the Garden have a self-disclosure that increases their bliss, from which the people of the Fire are veiled. For this reason He said, “from their Lord,” concerning the people of the Fire. The Lord nurtures and makes sound.
The door to knowing God apart from everything else is closed in respect of His Essence, which is what is sought through self-disclosure. Creation is in ignorance of this matter we have mentioned, except those upon whom God has mercy. The Muʿtazila were correct in denying vision, but not in their proof for it. Had they not mentioned their evidence, we might have imagined that they knew the matter as the people of God know it.
In their evidence, however, they were like one who said something that pleased his companion and was accepted by him. When he mentioned the attribution of what he had presented, that joy departed, and his companion said, “You spoiled it when you gave its attribution.” Whoever does not know God in this way does not know Him with the knowledge required of him.
Chapter One Hundred and One: On the Station of Leaving Fear
When knowledge of fear became attached to nonexistence,
I did not fear it, and we attained the rank of beginninglessness.
I am existence, so no fear accompanies me,
for my opposite is ascribed to nonexistence.
What I feared has no existence:
leave fearing it as meat upon a block.
Notes
Translator’s note TN4047-1: The author separates the Muʿtazila’s denial of vision from their proof for that denial, approving the former under the perspective stated here while rejecting their evidence.
Translator’s note TN4047-2: The poem shifts from ‘I’ to ‘we’ as supplied. Qidam is read as ‘beginninglessness’; the same consonants can also read qadam, ‘foot.’ Waḍam is a block or support on which meat is laid; the closing image is retained.
