The Second Sort is like air. It may be perceived, but it is neither visible nor may it be held. You should turn towards it with your face, your mouth, your spirit, and hold yourself before that breeze of mercy. But do not stretch out the hand of criticism towards it, for you will be unable to hold it. Breathe it with your spirit. If you look on it with the eye of hesitation and lay hands on it by criticizing it, it will escape you and depart. It will not make your hand its dwelling; it would never be content with it!
As for the Third Sort, it is like light. It is visible, but is neither palpable nor may it be held. So you should hold yourself before it with the heart’s eye and spirit’s vision; you should direct your gaze towards it and wait. Perhaps it will come of its own accord. For light cannot be held in the hand or hunted with the fingers; it can be chased only with the light of insight and intuition. If you stretch out a grasping, physical hand and weigh it on material scales, even if it is not extinguished, it will hide itself. For just as such light will not be consent to be imprisoned in matter, so it cannot be restricted, nor will it accept dense things as its lord and master.
Eleventh Note
Know that there is much kindness and compassion in the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition’s manner of expression, for the majority of those it addresses are ordinary people. Their minds are simple so to flatter them it repeats the signs inscribed on the face of the heavens and earth, since their vision does not penetrate to fine things. It facilitates the reading of those large letters. For example, it teaches signs that are clearly apparent and easily read, like the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the rain being made to fall from the sky, and the raising to life of the earth. It rarely directs attention to the subtle signs written in small letters among the large ones lest ordinary people experience difficulty in reading them.
There is an eloquence, fluency, and naturalness in the Qur’an’s styles whereby it is like a hafiz; it recites the verses inscribed with the pen of power on the pages of the universe. It is as though the Qur’an is the recitation of the book of the universe and the verbal expression of its order, and reads out the Pre-Eternal Inscriber’s attributes and writes His acts and deeds. If you want to see this eloquence of expression, listen with an aware and attentive heart to decrees like Sura ‘Amma1 and the verse,
Say: O God! Lord of All Dominion.(3:26)
Sura 78, The Great News.