spectacle for all to gaze on so that they do not remain useless and vain. Moreover, in order to announce the things that please Him to conscious beings, He will raise one of them to a rank above the others, and will inform him of those things and send him to them.
Since reality and wisdom require it to be thus and the one most worthy to perform this duty was the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him), for he actually performed those duties most perfectly, to which fact the world of Islam which he founded and the light of Islam which he showed are truthful and just witnesses; this necessitates that he should have risen above all the rest of the universe, surpassed all beings, and attained to a rank at which he held a universal, elevated, and all-embracing conversation with the Creator of all beings. Thus, the Ascension expresses this truth as well.
In Short: Since He has formed, arranged, and adorned the vast universe in this way for mighty purposes and sublime aims such as those mentioned above; and since among beings mankind exists to see this universal dominicality together with all its subtleties and this supreme Divine sovereignty together with all its truths; most certainly that Absolute Ruler will speak with man, He will inform him of His purposes.
Since everyone cannot free themselves from particular, insignificant, and lowly matters and rise to the highest and universal position, and therefore cannot themselves receive the Ruler’s universal address, certain special individuals 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 (Peace and blessings be upon him), 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. And the Ascension was this.
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: