On the Cloud (al-ʿAmāʾ)

Truly the Cloud (al-ʿamāʾ) is the first locus; / a sphere in which the suns of beauty have set.

It is the very self of the self of God -- come-to-be, for it, by it, [as] a coming-to-be; / yet it has not gone forth [of Him], so it does not change.

The lofty likeness was struck for it: its latency / is like the latency of a fire that the boulder holds.

Whenever a fire appears from the stones, it is [yet], / by its rule and its latency, not departing.

And the fire, in the stones, is latent; and even if / it appears, this rule does not dissolve.

And how many a beholder we have seen who is in blindness / of Him -- exalted is God! -- He is not represented [in any likeness].

It is the bewilderment of minds, in their astonishments / away from it -- so that is, for them, a Cloud [that] is let-go.

It is His self -- not by the consideration of its darkness, / but by the consideration of its light, when it is conceived;

without an unknown Oneness, / or a Unicity of multiplicity that is not unknown.

It was subtilized, so it vanished in the subtlety of its essence; / so its latency, in it, is the First Cloud.

And know that the Cloud (al-ʿamāʾ) is an expression for the Reality of realities, which is not qualified by Real-ness nor by creature-ness; so it is pure Essence -- because it is not added to [any] rank, neither Real nor creaturely; so it requires, for the absence of addition, neither attribute nor name. And this is the meaning of his saying (upon him be blessing and peace): 'Truly the Cloud -- above it is no air and below it is no air' -- meaning, neither Real nor creation. So the Cloud became the counterpart of Oneness: for just as, in Oneness, the Names and the qualities dwindle away and nothing has appearing in it, so likewise the Cloud -- nothing of that has, in it, scope or appearing.

And the difference between the Cloud and Oneness: that Oneness is the rule of the Essence in the Essence by [the requirement of] elevation -- and that is the essential, one-fold appearing; while the Cloud is the rule of the Essence by [the requirement of] absoluteness, so that no elevation or drawing-near is understood from it -- and that is the essential, Cloud-like inwardness. So it [the Cloud] is the counterpart of Oneness: that one is the sheerness of the Essence by the rule of self-disclosure (tajallī), and this one is the sheerness of the Essence by the rule of concealment (istitār). For exalted is God that He should conceal Himself from Himself, away from a self-disclosure, or disclose Himself to Himself, away from concealment. And He is upon what His Essence requires, of self-disclosure and concealment, inwardness and appearing, [the divine] affairs, relations, considerations, additions, names, and attributes -- [which] do not change and do not alter.

And He does not don a thing and [so] leave another, nor strip off a thing and [so] take another.

Rather, the rule of His Essence is upon what it is, ever since it was, and is only upon what it [always] was: 'There is no altering the creation of God' (30:30, al-Rūm) -- that is, [no altering] the attribute of God which He is upon. And these changes and alterations are only in the forms and other [than them], of the relations, additions, considerations, and the like of that; and it is [all] only by the rule of what He discloses by to us and appears by to us; while He is, in Himself, upon what He is, of the matter that was His before His self-disclosure to us and His appearing to us.

And after that rule, His Essence accepts only the self-disclosure that He is upon; so He has but one self-disclosure, and the one self-disclosure is but one name, and the one name is but one attribute, and for [them] all there is but one [reality], not multiple. So He is disclosed to Himself, in pre-eternity, by [the very same] that He is disclosed to Himself by, in post-eternity.

Upon the covenant, of those [old] covenant-grounds, is Zaynab; / and the events have not changed her, that she should [need to] veil.

Indeed she kept those covenants, and Zaynab was not / one to squander a covenant at al-Muḥaṣṣab [the pilgrims' halting-place].

And if the slanderers report of her [some] shunning, / then it is [only] for the sake of what the slanderers [themselves] desire -- the shunning.

And if they thunder, concerning her, with rebuff and estrangement, / [then] the lightning of fidelity, in the downpour of [her] grace, is [but a] false flash.

Take, O her boon-companions, the cups of her [sweet] saliva; / for the palm of the boon-companion's hand, in [her wine], is dyed [red].

And do not hope, from her, for embrace and [easy] peace; / for the bats do not approach the sun.

So what she unveiled to you is by her tenderness, / and out of mercy to the love-stricken -- [for] she does not veil [from him].

And in verification, there is no equal to her beauty / but herself; so beware! -- [she is as] the ʿAnqāʾ Mughrib [the unattainable phoenix].

And this one self-disclosure is the reserved-one (al-mustaʾthir), by which He does not disclose Himself to another; so the creation has no share in it at all -- because this self-disclosure accepts neither consideration nor division, neither addition nor [the] qualities, nor anything of that. And whenever the creation had, in it, a relation or a quality or anything of that, it would not be this self-disclosure.

And all this is not of the rule of this self-disclosure that He is upon, in His Essence, from pre-eternity to post-eternity. And it [this disclosure] meets the divine self-disclosures -- be they essential or act-based, attribute-based or name-based -- for they, even though they have a reality for Him, are [yet only] what He requires from the side of His appearing and His self-disclosure to His servants.

And in sum: this essential self-disclosure that He is upon gathers the kinds of self-disclosures; His being in this self-disclosure does not prevent Him from disclosing Himself by another self-disclosure. But the rule of the other self-disclosures, beneath it, is like the rule of the stars beneath the sun: existent-[yet]-nonexistent -- granted that the light of the stars, in themselves, is from the light of the sun.

And likewise the rest of the divine self-disclosures are but a trickle from the sky of this self-disclosure, or a drop from its sea; and they are, despite their existence, nonexistent in the appearing of the sovereignty of this essential self-disclosure -- the reserved-one, which He merited for Himself from the side of His [own] knowing of it; whereas the remaining self-disclosures, He merited [them] for Himself from the side of another's knowing of them. So understand.

The steed of [eloquent] exposition ran in the racecourse of this clarification, until it disclosed the rule of what never appears [at all]; so let us draw in the rein, in this demonstration, and unfold the tongue in that for which there was [some] render-able expression.

So we say: after we have informed you that the Cloud is the self of the Essence by the consideration of absoluteness in inwardness and concealment, and that Oneness is His self by the consideration of elevation in appearing -- with the necessity of the falling-away of the considerations in it -- [know that] my saying 'by the consideration of appearing' and 'the consideration of concealment' is only for conveying the meaning to the understanding of the hearer; not that the consideration of inwardness is [really] of the rule of the Cloud, or the consideration of appearing of the rule of Oneness. So understand.

And know that you [yourself], in your [own] self -- and to God belongs the highest likeness -- are in a 'cloud' away from yourself: if we consider the absence of your appearing to yourself, absolutely, in the entirety of what you are upon -- even [granted] that you are knowing of what you are by and upon. But by this consideration, you are an essence in a cloud. Do you not see yourself -- by the consideration that the Real (glory be to Him, exalted is He) is your very [reality] and your ipseity -- [that] you may [yet] be heedless of the reality of what you, by Him, most truly are?

So you are, away from yourself, in a cloud, by this consideration; while you, from the side of your Real[-ity], are not veiled from yourself -- because the rule of the Real is that He is not veiled from Himself. So you were, in your appearing to yourself by the rule of the Real, upon what you are of the cloud; and it [the cloud] is your concealment from your [own] reality by the rule of creation. So you were appearing to yourself, [yet] inward away from yourself. And this is a kind of the likenesses we strike for the people, and none grasp them but the knowers. And for this, when the Messenger of God (may God bless him and grant him peace) was asked: 'Where was the Real before He created the creation?' he answered with his saying: 'In a Cloud (fī ʿamāʾ).'

because the self-disclosure, in itself, must require -- from the side of its name -- that there be no concealment before it; and this 'before-ness' is a before-ness of rule, not a before-ness of timing -- because He is exalted [above] that there should be, between Him and His creation, a timing, or a separation, or a disjunction, or a connection, or a mutual-necessity; since time, separation, disjunction, and mutual-necessity are [themselves] creatures of His -- so how could they be between Him and His creatures?