Whatever is right and eloquent in this discourse comes through his blessing and through holding fast to his ranks and signs; whatever is mistaken or wayward arises from my own weakness and shortcomings. I say, and He it is who grants right guidance: My Lord suffices me, and excellent is the Helper and Supporter. Upon Him I rely, and through Him I seek assistance in every affair.
The spiritual persons are known to most of the world only by names that people imagine without verifying their reality. People suppose that there exists a simple spiritual world that is neither perceived nor sensed nor limited by any of the senses. But what cannot be established is imagined and nonexistent. What form can be shown to a person who believes this false belief? Such a person is stubborn toward the people of reality. Yet these people agree that the spiritual world is superior to everything else.
I wish I knew what benefit they derive from esteeming it, when by their own account it consists of substances that do not exist and possess no established reality. Things become real through their reality when they appear as persons among the world, acting in it as the soul acts in the body: directing it, making use of it, and understanding through it, as the subtle acts upon the dense, directs it voluntarily, and employs it in its undertakings.
All creation likewise agrees that the Creator—mighty is His power—is just. What justice would there be in making the spiritual world consist of simple, unlimited, imperceptible substances and then requiring servants to know them? No one in the world understands, perceives, or learns except through a living, speaking, discriminating form. What justice could there be in abolishing such persons when the entire order of the world rests upon them, and without them the world could not subsist?
The Qāʾim of the Age and Guide to obedience to the Merciful is the command of our Lord, exalted be His remembrance, by which He commanded things to be, and they were. Those things are the people of tawḥīd, for they possessed no form of actual reality until the Qāʾim of the Age brought them into being—upon him be the Lord's finest greeting and peace.
The substances called Intellect and Soul are persons in his presence: men who speak and understand. Through them the entire order of the spiritual and corporeal worlds subsists. The spiritual rises through them and through knowledge of them to that greatest station, the rank of tawḥīd, while the corporeal world is administered by them at the command of our Lord. Thus whoever is in heaven or earth serves our Lord, willingly or unwillingly.
For these reasons, spiritual persons must be knowledgeable, understanding men. Without this, things would possess no realities and the world would resemble that of the sophists who deny that anything has a real nature.
The revealed text and its interpretation show the same thing: neither possesses truth independently. Those who claim that the truth lies only in some third form, saying that revelation cannot be understood without inward interpretation, admit that the two depend upon each other despite their opposition. Not one word of the interpretation is valid without the revelation, nor can they say what revelation truly means without interpretation. Each depends upon the other for its existence. By their very opposition and interdependence the knowing person discovers that neither is truth in itself.
Interpretation also does not have a single face or a single path, whereas truth has only one. And interpretation has no limit at which it stops. Whatever proceeds in a series without any ultimate end is false. Thus the truth must be knowledge that has a definite object and a goal beyond which the intellect cannot proceed: our Lord, exalted be His remembrance, who has appeared to His creatures through a form of their own kind, manifest and unveiled to servants who know Him.
His ranks are persons, men who command and forbid, teach and communicate knowledge. If they act rightly, our Lord and the Lord of every lord says to them, “You have done right”; if one errs, he is told, “You have erred.” Thus they know their position with certainty, and those successful Unitarians who follow them likewise know their own position with certainty.
The remainder of the world lives in doubt. Doubt is unbelief, for people worship someone who, as they conceive him, neither sees, hears, harms, nor benefits them. They do not know whether their worship is what he wishes, or whether he has wanted anything of them beyond what their limited understanding has imagined. This itself is doubt, from which we seek refuge in the Lord.
It has already been established that the Guardian—exalted be His remembrance—is just and does no wrong. What justice could require us to know and worship a deity seated above the seventh heaven, as the associationists suppose? Who among all humankind could know what lies behind a wall closer to him than anything else without having the wall opened and being able to see beyond it? If a thing so near cannot be known while concealed, how could humanity be ordered to know One whom it is said has hidden Himself behind such a veil? Rather, the Lord has appeared in this human form which resembles us. This is just, through correspondence and likeness in the means of human apprehension.
There is another argument. The son of Adam is the purpose of the Creator's work among creatures, for the higher and lower worlds exist for him and on his account. Since the knowledgeable, discerning, and wise have established that the son of Adam is the noblest of all things, it follows that the Creator conceals Himself in the noblest of forms, not the lowliest. We seek refuge in the Lord from the belief that He is identified with the ignorant dead, who neither see nor hear nor benefit nor harm.
The world agrees that the Creator has power. Where would that power be if He remained absent through all the ages and never manifested? Would that not make Him unable to manifest? Conversely, if He appeared throughout all the ages and could not be absent, He would be unable to conceal Himself. And if He appeared in every manifestation only in a single form and condition, that too would be a limitation of His power. What sort of deity is invoked by a man who claims his deity is absent and unable to appear? Inability is no property of One who possesses power.
Our Lord is the God of the first and the last and is powerful in every condition. He has been concealed and manifested Himself in appearances of different forms. In outward appearance He has passed through the form of childhood and then perfection, and afterward, outwardly, the body has suffered illness, so that it cannot be claimed that He is incapable of this. The demonstration of such possibilities is a demonstration of power.
Had He remained absent without appearing, the Worshipped One would not have been established and the indications of the ranks would have had no reality. Had He appeared and never withdrawn, worship would have become compulsion and force. All the inhabitants of the earth would have agreed about Him without disagreement. That too would represent a defect in the created order, for everyone would then be knowledgeable, no one ignorant; everyone would be a Unitarian, no one an associator. The world would be compelled, without anyone earning reward or punishment, since compulsion excludes both. This would mean inability to manifest the learned and the ignorant, the deficient and the excellent, a thing and its opposite. Rather, through the appearance of opposites, power is made complete and wisdom is fulfilled, the Worshipped One is known, and the ranks of those given guidance and success are disclosed.
A learned man spoke on this matter in verse:
“The God appeared in visible form, in justice and grace; There is nothing concealed in that manifestation.”
He also said in three couplets:
“The Lord did not burden all His servants
With an extravagant command that cannot be fulfilled;
Nor with worship of distant nothingness, unjustly imposed,
Whose existence they cannot even represent to themselves.
Rather, He manifested to His servants, every one,
And brought them knowledge of what is forbidden and permitted.”
Consider also this: if a child were born of two parents who could not speak, and never heard speech from anyone else, he would likewise not speak. If his parents could speak, he could learn to speak. Tracing an effect backward to its cause requires an ultimate teacher or originating cause. Form is only received from form. It follows that the Originator—exalted be His remembrance—appeared of old in a visible form permitting correspondence and understanding.
The same argument applies to all sciences and crafts. Follow every effect back through its causes, and there must be a final origin where the sequence stops. No person on earth produces an art by himself that has never been preceded by something similar or analogous. All things must therefore have a single source to which they return and upon which they rely: the Originator, exalted above what the deniers say.
The clearest proof of the imamate of the Qāʾim of the Age is that he brought what is the opposite of the doctrines of the world. All the Speakers, Foundations, and masters of successive cycles pointed toward a supposed absent nothingness and placed it beyond the world's senses. The Qāʾim of the Age, Guide to obedience to the Merciful—upon him be the Lord's peace—called humanity to a being who exists and is manifest, a God powerful and victorious in all things. Whoever calls to al-Ḥākim, the existing and worshipped God, judges himself fairly. Whoever calls to an imaginary absent object seeks leadership for himself. For a rational person the distinction is plain.
Another aspect is that he disclosed his purpose all at once. People east and west knew that he summoned them to the unity of our Lord. After that, the nations were given freedom to practice and manifest their religions. It follows that this proclamation was especially for the people of tawḥīd, not for ignorant associators; otherwise it would have been part of the established custom even before the appearance of the Qāʾim of the Age and his followers.
The restoration of churches, the removal of the requirement that Christians carry crosses, and their elevation above Muslims in various places provide clear evidence that the former Islamic dispensation had weakened and come to its end, and that truth now shines: the tawḥīd of our Lord al-Ḥākim through His own essence, distinct from His originated beings. Whoever went ahead to recognize Him was saved, while whoever remained behind perished in error. What an astonishing people, shut off from hearing and fleeing from the true knowledge of our Lord, while clinging to idols!
The learned man said, in ten couplets:
“How strange the act of those who stayed behind,
Rejecting truth once truth had plainly appeared!
And stranger still, the worship they offer
To one concealed, absent for so long.
If he possessed power he would have appeared—
A strange affair indeed to anyone who reflects!
But tawḥīd arrived, and the power
By which the minds of all the worlds were dazzled.
It became clear that al-Ḥākim, the Just, is One,
Tender and merciful toward creation and mankind.
Yet those without insight lagged behind,
While the noblest among the people went ahead.
Is it not strange that churches are built,
And Christians exalted after an order has passed away?
He has alerted the minds of all His servants:
There is no truth except obedience made manifest.
The God of creation, exalted beyond every denier,
Is the Lord al-Ḥākim: the pride of whoever takes pride.
In Him I take pride throughout my life,
Obedient to the rank of truth, waiting upon it.”
I marvel at the people who cross desolate deserts and endure the hazards of travel to a country they can reach only with great difficulty, for the sake of a black stone and a lifeless house of rock, without life or speech. What could be more astonishing than this deed? Yet they condemn the luminous company of Unitarians for worshipping the one glorious Lord al-Ḥākim, witness over all things.
What benefit is gained by kissing the Black Stone? What intellectual insight or genuine divine science does it give? Their action is like that of Christians venerating a cross—or even less reasonable because crosses exist everywhere, while followers of the Black Stone travel from every region to reach it.
They honor the stone, they say, in reverence for their prophet. Yet is not the person who occupies the prophet's station in every age more deserving of excellence, honor, and reverence? Is it not an intellectual impossibility to prefer the sign to the living person whom it signifies? A people searched for their deity all their lives, obtaining nothing but names which, once investigated, had no reality except through the existence of a living, speaking form. When the Worshipped One appeared to them, confirming what the ranks had indicated, they refused, grew proud, and called Him a mere man. Pride deceived them concerning the Lord. Then they behaved with the hatred and envy toward Unitarians that their predecessors had displayed in earlier ages.
What profit could be greater for human beings, whether they travel in worldly or religious affairs, than to receive abundant sustenance without providing capital? That would be profit from every point of view. Yet in the case of revealed truth, they reject the one gain that can be received without surrendering another possession.
You, people of tawḥīd, good guidance, and right direction, have known your God while other creatures deny Him. You have profited from knowing Him while others have suffered loss. Those endowed with perception and excellence know that worshipping imagined nothingness was a very great loss. When our Lord manifested Himself to the servants, those guided recognized that He had not imposed an impossible object of worship. A supposed being that could never be delimited, described, or perceived by any sense could not provide the knowledge He has now disclosed.
It is intelligible to anyone who thinks that the son of Adam is the purpose of the Creator's creatures, and that the higher world, including the sphere and its governing bodies, and the lower world, including animals and plants, exist for humankind. How could wisdom require that the intended human being be an unreachable nothing through all the ages? That would attribute the greatest inability to the Creator.
Reasonable and knowledgeable people know that the number of human souls has neither increased nor decreased; they are a fixed number from the first cycles to the completion of the world and the return to their lasting abode. The higher and lower creation has no bounded date or limit known to the world; if the number of human souls increased at every interval, an impossible conclusion would follow. If, in every thousand years, even a single person were added to the world, would the earth not become crowded with them? And if in every thousand years a single person were subtracted, would there not come a time when not one of them remained?
The persons have neither decreased nor increased. Rather, they appear in different bodily forms in accordance with what they have acquired of good or evil. The Creator's power enables Him both to reward and to punish in those bodies.
Someone may object: “Why do we not remember our previous cycles and epochs?” The person who argues from truth replies: “If you remembered and knew them, you would share the Originator's hidden wisdom, and that would imply a defect in His power—may we seek refuge in Him from such a thought. It would also ruin the world's order. If you knew the soul you formerly possessed and the condition in which you lived, you would know the previous condition of others. You would also know the Originator who has repeatedly brought you into bodily persons. If you knew Him in that way you would know everything in the world, just as you know yourself. Then learned and ignorant, deficient and excellent would be equal. The Creator would no longer have manifested a world containing the ignorant as well as the learned and the imperfect as well as the perfect. His power and wisdom are instead revealed by the learned and the ignorant, the deficient and the excellent, each thing beside its opposite.”
Another indication is that, when the Qāʾim of the Age summoned his people, certain persons who had known truth in earlier ages answered the Call, accepted it, and did not deny it. Their minds were ready and they possessed genuine understanding, without any worldly advantage to gain. Instead they suffered hardship at the hands of opponents, envious enemies, and those of base character, yet they endured.
They even affirm that the rest of the world is in the Fire while they are in the Garden. What clearer sign could there be that, when reminded, they remembered, and when told, they recognized what had been familiar to their souls? Meanwhile the ignorant and contemptible stayed behind, rejecting the Qāʾim of the Age and claiming he had taken what was not rightfully his. They refused, disbelieved, and passed the blessing by, although the Lord is rich and worthy of praise. Vengeance and recompense will come upon them for having turned away.
Listen, company of Unitarians, worshippers of the Lord of the worlds, who are free from false testimony and association with those who give partners to the divine. You are the angels brought near; from among you are the prophets sent forth. May the Lord place us with those who are granted obedience to the ranks and who recognize the meanings by which those ranks point toward the Worshipped One, the present and ruling God al-Ḥākim.
Make your souls joyful and lift up your heads. The Lord is with you; He is your Guardian, and the Qāʾim of His Age is your Imam and guide. You are the best of people in the best time, the most excellent community in the most excellent age. Obey your ranks and know the One you worship; then you shall be guided and given success. The Lord is able to do all things. He suffices me, and excellent is the Helper and Supporter in every affair. The epistle is complete.