And when, the Satan of estimation, adorned their deeds for them, with [the false promise] that the kingdom of the heart and its faculties could be overcome, and said: 'Today no person shall overcome you, illuding them [into believing] that their wish would be realised by showing them that there is none from among the men of the senses that shall overcome them and that likewise would be the case with all the other faculties, and I shall be your protector', reinforcing you and fortifying you and fend off the men of the spiritual faculties from you. But when the two armies sighted each other, he turned his back in flight, sensing the state of the spiritual faculties and their power to overcome by virtue of his correspondence to these [spiritualities] in terms of [his capacity of] perceiving [their] meanings, saying, 'I am quit of you, for I am not of your genus. I see, in the way of meanings and of the arrival of reinforcement to them from the heaven of the spirit and the angelic realm of the world of the Holy, what you do not see. Verily I fear God, as I sense some of His lights and His vanquishing, and God is severe in retribution': herein is an allusion to the saying of the master of all messengers [Muḥammad], namely: 'Each person has a devil, except that my devil submitted [to islam] at my hands'. That is the instruction and the model [to be followed] in similar cases where a seeker wishes to effect a correspondence between the stories [of the QurÌān] and his own states. However, I shall rarely repeat the like of this [intepretation] henceforth because other than conceptualising the path of wayfaring and having the initiate imagine what he faces [along this path] with a view to energising him to rise and ascend [through the states], there is little in the way of a useful lesson [therein]. And God is the Guide.
