God has set a seal on their hearts, and on their hearing; and on their eyes is a covering; and for them there will be a mighty chastisement], [all of this] refers to the foremost group of the wretched ones who are subject to the overwhelming divine power (qahr ilāhī) for whom no warning is of any use and who have no means to being saved from the Fire: 'those are the ones against whom the word of your Lord was fulfilled: that they shall not believe' [cf. Q. 10:33] and thus was the word of your Lord fulfilled against those who disbelieve: that they shall be the inhabitants of the Fire [Q. 40:6] all paths shall be closed to them and the gates [of hell] shall be sealed shut upon them. For the heart is the divine waymark of the senses, the locus of inspiration from which they are veiled by its [the heart's] being sealed; while the hearing and the sight are the human waymarks of the senses, the pure ones which constitute the two gates of understanding and the capacity to take heed. These [wretched ones] are thus denied the use of these two [waymarks] because meaning is unable to penetrate from them into the heart. Thus they have no access inwardly to the unveiling knowledge of experiential taste, nor outwardly to taught and acquired knowledge and so they are interned in the prisons of darkness: how mighty therefore is their chastisement!
