And had We prescribed, that is, [had] We made it obligatory, for them: 'Slay your souls', by curbing the caprice that is their [the souls' source of] life and by annihilating their attributes, or 'Leave your habitations', your stations, which are patience, trust, satisfaction and the like, because of their veiling [of the soul] from the affirmation of Oneness, as al-Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr [al-Ḥallāj], may God sanctify his spirit, said to Ibrāhīm b. Adham, may God have mercy on him, when he asked him about his state and [al-Ḥallāj] responded by saying, 'I wander the deserts and roam the open lands where there is neither water nor trees, and neither meadows nor rain: am I right in assuming a state of trust [in God] or notḍ', to which he [Ibrāhīm] replied, 'If you were to spend your entire life cultivating your belly: where [in all of that] is the annihilation in the Onenessḍ'; they would not have done it, save a few of them: and these [few] are the lovers [of God], those prepared for His encounter, the greatest in power, the smallest in number, as God says but few are they [Q. 38:24]; it would have been better for them, in terms of the perfection that would have been actualised for them upon the removal of the veil of the attributes of the soul by the assumption of the attributes of the Truth or by the arrival at the source of the union, and stronger in establishing, by making [them] upright in religion upon subsistence after the annihilation.
