like a running bird: a busy mouth and a foot on the move.” All this belongs to the greatest states of the men of the path with God. For the great one among them treats every abode according to what it deserves, and the realized person can treat this worldly abode only as this shaykh has described.
If someone in this abode displays conduct contrary to this, one knows that a claim of the self must be present—unless he has been commanded to do what appears from him, as is the case with the messengers and prophets, peace be upon them. Some of their heirs may also receive such a command at a certain time. This is a hidden ruse, for it is a departure from the station of servanthood for which the human being was created.
(The Secret of the Dwelling and the Dwellings, and the One within Number)
As for the secret of the dwelling and the dwellings, it is the Real’s appearance through self-disclosure in the forms of everything other than Him. Without His self-disclosure to each thing, that thing’s thingness would not appear. He says, exalted is He: “Our saying to a thing, when We will it, is only that We say to it, ‘Be!’” [al-Nahl 16:40]. His words “when We will it” are the divine turning toward bringing that thing into existence. Then He says, “that We say to it, ‘Be!’” The thing’s very hearing of the Real’s address is its coming into being.
This is like the permeation of the one through the stations of number. Numbers appear without end through the presence of the one in these stations. Were its entity not present within them, the entities of numbers would not appear, nor would they have a name. Were the one to appear by its own name in this—
Notlar
Translator’s note TN753-1: The opening continues Abu al-Suʿud’s saying on the preceding page. The compressed bird simile is rendered as a bird running along, retaining the contrast between its occupied mouth and moving foot.
