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BOOK THREE ---------- THE ONE

FLASH SEVEN: INTERFUSION

    In the First degree He is unmanifested and unconditioned and exempt from all limitation or relation.

    In this aspect He cannot be described by epithets or attributes;  In this aspect He is too holy to be designated by spoken or written words.

    Neither does tradition furnish an expression for His Majesty, nor has reason the power to demonstrate the depth of His perfection.

    The greatest philosophers are baffled by the impossibility of attaining to knowledge of Him.

    His FIRST characteristic is the lack of all characteristics.  The last result of the attempt to know Him is stupefaction - hairāni.

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To you convictions and presumptions wrought, By evidence intuitive are naught;

How can one prove your own reality, To such as you who count all proofs as naught?

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However great our heavenly knowledge be, It cannot penetrate Thy sanctuary;

Saints blest with visions and with light divine, Reach no conceptions adequate to Thee.

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Our love,* the special grace of souls devout, To reason seems a thing past finding out;

Oh, may it bring the dawn of certitude, And put to flight the darksome hours of doubt!

* Rumi describes love as "spiritual clairvoyance".

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    The SECOND degree is the self-display of Being in a self-revelation containing in itself:

- All the active, necessary, and divine manifestations;  And all the passive, contingent, and mundane manifestations -

    This degree is the first of all the manifestations of Being.  Above it there is no other degree than that of the "Unmanifested".

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    The THIRD degree is named the "Unity of the Whole Aggregate" -Ahadìyat-i-Jam, usually called Nafs-i-Kull, uni    versal soul, pneuma.

    This contains in itself all the active and efficient manifestations.  It is named the degree of "Divinity" - Ilāhìyat.

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    The FOURTH degree is the manifestation in detail of the degree named "Divinity".  It is the degree of the names and theatres wherein they are manifested.

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    These two last named degrees refer to the outward aspect of Being wherein "necessity" - wajūb -is a universal condition.

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    The FIFTH degree is the "Unity of the Whole Aggregate", which includes all the passive manifestations.

    Its characteristic is the potentiality of receiving impressions, i.e., passivity.  It is the degree of mundane existence and contingency - maratab-i-kaunìya-i-imkanìya.

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    The SIXTH degree is the manifestation in detail of the preceding degree.  It is the degree of the sensible world -'ālam.

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    These two last degrees refer to the exterior of the intelligible world.  (The object of this distinction is to keep God from contact with matter.  Contingency is not found in the immediate reflections of Being, but only in the reflections from the intelligible world of Divine Ideas).

    Therein contingence is one of the invariable qualities.  It consists in the revelation of the Divine Mind to Himself under the forms of the substance of the contingent.

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     Consequently, in reality there is but ONE Sole Being.  He is interfused in all these degrees and hierarchies which are only the details of the UNITY - the Unity that is "SINGLENESS" - Wāhidìyat.

Wāhidìyat should not be confused with Ahadìyat.

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The "Truth appears in all;  wouldst thou divine

How with Himself He doth all things combine?

See the wine froth: the wine in froth is froth,

Yet the froth of the wine is very wine!

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'Tis the bright radiance of Eternity 

That lights Not-being, as we men may see; 

Does not the world severed from the "Truth": 

In the world HE is the world, in Him 'tis HE!

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NOTE: The object of this distinction is to keep God from contact with matter.  Contingency is not found in the immediate reflections of Being, but only in the reflections from the intelligible world of Divine Ideas.

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