sun’s essence directly in person, then you have to transcend very many restrictions and traverse very many levels of universality. Simply, after abstracting yourself from materiality, becoming enlarged to the extent of the earth, expanding in the spirit like the air, rising as far as the moon and resembling the full moon, only then can you claim to meet with it in person without veil and to draw close to it to any degree.

In just the same way, the All-Glorious One of Perfection, the Peerless One of Beauty, the Necessarily Existent One, the Giver of existence to all beings, the Eternal Sun, the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, is closer to you than yourself. Yet you are infinitely distant from Him. If you have the power, put the fine points in the comparison into practice.

Secondly: For example, “And God’s is the highest similitude”(16:60), among many names, a king’s name of commander appears in many spheres, one within the other. It has a manifestation and appearance in spheres extensive and narrow, universal and particular, from the universal sphere of commander-in-chief, to those of field marshal and general, then those of captain and corporal. Now, in his military duties, a private soldier holds as his authority the minor point of commandership apparent in the rank of corporal; he is in touch with and connected to the commander-in-chief through this minor manifestation of his name. If he wishes to get in touch with him through his essential name and meet with him through that title, he will have to rise from the corporalship to the universal rank of commander-in-chief. That is to say, the king is extremely close to the soldier through his name, decree, law and knowledge, his telephone and regulations, and if he is luminous like a saint who is an abdāl, with his presence in person. Nothing at all can be an obstacle or obstruction for him. Whereas the soldier is extremely distant. Thousands of degrees form obstructions and thousands of veils intervene. But sometimes the king is compassionate and contrary to his practice, receives a soldier into his presence and favours him with his grace.

In just the same way, the All-Glorious One, the Lord of the command of, “‘Be!’, and it is”(36:82), for Whom the suns and stars are as though His soldiers under orders, is closer to all things than they themselves, yet all things are infinitely distant from Him. If you want to enter the presence of His grandeur without veil, you have to pass through seventy thousands of veils of darkness and light, that is, material and physical veils and the veils of the divine names and attributes, rise through the thousands of particular and universal degrees of manifestation of each name, pass on through the most elevated levels of His attributes, and ascend as far as the sublime throne, which manifests His greatest name, and if you are not the object of