15 - The Rock

Thou Allah! Thou Gracious! Thou Merciful! Thou Beloved!

1. Those that do not believe that Allah is the One; indivisible, omnipresent, manifest and fully in every mote of the Universe, refuse the plenty that awaits them.
2. They say: "You messengers, you dervish, you saints who proclaim this! You are mad, your faces filled with the intoxication of your beloved!"
3. "Show us angels, show us miracles, heal us of our ills, if you have the truth."
4. They are surrounded by angels, their lips kissed by the winged ones.
5. They are in the presence of miracles.
6. The medicine is in their mouths.
7. They would be paid before the work was done, beggars at the table set for them.
8. The message has been sent from the moment the first day dawned, from the moment Allah forgot and all time, all space, all creation was manifest.
9. Allah sent messengers to point the way, sellers of water by the fountain; wandering saints of the deserts, hermits of high mountain passes, ordinary men and women who had stood in the presence of Allah and understood that all is one, that one is Allah.
10. He sent them to the sects of old, he sent them to the corners of the earth.
11. But never came a messenger to them that they did not mock him.
12. For those who recognized the messenger, he was robbed of his humanity.
13. Never did they let the messenger be as he was, but dressed him in the raiments of kings.
14. So afraid were they of Allah, that they made his messengers exemplars.
15. So afraid were they of Allah, that they placed the example beyond their own reach.
16. They do not trust in the simplicity of the message, such has been the way of those who went before them.
17. If Allah rended from them the veils of illusion, opened out to them a gate from heaven, if they were to walk the earth arm in arm with the beloved, they would only say: "Our eyes have been intoxicated: We have been bewitched by sorcery."
18. It is Allah whose playfulness, whose moment of forgetfulness, set out constellations, spread out the Earth out like a carpet; set thereon mountains firm and immovable. Allah manifested the means of subsistence, the fecundating winds. It is Allah that causes the rain to descend from the sky, and provides water in abundance.
19. It is Allah that provides the veils, and Allah that provides the laws that govern the world of veils.
20. Allah is your every condition, Allah is your every faith, your reconcilliation, your despair.
21. Your joy or sorrow is a condition of Allah.
22. Your respiration, your life, your death are a condition of Allah.