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In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

Peace be upon God’s sincere servants. O questioner! I have heard all that you wrote in your letter. Now hear what is being conveyed to you by God’s leave. First judge fairly between my position and your own position, as though you were standing before God on the Day of Judgment. If you have read my last letter regarding the matter of proof, you know my ruling that I do not utter a single letter as proof against anyone, nor do I engage in mutual imprecation with anyone, as this was God’s decree concerning me until such time as God ordained. You did not ask me for a ruling, but now since you seek to establish a matter, I will say what I can, and I am capable of no more than this. God suffices as a witness.

Know that God, glorified be He, created that verse just as He created all things—there is no suspension of His Command—and He has testified concerning it in ways none but He knows, as He indicated in the Qur’an to His Beloved:

“When We recite it, follow its recitation, then upon Us rests its explanation.”

I do not know a single letter of its interpretation in that station. When the verse descends from its station, I speak concerning its ruling as God wills regarding my right. The meaning is that nothing achieves its complete manifestation except through causes, and God in His subtle wisdom has made all things evidence for all things, such that if an ant were to speak regarding that verse in the station of its existence, God would verify it through His grace. The one who speaks concerning it does so from the station of that Remembrance and Cause.

If you consider it from the perspective of exposition, it has no proof except itself. The letters of multiplicity within it only tell of its station of unity. There is no ruling regarding the meanings of its words except through the evidence of its reality. There is no connection between it and other examples prepared at its lowest rank, which is its outward aspect. There is no concealment of its inner meaning, yet its inner meaning is beyond its outer meaning. Thus has God established it through the proof of wisdom for itself. Exalted is God far above what the wrongdoers say concerning it!

If you wish to rely on its ruling according to the outward path, God has taught you in His Book: “God takes the souls at the time of their death.” There is no doubt that the taker of spirits is an angel from His creation. And there is no doubt that when one of the angels acts from the aspect of Lordship deposited within his servitude, he speaks only on behalf of his Holy Master and has no authority except the authority of God, the Exalted, the Great.

It is like what al-Sadiq (peace be upon him) indicated in his words that the one who appeared to Moses on the Mount was a man from among our followers. This man could not be certain of his station unless God manifested for him an aspect of universal Lordship. When he saw within himself an aspect unlike the aspects of creation, he had no choice but to believe in what God had bestowed upon him from His grace and to manifest to His creation what God had ordained in His mighty Essence.

Whoever falsely claims that this verse does not descend from the heart but is rather a verse from the divine essence which God sent down upon his heart to destroy him—God has already answered such a fabricator in His Book:

“Then let them produce a discourse like it, if they speak the truth.”

Consider within yourself: if you can speak everything you wish without reflection, and write whatever you desire without pause of the pen, and transform a single verse into well-constructed words reaching seventy in number, then you speak the truth in your claim. Otherwise, seek forgiveness from your Lord and return to His judgment. If you say this proof does not establish the ruling, God’s Book belies you, and He suffices as a witness.