Have they not seen how God originates creation, then makes it return? In terms of the outwardness, originating creation and making it return are this world and the next world. In terms of the inwardness, these allude to the changing of the moments and the recurrence of states for the possessors of hearts. Sometimes they are in contraction, sometimes expansion, sometimes awe, sometimes intimacy. For a time absence dominates over them, for a time pres- ence; for a time intoxication, for a time sobriety; for a time subsistence, for a time annihilation. When the servant is in contraction and awe, he manifests servanthood by craving forgiveness and fearing punishment, just as the Exalted Lord said: “They were supplicating Us in eagerness and dread” [21:90]. Then, when he steps into the world of expansion, he sees the marks bearing witness to intimacy. He is freed from his own power and strength and disengaged from his own desires and aims. He lives in the opening of disengagement and his aspiration's goal and kiblah becomes desiring His face [6:52]. In this state his soul will be like what Shiblī said because of drunkenness and selflessness: “At the resurrection, everyone will have an antagonist, and I will be Adam's. Why did he make my road steep so that I was held back by the mud?” When he was in expansion he spoke like that, and when he was in contraction he used to say, “My abasement suspends the abasement of the Jews.” Once again he would be given over to expansion and intimacy such that he said, “Where are the heavens and the earths that I may carry them on one of my eyelashes?” This then is the meaning of the recurrence of the states alluded to by originating and making return. The proof text of this in the exalted Qur'an is His words, “You shall surely ride stage after stage” [84:19], that is, state after state. Part of the conduct and traveling of MuṣṬafā was that one day he would say, “I am the master of Adam's children.” Then in the state of contraction he would say, “I do not know what He will do with me or with you. Would that MuḤammad's Lord had not created MuḤammad!” Again, in the state of intimacy, he would say, “I am not like any of you-I spend the night at my Lord; He gives me to eat and drink.
