yet the perfect human being has been preferred over him through knowledge of the names. In this presence and station he is more excellent. This is the extent of the Real’s preferring him.
A Dais and a Locus of Self-Disclosure
The Lover Is Described as Effacement within Affirmation
His affirmation appears in his being charged with obligations, and among active acts of worship in his prayer, which He divided between Himself and His servant, thus affirming him. His effacement within this affirmation is His saying, “God created you and what you do” [al-Saffat 37:96]; “Nothing of the affair is yours” [Al ʿImran 3:128]; “The whole affair belongs to God” [Al ʿImran 3:154]; “You did not throw when you threw, but God threw” [al-Anfal 8:17]; and “Of that over which He has made you successors” [al-Hadid 57:7]. This is utterly clear from God’s Book: effacement within affirmation.
The lover has no disposal except within what he is directed to. His love has bewildered him into willing nothing except what is willed for him, and reality in the affair itself insists upon this. Everything issuing from him is God’s creation. He is acted upon, not an agent: he is the locus through which affairs run over him. He is effacement within affirmation.
When God Is the Lover: Effacement within affirmation. The eye falls only upon the servant’s act: this is the Real’s effacement. Rational proof and unveiling give only the Real’s existence, not the servant’s or the cosmos’s: this is the Real’s affirmation. He is effacement in the witnessed world and affirmation in the presence of witnessing.
