Not restricted by conditions or qualifications. Not relative.

“To break a promise is both ignominy and abasement; it can in no way approach His majestic holiness. Failing to carry out a promise, however, arises either from mercy or from powerlessness. Yet unbelief is an absolute crime and admits of no pardon. The Absolutely Powerful One (al-Qadir al-Mutlaq) is transcendent and sanctified beyond all impotence.”¹⁾

“O hapless human being who rolls about in boundless weakness and endless poverty! Realize how precious an intermediary and how acceptable an intercessor mercy is: that mercy is an intermediary to such a Sovereign of Majesty that stars and atoms alike serve in His army with perfect order and obedience. That Lord of Majesty, that Eternal-and-Everlasting King, possesses essential independence; He is immersed in absolute self-sufficiency. He is the All-Wealthy beyond all need in every respect, having no necessity for the universe or its creatures. All creation lies under His command and governance, and beneath His awe and magnificence it shows utmost obedience and humbles itself before His majesty.”²⁾

“… of the four foundations of the highest and loftiest path— the way of servanthood and belovedness— the greatest is thankfulness; the four are expressed thus:

‘On the path of poverty we must keep four watchwords: Absolute impotence, absolute poverty, absolute enthusiasm, absolute thankfulness, O dear one!’”³⁾

“For us, the ‘absolute unseen’ does not mean something unknowable, but something that cannot be encompassed or comprehended: the Divine Essence, the reality of divinity. Other articles of faith, such as belief in the angels, are not the absolute unseen; they are unseen only for people like us, for prophets have seen angels and even some saints may have dealings with them.”⁴⁾

“… everything has come into existence from His light, from the manifestation of His light; it continues to appear and unfold by that light. The absolute and primordial light is His. To ascribe light to any other is either a metaphor used by the elect or an error born of popular ignorance. If everyone does not realize this, it is not because He has an opposite or equal, but because His intense manifestation— an unopposed, measure-less, quality-less disclosure on the horizons of conscience— veils Him. Yes, just as the unseen can be an important gateway to comprehension, so too excessive brightness can sometimes become a screen to the hidden.”⁵⁾

“Every possessor of beauty and perfection desires to display that beauty and perfection. Accordingly, God Almighty wished to behold and show His absolute perfection and the beauty that attains the degree of perfection, and so He created the universe.”⁶⁾

“A point is the smallest part of a line, and it is the first existent produced when the tip of the reality of the Pen touches non-existence. By marking what seemed to be nothingness, it shattered ‘non-existence’ and showed that beyond it there is no absolute nothingness. To know a Being that has neither opposite nor equal required such a point—a notional unit of measure—that would indicate what is other than Himself. For God has no opposite or peer; therefore He cannot be known as the Absolute Existent. Just as light without darkness cannot be known nor its degrees comprehended, so a veil of darkness must be placed within the light so that, according to degree, all lights may line up in order and be knowable.”⁷⁾

“Indeed, when one’s sense of neediness before God is perfected, one attains absolute richness; and when one attains that richness the human spirit feels no other want. This, it would seem, is the meaning of the saying among people: ‘True wealth is the wealth of the heart.’”⁸⁾

“In reality everything is always what it is: there is no indwelling, no union, no identity and no absolute annihilation. Things remain things, events are one of their dimensions; the servant remains the servant, and God is the possessor of absolute existence and knowledge. Every being is a flash of the manifestation of His existence and knowledge. The human being is the interpreter, the soloist, the conscious instrument—or even the conductor—who senses, feels, comments on and evaluates those manifestations, yet who can also err and, if endowed with fairness and insight, seeks to correct his errors.”⁹⁾

“Journeying downward: in order for a restricted, conditioned, and transient existence to emerge, the Absolute, Necessary Existence manifests Itself with mercy and blessings. In other words, the Almighty, True One graciously condescends beyond all concepts of modality to manifest Himself. He does so universally, with all His Names, and gives existence to, and maintains, beings and things, and He does so particularly, with some of His Names, and bestows its particular shape, character, quality and capacity on, and maintains, each being and thing. This can also be regarded as the expanding manifestation of the Necessary in the spheres of the contingent, and the Absolute in the spheres of the conditioned. This journey extends from the earliest determination of beings and things in the Divine Knowledge to the step expressed in the Prophetic saying, “The first thing which God created is my light,” and from here to all degrees of existence in the whole of the universe, and finally to the realm of humankind.”¹⁰⁾

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