so you have not departed from your kind. In reality you have worshipped only what you set up within yourself.
For this reason statements concerning God differ and states change. One group says He is such; another says He is not such, but such. One group says concerning knowledge of Him, “The water’s color is the color of its vessel.” This is an agent of effect according to evidence, yet affected, in the view of one holding this saying, in what the eye sees.
See bewilderment flowing through every belief. The complete one is he whose bewilderment is mighty, whose regret is perpetual, and whose aim is not attained, since his worshipped one is unknown. He sought to attain what cannot be attained and followed the way of One whose way he does not know.
More complete than the complete is one who holds every belief concerning Him, knowing Him in faith and evidences, and in deviation. Deviation is inclining from one belief toward a particular belief. Witness Him through every eye if you wish to reach the very entity. His self-disclosure is universal: He has a face in every form and a state in every world.
Watch if you wish, or do not watch. There is only one rewarded and one rewarding, one punishing and one punished.
End of Part One Hundred, followed by Part One Hundred and One: Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Eight, on Satisfaction.
Notlar
Translator’s note TN4160-1: The passage plays upon ʿayn as eye and the entity itself. It also preserves the sequence of the Real not being qualified by states and having a state in every world, without replacing either formulation.
Translator’s note TN4160-2: The last pair, muʿāqib/muʿāqab, has identical unvocalized spelling. It is rendered “one punishing and one punished” by context; the opposite order, paralleling rewarded/rewarding, is also possible. All four recompense roles are retained.
