The Ta-Sin of the Disconnection-From-Forms

1. This is the circle of the allegory and this is the figure which represents it:
   
2. This is the whole which can give us phrases and sentences, and to the adepts, cults and sects, doctrines and methods.
   
3. The first circle is the literal sense, and the second is the inner sense, and the third is the allusion.
   
4. This is the totality of things, created and composed, answered, trodden upon, seized on, contradicted, deceived and stupefied.
   
5. He circulates in the pronoun ‘we’ of subjects of persons. Like an arrow he penetrates them, provides for them, surprises them, and overturns them, and He amazes them in crossing them.
   
6. Here is the totality of created substances and qualities. Allah has nothing to do with these fables.
   
7. If I say: ‘He is He,’ that statement is not the Tawhid.
   
8. If I say that the Tawhid of Allah is valid, they will tell me - ‘no doubt!’
   
9. If I say ‘without time,’ they will say: ‘Then is the meaning of Tawhid a simile?’ But there is no comparison when describing Allah. Your Tawhid is without relation to Allah or to creation, because the fact of expressing the number of times introduces a limiting condition. In so doing you have added a sense to Tawhid, as if it were contingent. However the contingent is not an attribute of Allah. His Essence is unique. And both Truth and what is unreal cannot emanate from the Essence of the Essence.
   
10. If I say: ‘The Tawhid is the word itself," the word is an attribute of the Essence not the Essence itself.
    
11. If I say: ‘Tawhid means that Allah wishes to be One’ the diving volition is an attribute of the Essence and volitions are created.
    
12. If I say: ‘Allah is the Tawhid of Essence proclaimed to itself,’ then I make the Essence Tawhid which can be spoken by us.
    
13. If I say: ‘No, it is not the Essence,’ then do I say that Tawhid is created?
    
14. If I say: ‘The name and the object named are One,’ then what sense does Tawhid have?
    
15. If I say: ‘Allah is Allah’ then do I say that Allah is the Essence of the Essence and that He is He?
    
16. Here is the Ta-Sin which treats of the denial of secondary causes: and these circles with ‘no’ written in them are its figure:
    
17. The first circle is pre-Eternity, and the second intelligibles, the third is that of dimensions and the fourth of the cognizable.
18. The Essence is not without attributes.
    
19. The first seeker opens the Door of Knowledge and does not see. The second opens the Door of Purity and does not see. The third opens the Door of Comprehension and does not see. The fourth opens the Door of Meaning and does not see. None say Allah in His Essence nor in his volition, nor in speech nor in His He-ness.
    
20. Glory to Allah who is holy and by His sanctity inaccessible to all the methods of the gnostics and to all the intuitions of the people of revelations.
    
21. Here is the Ta-sin of Negation and Affirmation, and this is its representation:
    
22. The first formula treats of the thought of the common people and the second of the elect, and the circle which represents the knowledge of Allah is between the two. The ‘no’s’ which are enclosed by the circle are the negation of all dimensions. The two ‘ha’s’ are set like pillars of the two sides of Tawhid which holds it up. Beyond them the dependencies begin.
    
23. The thought of the common people plunges into the sea of images and the thought of the elect into the sea of understanding. But these two seas dry up and the ways which they marked are effaced, the two thoughts disappear and the two pillars fall and the two worlds of being perish and proofs and knowledge vanish.
    
24. On the side of the pure divinity of Allah, He remains, transcending all dependent things, praise be to Allah who is not touched by any secondary cause. His proof is strong, and His power glorious. He, the Lord of Splendor and Glory and Majesty. The Unaccountable One with arithmetical Unity. No definition nor counting nor beginning nor end touches Him. His existence is a marvel since He is removed from existence. He alone knows Himself, Master of Majesty and magnanimity. Creator of souls and bodies.

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