BB00067: Answer to Shaykh Nasiru’d-Din Karbila’i

Part 1: “The answers to the questions of Nasir Nasir…”

The answers to the questions of Nasir Nasir Shaykh Nasir, may God aid him in this world and the next, God willing, after consideration they shall be sent to the service of Wahhab, peace of God be upon him

In the Name of God, the Exalted, the Most High, the Most Great, the Most Mighty, the Most Sublime, the Most Manifest.

Praise be unto Him Who hath established Himself upon the throne of His oneness and hath been sanctified in the sanctity of the holiness of His grandeur above all mention and praise, essence and glory. He is the One Who hath ever been and shall ever be; verily He is as He hath ever been. Too exalted is my Lord to be described by greatness, and too ancient is the antiquity of my Beloved to be characterized by ancientness. He hath originated whatsoever He hath originated without origination or invention, and He hath created whatsoever He hath created without creation or bringing into being.

He hath manifested Himself to the Countenance of the Point through the Countenance of the Alif in His mystery and the Countenance of the Ba in His manifestation, that He might adorn all letters with the jewels of the adornment of the wondrous lights of the varieties of the marvels of His power. And He hath made, through the craft of His handiwork which is described as subtle though He is more subtle than all subtlety, and through the majesty of His self-subsistence which cannot be characterized by greatness for He is greater than all greatness, in the essence of the simple camphorated being of His existence, every small particle a manifest Ha for the beauty of His countenance and a hidden gate for the loftiness of His power.

Therefore doth each one say: “There is no God but He,” and every one saith: “Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger, and Ali and the Imams are the Manifestations of His power, and the Hidden Name, the Treasured, the Preserved, are the secrets of the repository of His might.”

Blessed be the handiwork of my Lord—how great it is! And exalted be the glory of my Lord—how mighty He is! And verily He is as He is in the glory of the beginning and the majesty of eternity. He shall not be known by number nor described by duration. And He is the One, the Single, the Unique, the Self-Subsisting, the Eternal.

Glory be unto Thee, O Lord! How shall I praise Thee when none save Thee can know Thee? And how shall I declare Thy unity when none below Thee can comprehend Thee? If I say that Thou art Thou, Thou hast adorned the countenance of my heart with the jewels of the lights of Thy creation, yet it is severed from Thee by its creation from Thy presence. And if I say “No,” I shall have limited my self within geometrical boundaries through the mention of affirmation in its mystery and invisible unity in its manifestation. And thereby is established Thy unity, manifest from the majesty of Thy grandeur, in three disobedient and three holy and three disobedient and three certain and two one self-subsisting.

Glory be unto Thee, O Lord! Thereby doth the Hidden Name appear, and He is the Exalted, the Succoring, the Treasured. Glory be unto Thee, O Lord! All things are equal in Thy sight, and every mention before Thee is upon the station of geometry of creation.

O Lord! Send blessings upon Muhammad after Thou dost praise Thyself by Thyself and remember Thy Essence by Thy Essence. Then didst Thou inform all things in Thy Book and descend upon the Mount from the right side of the fire unto Thy Interlocutor, saying: “Verily I am God, there is no God but Me.” Then didst Thou mention after the mention of Thyself Thy First Beloved and Thy Eternal Remembrance—Muhammad, then Ali, then Fatimah, then Hasan, then Husayn, then Ali, then Muhammad, then Ja’far, then Musa, then Ali, then Muhammad, then Ali, then Hasan, then Muhammad the Qa’im the Expected—inasmuch as Thou hast loved to praise them and to reveal concerning them. There is no God but Thee, the Mighty, the All-Encompassing, the Beneficent, the Expander, the Wondrous.

Look unto thy Lord, and unto Whom thou hast made the first geometry of His Name in the two verses as One, or in the two verses as the One and Only, and thou hast made every Name of His beauteous in the geometry of His manifest Spirit. And verily unto Thee have I committed the Cause, and unto whomsoever Thou willest, from before and from after. And Thou art the best Manifest and Manifester, and the best Dominant, Omnipotent, Mighty, Victorious, Helper.

And after the praise of God and His manifestations upon the Dawning-Places of His Self, know thou concerning that which thou hast asked, that God hath favored thee and answered, inasmuch as the birds of the celestial realm warble upon the Tree of Baha with the warblings of the remembrance of Glory and Beauty, that there is no God but He, the Exalted, the Mighty, the Most High.

And as to what thou hast asked concerning the tradition which thou hast mentioned aforetime—yea, and verily that is truth wherein there is no doubt. The Holy Spirit hath breathed therein by permission of the Sovereign of Paradise, the true King, the Holy One—yea, and God hath created Muhammad and the family of Muhammad from the Tree of Oneness. And the form thereof in numerical geometry is the Alif manifest after the Point.

And We have set forth in many of Our allusions that the Alif—the first mention thereof is ten, and it is the First Love, Muhammad, and the last thereof is Alif, and the meaning thereof is four Alifs in the number of Manifestation, that thy Lord may give thee to drink of the draught of purity.

And the first ocean that God created in the essence of the celestial realm and the camphor of praise—its like among the letters is the ocean of the Ha. And the word “Huwa” is the triangle of the Holy One and the staff and the staff. And the secret thereof is the Alif between the two, and the body thereof is the Alif between the two Ba’s.

That is the first ocean that God created for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad. There was none purer than it and more subtle, and none greater than it and more mighty. And it is the ocean of eternity—whatsoever is attributed unto it is itself, not other than it. And the last thereof, which is the Most Great Ocean encompassing the Names of God, glorified and exalted be He, and it is the Succorer—its geometry in its end is multiplied like the first unity: Alif and two by two. God created naught greater than that Ocean in encompassing and power and glory and might, nor in unity than the first Ocean.

Therefore, the first—its form is Ha, and the last—its form is Ha. When joined together, naught is seen in the countenance of the First save the Lord, for its geometry is thus: 202. And naught is seen in the countenance of the Last save the First Self, save that the Point became Alif. Thus hath God originated the Tree of Oneness.

And verily the first of the stages of remembrance in the essence of the Tree is the essence of love, ten, then eleven, then everlasting one hundred, then exalted one hundred and one, then upon one hundred and ten, then most exalted one hundred and eleven, then the thousand, and it is the overshadowing of those stages of the unseen for the Will and the Volition and the Destiny and the Decree and the Permission and the One—may He be glorified—and the Book, that is to say Muhammad and Ali and Fatimah and Hasan and Husayn and Ja’far and Musa. And when those seven descend from the sanctuary of their hiddenness to the dawning-place of testimony, there are seven stages like unto those seven with the single thousand without the two.

And verily at its end appear four thousands in the form of the circle of certainty, and the essence of manifestation in the Gate Manifest. There appear from the four thousands seven meaningful words upon the meaning of the beginning and the end. The four thousands are read: He is Ali, Ali is He, then the Gate Manifest is Ali, and Ali Manifest is He, the Gate. Those four are from these seven, and the three are veiled in the essence of manifestation. And whosoever looketh upon the circle of certainty and the decree of the descent of the thousand in fourteen stations will be able to bear witness to the Sun of Manifestation in the last of the stations with four thousands, and it is the thousand, and its meaning is naught else but that, for the number of the thousand is one hundred and eleven, and its meaning is the thousand. When the thousand is joined with those three, the Sun of Manifestation dawneth from beneath the veil of the rational and shineth upon whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is on the earth with the essence of manifestation.

And verily whosoever looketh in truth upon the spirits of the letters with the abjad geometry seeth all as two thousands, and all of them are He, and all of them are Ali, and all of them are Ali, and all of them are He. Look upon the number of the name of the First, Muhammad, its form is thus: 921. When the two are separated, naught is seen save eleven. And likewise Ali, when its geometry is gathered, it numbereth eleven. And verily Hasan is ten, and verily Husayn is eleven. And verily the thousand is lacking from the name of Hasan because it pointeth to the Messenger of God, and it must needs be ten because the rank of the First, as is established in its place, is love, and when it is repeated the Beloved appeareth, as appeareth from the geometry of the name of the Messenger thus: Muhammad M-H-M-D appeareth twenty, the number twenty is the word Beloved. And for this reason is the station of Hasan with the Messenger of God, and Husayn 48 with Ali 44. And verily Ja’far, peace be upon Him, despite the multitude of the number of His name, is Ali, because His form is thus: 353, and verily when gathered it is eleven.

And verily when Moses, peace be upon Him, attained unto the station of the Book, His geometry at the time of gathering became seventeen, which is the number of points in fourteen stations, but in the form of unity His geometry was naught save the temple of the name of the Most Holy in the summit of ascension and the Most Glorious in its beginning. Therefore when He was imprisoned and God removed the veils from the woman who entered unto Him, she prostrated herself before God and said: “Holy, holy” until she returned to her place. And this is the mystery of the three and twenty names.

And as for Fatimeh, the number of the mystery of her geometry is one hundred and thirty-five, and it is according to the sum of her geometry twenty-seven, and at the time of gathering there appeareth from the second like unto the first, nine. Therefore her letter is Ta, and it is the third of a triangle, and it is the third of the staff which was revealed in the Greatest Name. And the number of the staff is the number of the staff, and the number of the staff is the number of the Most Holy and of Certitude. And she ceased not to draw sustenance from the tree of Glory, for she is nine in His absence, and when He descendeth in manifestation He is the one who drinketh from the chalice of the thousand hundred after He and Love. And there appeareth the name of God the Eternal, and His letter is Qaf in the letters of the line in every book that is written.

This is the mystery of the saying of the Imam, peace be upon Him, where He said: “God hath created us from the light of His glory,” and it is the first light which God manifested unto Him thereby and made it the station of His Self. And the geometry of the light is the name of the One, and therefore each one of those four and twenty indicateth the alif of the One from the first mention of the station of the ten unto the last appearance in fourteen stations. There appeareth the circle of the letters, and the sun of the manifestation of the Eternal riseth by the mystery of the alif and its meaning.

Therefore it hath been established among the people of the letters that the dawning-place of the appearance of Him Who Shall Arise is the letter Zad, and that is truth in which there is no doubt. And the Point was created before the alif, and it hath infinite stations, the first of its existence being in the ten in the name of Love, and the last of its appearance in the ocean of the Greatest Name, the Helper. There appear three points, and it is like the alif—its beginning is one point and its end is four, increasing not beyond that nor decreasing. These are the stations of its hiddenness and its testimony for him who knoweth its beginning and its seal and its end.

And the Point is the number of the letters of the Bismillah, and its form is thus: Nun, Qaf, Ta, Ra. And its geometry becometh nineteen whether thou countest by the outward or by the inward. Therefore the letters of the Bismillah became nineteen, the number of the name of the One. And therefore after the Ba appeareth the Sin, because when the Waw descendeth in the station of the ten, the Sin appeareth. And how excellent is the remembrance, the remembrance of God the Greatest, the Most Great, the Sovereign, the Qa’im, the Most Holy.

And verily hath God created for the letters of the Basmala six names from among the names of His glory, and He is the One, the Living, the Self-Subsisting, the Judge, the Just, the Most Holy. And I have expounded those names and their mysteries in the Book of the Science of Letters. And verily the four alifs of the Manifestation are manifest in the Basmala: the first alif, the One, is the Hidden, and between the ba and the sin, and the three are manifest in Allah and al-Rahman and al-Rahim. And that first is the name concealed and treasured, and the three manifest are the three pillars, and the three names are the pillar of Unity and of Prophethood and of Guardianship.

Part 2: “And verily when the Hidden is joined…”

And verily when the Hidden is joined to the three, there appeareth the manifestation of the Qa’im, upon Him be peace, and the four alifs become the completion of the circle of certainty and the number of manifestation. And if I desired to extract all that which the knowledge of God encompasseth from this Point in the form of the circle of certainty and the number of manifestation in one chapter, it would be manifest, but it is sealed with the seal of God, and it is concealed with God and treasured in His hiddenness. So whosoever desireth to gain knowledge thereof hath opposed God in His dominion and contended with Him in His sovereignty, and hath incurred wrath upon wrath from God, and verily his abode is the Fire.

And verily this is the clay from which were created those sanctified souls, and verily their Paradise is the very essence of their earth, and their heaven is all of it. And thus have all of them become the Manifestation, and all of them the First in the numbers of unity and the Second in the numbers of duality. Through them hath appeared in the Kingdom of the heavens and the earth that there is no god but God.

And verily the mystery of that which hath placed negation before affirmation is for the sake of the descent of the ten in fourteen stations. There doth appear thirty-one thousand in the arc of descent. The lam is placed before the alif, and therefore doth the servant say “There is no god”—this is the dominion of Satan, and therefore is it placed before the dominion of the Family of Muhammad. But in the arc of ascent the alif is placed before Allah, and therefore is established the word “but God” with the alif, and this is the dominion of the Family of Muhammad. There is no dominion after it for anyone, for the first is a word of disbelief and the second is a word of truth.

And were it not that the first word existed, love would not descend in fourteen stations, but its shadow hath appeared in the enemies of the Family of Muhammad, and therefore hath appeared that which hath appeared. And verily all knowledge is in the knowledge of the alif in thirty-one, and thereby is made manifest that which is inward through that which is concealed in the knowledge of God.

And the clay from which the Shi’ah of Muhammad and the family of Muhammad were created is from that clay, even the thousand and ten in the very essence of love, but God hath made all those seven one soul and made it the paradise of His oneness, whose heaven is its earth and whose earth is its heaven, and whose people are itself and whose bounties are its essence. None seeth therein aught save itself. Its drink is its camphor, its milk is its pure essence, its wine is its abstractness, its water is its substance. All of it is each part of it, all of it is its beginning which is its end, its end which is its beginning, its hidden which is its manifest, its manifest which is its hidden.

The heaven of that paradise is four thousand manifestations, and its earth is two by two manifestations. None liveth in that paradise save the love of the First in its descent through fourteen stations.

And verily those who are below these fourteen and these seven have no portion of this primal, eternal clay, yet each hath a portion of nearness unto it, and that is his paradise, and distance from it, and that is his fire. And were explanation desired, the oceans of creation would be exhausted, and sufficient unto thee is the saying of the All-Merciful: “The Hour hath drawn nigh and the moon hath been cleft” in the hidden of the manifest and in the hidden of the hidden. “And their Lord giveth them to drink a pure draught.” I have given thee to drink that thou mayest remove the veils from the dawn of thy countenance and enter into the civilization of love for thy Lord whilst its people are heedless. There shalt thou find whatsoever thy soul desireth brought before thee, nearer than the twinkling of an eye.

But I teach thee that if thou desirest wine without Him, there is none there and thou hast not entered therein. And if thou desirest the houris without His very Self, there is none there and thou hast not entered therein. And if thou desirest tender flesh without Him, there is none there and thou hast not entered therein. And all that thou desirest other than Him existeth not with Him and thou hast not entered therein, for other than Him sufficeth not from God, but God sufficeth from all things. And unto this referreth the saying of God, exalted and glorified be He: “Doth not thy Lord suffice, seeing that He encompasseth all things?” That is the secret of secrets and the essence of lights for him who wisheth to behold the dawn of the Almighty on the Day whereon it shall be said: “Whose is the kingdom this day?” and He Himself shall say: “God’s, the One, the Subduer!”

And He hath said: “And all are gathered together, and all things swoon away” save those fourteen, and all that is in “Be and it is” returneth unto “Be,” nearer than the twinkling of an eye, and each entereth into its station, and He bringeth forth another creation. “Blessed then be God, the best of creators!” That is a drop from the ocean of bounty and grace of the clay from which Muhammad and the family of Muhammad and the Shi’ah of Muhammad were created.

By Him besides Whom there is no God, save the thousand of the unseen between the Ba and the Sin, for He created with the Alif the three together, and it is a part of the First Word. And that Name is that which appeared through the appearance of the very essence of Manifestation upon the mighty mountain wherewith God created creation, then was it withdrawn afar.

Unto Him be praise and glory, and unto Him be might and majesty, for when thy Lord appeared upon the mountain of severity, He created every manifestation of God before and after, and the mountains were crushed and the hearts fell prostrate, and all were raised up and gathered together, and whosoever was created for Paradise entered Paradise, and whosoever was fashioned for the Fire entered the Fire. Then He brought forth through His word “Be, and it is” a creation beneath that station, and by it He established the heavens and the earth and all that lieth between them. This is from the decree of the Mighty, the Wise.

Yea, verily the Prophets were created from the remnant of that clay, yet they have no share in what God hath ordained for the essence of that clay and its people—four and twenty names of the Manifestation, whose beginning is Love and whose end is Manifestation, whose beginning is ten and whose end is one thousand one hundred and twenty-one. And verily the essence of the Manifestation liveth at all times in His Paradise, which is His very Self and none other. None shall know Him save God, and He shall guide unto none save Him.

When God granteth thee a glimpse of His love and uncovereth from thy countenance in the unseen realm all veils and allusions, thou shalt behold the face of the Holy One in the essence of the Manifestation, Who is the One, the Self-Subsisting. This is a secret from among the secrets of the science of the Jafr of Fatimah—may the blessings of God be upon her—which God, glorified be He, filled through the agency of Gabriel. Therein is the knowledge of what was, what shall be, and what is. And verily I have read that Book and observed it from beginning to end, and I witnessed naught therein save God, and I beheld naught save God, for at its beginning I beheld written one thousand and one, and at its end four thousand. By this have I been informed of all that is treasured within that protected symbol.

For this reason it hath been established among the people of Jafr that the Book of the Jafr of Ali—peace be upon Him—had at the beginning of its verse four thousand, and at the end of its verse four thousand. This is the meaning of the saying of Ali—peace be upon Him—in the Sermon of Tutunjiyyah, upon whose speaker God manifested Himself as befitteth Him: “I beheld God and Paradise with the sight of the eye.”

Yea, whosoever looketh into the Jafr of Fatimah should say this, for he is the Living One in the name of God, the Self-Subsisting, and through Him is the life of all things and the secret of His name, the Eternal. And whosoever persevereth in reading it, God loveth him and all His creation, even unto the fish in the seas and the beasts in the atmosphere, and whatsoever was created in the Concourse on High unto the uttermost atom of the lowest realm. For it is the third of the Rod that became the thousand and one hundred, and precedeth the two points, and it is the remembrance of Muhammad and Ali. And verily the oceans of creation are inexhaustible in a single letter of those letters, and unto God returneth the Cause in the dawning-place of the unseen and the seen.

And if thou desirest that God should cause to shine upon thee the light of that Sun which shone upon Muhammad on the Night of Ascension in the Dome of “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”—verily, Muhammad the Messenger of God did enter into this Dome on the Night of Ascension, and it is a dome created from a piece of red ruby, upon which are nineteen lamps of white pearls containing perfume from the fragrances of the Glory of the Eternal. The breadth of this Dome is as its length; its beginning is the remembrance of the First Who hath no beginning, and its end is the remembrance of the Last Who hath no end. Between each lamp and the next is a journey of nineteen thousand ages.

Around this Dome are angels of the light of the Lord of Might who glorify God and say: “Holy, sanctified is the Lord of all things! There is no God but Him, the Beloved King!” And God hath created in this Dome all that He created in Paradise. Four rivers flow therein: a river of milk which floweth from the first Mim; then a river of clarified honey which floweth from the Mim of the Compassionate; then a river of wine, a delight for those who drink, which floweth from the Mim of the Merciful; then a river of water that changeth not in taste, which floweth in the shadow of the Alif of the Unseen between the Ba and the Sin, for the Sin in its hiddenness is a Mim. And when it descended to the rank of six for the manifestation of the Waw of Unity in the ten, that the letter Sin might appear, and when the Ba is placed before it, it is the completion of “Be,” and it is. How can I describe to thee what God hath created in that red Dome?

Verily, if a single hair of one of its houris were suspended between the heaven of origination and the earth of creation, it would cause all the people of existence to swoon and they would say:

“The Almighty hath appeared in His Essence and the All-Subduing hath beheld His servants with His own Self!”

Glory be to my Lord! Holy, holy! He is more glorious and greater and mightier and higher and more exalted and more sublime and more beauteous and too glorious to appear in His Essence or to behold His servants with His own Self. Nay, this is but the light of a hair from a houri of that sanctified Dome.

And think not that this Dome containeth aught that is lifeless, for verily Paradise in its entirety is alive. By Him save Whom there is no God, I know this Dome and its people and have dwelt therein from the day God my Lord created me, and it is my very self and none other.

Praise be to God for that red Dome and the Most Glorious Word! And in this let the competitors compete. Verily, I perceive that the beginning of the mention of the Dome—its first letter is Qaf and its last is Ta—when joined together manifesteth five hundred, which is the essence of the Ha, and it is the essence of that Self which God hath attributed unto Himself, and it is the Essence of God and His Self, and the Eye of God and His Hand, and the Face of God and His Tongue, and the Manifestation of God and His Beauty and His Glory.

Praise be to Him for having made me one of those who have known that Self and found rest in its shadow! Verily unto God do all things return, both before and after, and in God let the believers trust.

Convey unto al-Wahhab that which hath been revealed concerning the measures of causes, that he may preserve them until the Day of Return. And convey unto those who traveled with Me in pilgrimage the explanation of that sacred Dome, and the first believer therein through thy traces, that he may attain unto victory with the victorious ones and enter the gardens of those who are nigh, through the hands of the believing servants of God. And glory be to God, Lord of the heavens and the earth, Lord of all the worlds. And peace from thy Lord be upon His servants who act according to His command, and upon the guided one among those who have been guided by the hidden command. And praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds.