The Answer
to a Confidential Question
[This instance of divine favour was written some time ago confidentially and was added to the end of the Fourteenth Word. However, most of the scribes have forgotten it and not written it. That is to say, the appropriate place for it must have been here, since it remained unknown.]
Y o u a s k m e : “How is it that in the Words you have written from the Qur’an are a power and effectiveness rarely to be found in the words of Qur’anic commentators and those with knowledge of God? Sometimes a single line is as powerful as a page, and one page as effective as a book?”
T h e A n s w e r : A good answer: since the honour belongs to the Qur’an’s miraculousness and not to me, I say fearlessly: it is mostly like that for the following reason:
The Words that have been written are not supposition, they are affirmation; they are not submission, they are belief; they are not intuitive knowledge (marifet), they are a testifying and witnessing; they are not imitating, they are verification; they are not taking the part of something, they are comprehension of it; they are not Sufism, they are reality (hakikat); they are not a claim, they are the proof within the claim. The wisdom in this is as follows:
Formerly, the fundamentals of belief were protected, submission was strong. Even if the intuitive knowledge of those with knowledge of God lacked proof, their expositions were acceptable and sufficient. But at this time, since the misguidance of science has stretched out its hand to the fundamentals and pillars [of belief], the All-Wise and Compassionate One of Glory, who bestows a remedy for every ill, in consequence of my impotence and weakness, want and need, mercifully bestowed in these writings of mine which serve the Qur’an a single ray from the comparisons of that Noble Qur’an, which are a most brilliant manifestation of its miraculousness. All praise be to God, distant truths were brought close through the telescope of the mystery of comparisons. Through the aspect of unity of the mystery of comparisons, truly disparate matters were collected together. Through the stairs of the mystery of comparisons, the highest truths were