or known anything but your essence. The originated attaches only to what corresponds to it, what you have of Him. What you have is originated,
Notlar
[30]
(Taksīfuhu was corrected to tukayyifuhu, “qualify Him,” according to the newer edition. The phrase denies states’ qualifying Him.)
Translator’s note TN4159-1: The text negates eight items and then discusses reception of an effect and an agent or manifest act. Its fāʿil, “agent,” is retained rather than altered to another category. The watched is passive, as in source note 14:26.
