vessels sailing upon the sea, differing tongues and colours, sleep by night and day to seek bounty, and everything the Qurʾan mentions as a sign “for people who exercise intellect,” who hear, understand, believe, know, possess certainty, and reflect. Despite all this, none gives it heed except the people of God: the people of the Qurʾan, God's elect.
The noncustomary sign, breaking customary order, affects the generality's souls: earthquakes, tremors, eclipses, an animal speaking, walking upon water, passing through air, informing of future events which occur as reported, speaking concerning thoughts, eating from created being, and a little food satisfying many people. The generality in particular take these into consideration.
Whenever breaking customary order does not arise from uprightness or awaken and prompt a return to God, with the person returning and having no agency in it, it is devising and gradual entrapment without his knowing. This is the firm stratagem: God's gifts alongside opposition. Within it is a wondrous mystery for the gnostics. Were divulging it not harmful among the generality, we would mention it. Not everything known is said.
(Creation's Renewal and the Impossibility of Repetition)
Breaking customary order occurs only the first time. If it returns a second time, it becomes customary.
In reality, however, the affair is perpetually new, and nothing returns. There is therefore no breaking of customary order. An affair appears in the guise of its like, not as its very entity. It has not returned, so it is not customary; had it returned, it would be customary.
People are veiled from this reality,
Notes
Translator’s note TN4820-1: “Eating from created being” closely follows the supplied al-akl min al-kawn, which is not further specified here. The argument about repetition then distinguishes a customary second occurrence from the perpetually new existence of a likeness, not the same entity returning.
