The letters of “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” signify the ranks of the Qāʾim of religion. Praise belongs to God, who has made the truth a refuge for whoever adheres to its obligations and covenants, and made abasement the lot of whoever denies the rights of His religion and the duties owed to its ranks. Through the truth He has ordained the curse upon accursed Iblīs and his soldiers. Peace from the glorious and mighty Lord upon the Imam who stands for tawḥīd and points toward Him through the true transcendence and stripping away of attributes; and the Lord's mercy and blessings upon the springs of wisdom, His friends in every renewed age.
Now then: the tawḥīd of our Lord—exalted are His favors—is the greatest object of search, the most precious treasure, and the most honorable acquisition. It is the fruit of the religious devotions practiced in vanished ages and the just balance by which heaven and earth are established. Through sound tawḥīd pure souls attain eternal reward and ultimate perfection; through failure to attain it, corrupted souls remain in punishment, shame, and an evil destination.
Tawḥīd of our Lord—glorious is His power—is the first of obligations and the reality of religions. As one who pointed to His unity and declared Him free of the qualities of His creatures and servants said: the beginning of religion is knowledge of God; the perfection of knowing Him is the completion of His tawḥīd; and the perfection of His tawḥīd is to deny Him the attributes of created beings. Sound intellects testify that the attribute is other than the one described, and the one described is other than the attribute. Knowledge, however, concerns what has been witnessed and seen.
The written text, in the section concerning the Imam, says: “They recognize God's favor and then deny it.” They recognize the one being pointed toward insofar as He exists, yet they do not know the reality of tawḥīd. They reject the favor that God granted them because their intellects have not grasped the completeness and order of unity, nor how to declare Him free of the attributes of creatures and servants. The adherents of all religious sects admit a Worshipped One, yet deny Him when summoned to knowledge of actual existence. They admit that they have a Maker and Creator; when called to recognize His unity, however, they deny His existence.
All those religious communities make worship obligatory for themselves, hoping through it for reward and fleeing punishment. Intellect decisively judges and bears witness that reward cannot be established without knowledge of the one who rewards. Creation needs to know the Rewarder more urgently than it needs to know His reward.
Moreover, adherents of the earlier laws and doctrines, and all who claim to turn toward the unity of the Lord, regard their most distinctive act of tawḥīd as denying Him quality, boundary, description, bodily vision, and related things. But their denial of these properties amounts, to pointing toward His nonexistence: they say that eyes cannot encompass Him. According to their own logic, if He does not exist, there is no excellence in their eyes' inability to encompass Him; their vision fails only because of His absence. And if He exists, why should they claim that seeing eyes cannot perceive Him?
By God, the highest proof of His power and the most powerful demonstration of His divinity is that He be existent among His creatures. Yet each party declares His unity and transcendence only to the degree of knowledge and illumination it has received. If our Lord exists—as ordinary discourse permits us to say—then the one who declares Him free of attributes, limits, and descriptions while affirming His existence performs a noble act of transcendence and earns lasting reward through penetrating understanding. In contrast, the one whose understanding is too coarse and who likens the Lord to creatures and servants is liable to punishment. If the Lord were nonexistent, proof against creation would collapse, and all would have an excuse for giving up the search for truth.
This agrees with words transmitted among people: God does not hide Himself from His creatures; rather, their own deeds hide Him from them. Another saying is: if they truly knew God they would not worship Him. And the written revelation declares: “How many signs in the heavens and earth do they pass by, turning away from them! Most of them do not believe in God without associating partners with Him.”
I have thus presented, concerning the assertion of the Lord's existence in language that can be spoken, enough to satisfy a person who understands the meanings and is granted success in grasping them. I do not ascribe any of this to myself or claim that I explain it by my own power and strength. Whatever in this epistle is correct and eloquently expressed comes from the blessing of the Qāʾim of the Age, the Guardian of favor and beneficence. Whatever is mistaken or badly said falls upon me alone. I seek pardon from the one who knows my inner thoughts better than I do, and beg him to guide me to the soundest and straightest road.
As for declaring the Lord free of attributes, His greatness is beyond what pens can trace or tongues can encompass with speech. Only someone who has been granted the good promise by the Guardian of his age and has lifted his gaze toward the highest assembly can make some indication of it. That is so when the person's intention has been purified of doubt and his inner disposition toward the brethren of religion has become sound, in accordance with his rank and degree in transcendence and abstraction. People must differ in rank; this difference makes just reward and punishment possible according to their true deeds.
I say, then, that all the scholars of earlier times—the logicians, philosophers, astrologers, those who claim the Twelve Imams, the followers of earlier laws and schools, the hostile literalists and traditionists—remain within the degrees of their own sciences. Some speak of Firsts and Seconds and the arrangement of expressions and their meanings. Others speak of heavenly spheres, governing bodies, generated beings, and elemental mothers. Others speak of Gabriel, Michael, and the spiritual angels. Still others speak of transmitted reports and things known by hearing. Each party believes these are higher realities and that the human being stands below them, since he is only one of the things produced in the world.
Yet if a rational person employs his thought upon their realities, he finds that the things generated by those principles consist only of animals, dead or living, inert matter, and plants. Were all religious communities to strive to invent so much as one letter added to or subtracted from the order of what I have described, the visible facts would defeat them and demonstration would prove their inability. Each of them would have to concede that what they call the higher causes are, in their conception, the divine things themselves.
We therefore ask every one of these parties to judge by its own intellect, its own objects of devotion, and the principles it treats as real. By what has humanity been distinguished above all other generated kinds, and raised until it joins the highest degree of originating? We oblige them, through what they themselves acknowledge of higher lights, divine truths, and spiritual sciences, to answer that humanity surpasses the other created kinds through the powers it has acquired. The truth deserves to be followed.
We ask them further about the reality of this bringing-into-existence: how does it become established, who laid its foundation, who prepared it, who is its source and who unfolds its consequences? The evident truth and a sound demonstration compel them, according to this argument, to answer: it is the Imam of the Age, the one who openly declares and explains, in every season and time. Such a matter cannot be accomplished without an intermediary. For this reason the people of the religious laws await that one, and profess their belief in him.
We also ask them to compare two creations. The first is the spiritual creation, the reality of the things to be served and the just balance for those of earth and heaven. The second is the corporeal creation, bodies, implements, instruments, composite limbs, and lights attached to dense, inert things. Which of the two has the better claim to association with divine things? They fall short of answering or fail to understand what is right. All things, however, can be divided into the excellent and the inferior, and the inferior follows the excellent.
These are two limits or ends. The end of religion is the Imam, the possession of our worshipped and transcendent Lord; the end of physical objects and compounds is below His servants, the ranks. Everything to which those scholars point consists of bodies, natural dispositions, things receiving those dispositions, substances, and lifeless matter. The human being, by contrast, has been joined to what is higher through nearness to the eternal, discovery of the truth, and connection with subtle spiritual matters. Bodily objects stand within his comprehension because of the divine matters with which he is joined. I have clarified this form of tawḥīd and demonstrated it through the favor of the Guardian of blessing, the Imam who stands for truth and extends mercy to his friends.
If an objector says, “When you count the visible manifestations in all past ages, you multiply the deity, deny Him, and associate others with Him; but if you dismiss those manifestations without proof, you disbelieve, reject what has been plainly seen, and abolish the truth. Tell me the right answer,” we reply: tawḥīd of the Lord is not achieved by looking with the eyes or by the words and expressions of speech. The one given success in it employs his intellect upon the reality of unity; his soul becomes pure and ascends to true transcendence. He frees himself from enclosing past ages within his conception, neither admitting a plurality of deities nor forming images of numbers in the One worshipped. Instead he reaches transcendence and abstraction, free from denial, comparison, and limitation. This saying refreshes the hearts of those who understand and polishes the souls of those who possess unity and knowledge.
I now address those who believe in the Imamate, those encompassed by the noble Call of Truth, and judge them by what was taught in the honored gatherings in reference to our age. It was said there that when the Qāʾim appears he stands for oneness, and after his appearance there is no further religious work in his time. Another gathering said: “Through tawḥīd I knew all things; it was not through things that I came to know tawḥīd.” Yet another taught: “Tawḥīd is a gift from the One to the Unitarians.”
According to those who teach the Imamate, the One in every age and time is the Imam, and what he entrusts of religion to the world is truth, for he is intellect and the source of understanding for those who take refuge in him, withdrawing from misleading passions and keeping the straight way. Hence every person of discernment should know that the One from whom tawḥīd is a gift to the Unitarians is the Imam, the servant of our Lord—exalted be His remembrance. He is the Qāʾim who stands for oneness: that is, who summons people to the tawḥīd of our Lord and declares our Lord beyond comparison. He is the Qāʾim after whose appearance no further work remains in his age.
Here lies the error of those who deny our Lord and His ranks. They fail to distinguish Him from His servants. They associate others with Him, arrogantly oppose and deny the guiding Qāʾim, and resist the truth through disbelief. They neither worship the Lord by affirming and declaring His unity and transcendence, nor know the just Imam through whom they might approach knowledge of the Lord and obey Him. Instead they hurl accusations at the Imam and his ranks, refuse him, and turn from justice toward oppression, folly, and ignorance. This is the cycle of Resurrection: deeds come out into the open, the intentions of those who profess reality are uncovered, and the previously concealed rebellion of the covenant-breakers becomes plain.
When we examined the beliefs of all who speak of worshipping the One, we found humanity divided into three classes. The first seeks Him through sight and direct sensory vision. The second seeks Him through words, dialectic, and verbal propositions. The third denies that these modes can encompass Him and affirms His unity through intellect, as expressed by the saying that tawḥīd is the gift of the One to the Unitarians. When asked what that gift is, the reply is “the final intellect.”
The first class consists of the people of revelation and religious laws. The sensory eye perceives a thing in its outward form, neither adding nor subtracting; likewise they adhere to the form of what was revealed. The second class, seeking unity through words and dialectic, consists of the interpreters, who add and subtract in the way that expressions and verbal formulations can add and subtract.
The third class consists of those who affirm the unity of our Lord in their hearts and declare Him transcendent through sound thought and intellect. They do not derive unity from visual shapes or pictures, or from verbal containment and enumeration. Through sound thinking they affirm it, declare Him free of everything imagined by the first two classes, and deny that He is nonexistent. Without the denial and comparison made by those two classes, there would be no distinction belonging to the people of true unity and transcendence. If the Lord were nonexistent, no proof would stand against negligent unbelievers and innovators; if He existed only in the manner the others imagine, all adherents of the laws would be equal in tawḥīd.
God Most High said: “Are those who know equal to those who do not know? Only those possessed of understanding take heed.” And He said: “You see them looking at you, but they do not perceive.” This indicates the spiritual ranks while declaring the existent and powerful One beyond them. As for the hostile literalists and traditionists, the references in scripture to a hand, an eye, and a side suffice as indications of existence and signs pointing to the one Worshipped.
The challenger continued, in the manner of examination, to put the Possessor of Unveiling to the test through outward presentation and description. Then a company of the noble appeared: they refrained from finding fault in fellowship and from tale-bearing, attained the utmost generosity, and received those of the intimate companions appointed to them. They proceeded toward what was unseen, directing their faces toward it, with mercy set before them.
As for what came in the Gatherings of Wisdom, pointing to our own time—what has passed and what lies ahead—consider what was recited in another gathering: “When the house had been established among the company who had set out, they disclosed what had already been done. They counted those who had purified themselves and those believers who had gathered to their Lord; the light and radiance that came upon them increased. They began openly to confront the hypocrites and waited for permission until the outward command and its forerunner came to them, gladdening the eyes and soothing the breast.” These things have been witnessed and seen. Those who carried them out are known, as is the command by which they were made manifest.
I have completed the argument I intended and conveyed what I had to say. I have summoned people to our exalted Lord with clear signs and demonstrated wisdom. It is as the saying speaks of a day when a caller calls to a strange and unrecognized thing: you have seen and heard it; you were summoned to tawḥīd and rejected it. You stood before the truth, denied it, and maligned it.
Come, then, believers, to the Qāʾim who upholds manifest truth! Come to the Judge of the Day of Judgment! Come to what you have been promised with certainty of sight! Come, thirsty ones, to sweet water and the true flowing spring! The approaching Hour has approached, and none but God can uncover it. Do you not see those who deny the truth wandering in idle discourse and play? Long shall they weep while they are silent.
Do you marvel at this discourse, laugh, and fail to weep, while you remain heedless? Prostrate yourselves to God and worship. The truthful messenger's task is only clear proclamation. Praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds; peace upon the Qāʾim of Truth, the Guardian of religion, and mercy upon his pure and near ranks. He suffices His weak and acquired servant, and through Him I seek help. He suffices me, the best Helper and Protector. Praise belongs to our Lord alone, who has neither partner nor another worshipped beside Him.