On the Qurʾān (as the Essence)

The Qurʾān is pure Essence / its Oneness is a binding Real obligation.

It is His witnessing-place, in it and for it / from the standpoint of His Ipseity, a deep obscurity.

He recites what He seeks of it / and He is the sought, the obligation for it.

So His recitation is His adornment / by His adornings -- and that is pure annihilation (fanāʾ).

But from the standpoint of the Essence, for Him / there is no whole there and no part.

It is His delight, in the Essence, by Him / from the standpoint of tasting -- and no diminishing.

And the understanding of that delight is Qur- / ʾān; it is He -- this is the obligation.

Know that the Qurʾān is an expression for the Essence in which all the Attributes are effaced; so it is the locus of disclosure named Oneness (al-aḥadiyya).

The Real (exalted is He) sent it down upon His Prophet Muhammad (God bless him and grant him peace), that he might be the witnessing-place of Oneness among the existents.

And the meaning of this sending-down is that the One Reality, exalted in its summits, appeared in its perfection in his body.

So it descended from its peak -- with the impossibility of descent and ascent upon it -- but he (God bless him and grant him peace), since his body was realized by all the divine realities,

and was the locus of disclosure of the Names, the One [Name], by his body -- just as he is, by his Ipseity, the locus of disclosure of Oneness, and by his Essence the very Essence.

And for that he (God bless him and grant him peace) said: "The Qurʾān was sent down upon me as a single whole."

He expresses his being-realized by all of that, an essential, total, bodily realizing; and this is what is pointed to by "the Noble Qurʾān" (al-Qurʾān al-Karīm), because He gave him the whole.

And this is the complete generosity (al-karam), because He stored away nothing from him, but poured upon him the all, by a divine, essential generosity. And as for "the Wise Qurʾān" (al-Qurʾān al-Ḥakīm), it is the descent of the divine realities, by the ascent of the servant to being-realized by them in the Essence little by little, according to what the divine Wisdom required -- the Wisdom upon which the Essence is ordered; so there is no way other than that.

Because it is not permissible, by way of possibility, that one be realized by all the divine realities, by his body, from the first bringing-into-being.

But whoever's primordial nature is molded upon Divinity ascends in it and is realized of it by what is unveiled to him of it, something after something, ordered by a divine ordering.

And the Real pointed to the declaration of that by His saying: "And We sent it down a [gradual] sending-down" (17:106).

And this ruling is not cut off and does not end; rather the servant remains ever in ascent like this, and the Real remains ever in self-disclosure -- since there is no way to the exhausting of what has no end, because the Real Himself has no end.

So if you say: then what is the benefit of his saying, "The Qurʾān was sent down upon me as a single whole"?

We say: that is from two aspects:

The first aspect, from the standpoint of the ruling: because the Perfect servant, when the Real discloses Himself to him by His Essence, judges, by what he witnesses, that it is the whole of the Essence that has no end, and that it has descended into him without parting from its place, which is the place-rank.

And the second aspect, from the standpoint of the exhausting of the remnants of humanness and the effacement of the created traces in their perfection, by the appearing of the divine realities by their traces in every limb of the limbs of the body.

So "the whole" (al-jumla) is connected to his saying upon this second aspect, and its meaning is the going-away of the whole of the created deficiencies by the being-realized by the divine realities.

And it has come in the hadith from the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace): "The Qurʾān was sent down all at once to the lowest heaven, then the Real sent it down as separated verses after that."

This is the meaning of the hadith:

So the sending-down of the Qurʾān all at once to the lowest heaven is a pointing to the essential realizing.

And the descent of the verses separately is a pointing to the appearing of the traces of the Names and Attributes, with the ascent of the servant in the realizing by the Essence, something after something.

And His saying (exalted is He): "And We have indeed given you seven of the oft-repeated, and the Mighty Qurʾān" (15:87).

So the Qurʾān here is an expression for the essential whole -- not by the consideration of descent, nor by the consideration of the place-rank, but the absolute essential Oneness, which is the absolute Ipseity gathering all the ranks, Attributes, affairs, and considerations.

And [it is] what is expressed as the pure simplicity of the Essence (sādhij al-dhāt) together with the whole of the perfections.

And for this it [the Qurʾān] was coupled with the word "the Mighty," for this Magnificence; and "the seven oft-repeated" (al-sabʿ al-mathānī) is an expression for what appeared upon him, in his bodily existence, of the being-realized by the seven Attributes.

And His saying (exalted is He): "The All-Merciful taught the Qurʾān" (55:1-2).

[is] a pointing to [the fact] that the servant, when the All-Merciful discloses Himself upon him, finds in himself a merciful delight, which delight gains for him the knowing of the Essence.

So he is realized by the realities of the Attributes; for nothing taught him the Qurʾān except the All-Merciful -- otherwise there is no way to arrive at the Essence without the self-disclosure of the All-Merciful, which is an expression for the whole of the Names and Attributes.

Since the Real (exalted is He) is not known except by way of His Names and Attributes. So understand.

And this is a thing that none understands but the strangers (al-ghurabāʾ) -- and they are the Perfect, glorious Singular Ones (al-afrād al-kummal al-amjād) who are the place of the gaze of God (exalted is He) among the servants.

And God says the truth, and He guides to the way.