fore cannot themselves receive the Ruler’s universal address, certain special persons from among human beings will be appointed to that duty so that it may be related to in two respects. First, in order to teach human beings, they must be human beings themselves. And in order to be able to receive the address directly, they must be extremely exalted spiritually.

Thus, since among those human beings the one who made known the purposes of the universe’s Maker most perfectly, disclosed the talisman of the universe and solved the riddle of creation, and who heralded the sublimity of the sovereignty of dominicality in the best way was Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), certainly, of all human beings he would make a spiritual journey in the form of an Ascension touring the corporeal world; he would traverse all the levels to beyond the intermediate world of the divine names, the manifestation of the divine attributes and acts, and the levels of beings, all of which are known as the seventy thousand veils. [^6] The Ascension was this.

[^6]:See, al-Ṭabarānī, al-Mu‘jam al-Kabīr, vi, 148; Abū Ya’la, al-Musnad, ii, 212; al-Daylamī, al-Musnad, ii, 221.

Again the following comes to mind: O listener! You are thinking of asking: “How should I believe it? What does it mean to traverse a distance of thousands of years to a Sustainer Who is closer than anything else and to meet with Him after passing through seventy thousand veils?” To which we reply as follows:

God Almighty is closer to everything than anything else, but everything is infinitely distant from Him. For example, if the sun possessed consciousness and the power of speech, it would be able to converse with you by means of a mirror held in your hand. It would have power of disposal over you as it wished. Indeed, although it would be closer to you than the pupil of your eye, which is like a mirror, you would be approximately four thousand years’ distance from it and could in no way draw nearer to it. If you progressed and rose to the position of the moon and came to the point of being face to face with it, you would still only be able to be a sort of mirror to it.

Similarly, although the All-Glorious One, Who is the Sun of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, is closer to everything than anything else, everything is infinitely distant from Him. Only one who traverses all beings, rises above particularity and gradually passes through the thousands of veils in the degrees of universality till he approaches a divine name which encompasses all beings, and then traverses the many degrees beyond it, may be honoured by a sort of divine proximity.