Observations placeholder

‘Abd al-Karim Jili [translated by Henry Corbin and  Nancy Pearson]

‘I am’ he said to me ‘transcendent reality, and I am the tenuous thread that brings it very close.  I am the secret of man in his act of existing, and I am that invisible one who is the object of worship.

 I am the cylinder that contains the Essences, and I am the multitude of tenuous threads projected forth as mediators.  I am the Shaikh with the divine nature, and I am the guardian of the world of human nature.  I cause myself to be in every concept and to be manifested in every dwelling.  I appear epiphanised through every form, and I make a sign visible in every Sura. 

My condition is to be esoteric, unusual.  My situation is to be the stranger, the traveller. 

My permanent dwelling is the mountain of Qaf.  My halting place is the A’raf.

I am he who stands at the confluence of the two seas, the one who plunges into the river of the Where, the one who drinks from the source of the source.

I am the guide of the fish in the sea of divinity. I am the secret of the embryo, and I already bear the adolescent.  I am the initiator of Moses.

I am the First and the Last diacritical point.  I am the unique Pole that is the sum of all.  I am the Light that scintillates.  I am the  full moon rising.

 I am the decisive word.

I am the splendour of consciences.  I am the desire of seekers.

Only the perfect Man, the ingathered Spirit reaches and finds access to me.  As for all the others, my rank is well above the dwelling place where they are established.

They have no knowledge of me; they see no vestige of me.