Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

GOD IN HIS UNITY

MOST ANCIENT OF ALL.

NO MULTIPLICITY.

ALONE OF EVERYTHING

UNCREATED.

What say you? Why did He

make the universe

out of pearl?

neither matter for form

height nor breadth.

You agree: in every case

cause precedes effect

as ONE is prior to numbers

or part to the whole

and since heaven and earth (all agree)

are both effects

why consider heaven alone

a realm of knowledge and power

(like its own antecedent cause)?

What He brings today

from potency into Act

could just as well be

yesterday or tomorrow

since He is not in need

nor impotent. You claim

that between cause and effect

between nothingness and creation

some interval of TIME must intervene

but TIME itself is born

of the rolling spheres.

How can TIME exist?

a non-existent entity?

a beginningless void?

before the spheres themselves?

If you think of nothingness

subsisting in itself

then Unity must have an opposite

a partner in manifestation.

If nothingness

is merely a name or sound

would this not prove that even names

are not without their due effects?

God is above all

as ONE above the numbers:

only thus is TIME s existence known

that of PLACE refuted

genesis necessitated

and Eternity proven.

Do not if you are wise

attribute to HIM

any action but creatio ex nihilo

of a single being in the wink

of an eye

or less.

Do not speak of His Action

in such a way that His Essence

might be passive like our own

moulded in time by act

by the least of intentions.

ABSOLUTE UNITY:

seek nothing outside His Essence

for He is All-comprehensive

while the essences of things

are particular, determined.

If you claim He transcends all vision

do not attribute qualities to Him

for this would make Him

dual in essence

no longer singular, unique and ONE.

True, you see in this universe

a myriad things made of earth

wind, water, fire, metals and seas.

If you could float down

like Harut the fallen angel

from celestial spheres

then could you not

lift yourself up again

like the Morning Star?

EMANATION FROM ESSENCE

NOT FROM BEING:

the cause of the creation of one thing

must be ONE

The First Emanation is Intellect

then Soul, then Body,

plants, the abundance of beasts,

the Rational Animal.

Each Archetype contingent in itself

bu (in reality) an impossible being;

each one manifest in itself but

(in reality) a hidden non-existent.

What say you now? how this painted screen

is set up in the vasty air

like an enamelled pavilion pitched

in a desert of fire?

Does it move by itself or

has someone set it spinning?

keeps it revolving like this

around the zenith on high?

How do you define movement ?

Locomotion? Turning from one state

to another lowly or sublime?

Then explain to me please

its condition and locus

if you know. If you don t know

stay off the path of Wisdom

till your blindfold is untied.

When by way of demonstration

and deduction you speak

of NINE SPHERES -

what say you again?

what lies beyond these verdant fields?

If you answer VACUUM

I say you re wrong - impossible

that solid forms should hang

in a void. If you say

PLENUM - no no - one cannot conceive

a physical body without limit or end

like a sublime substance.

Then what keeps this ball of dust

suspended - so - between water and fire

thunderbolt and raging tempest?

If the elements are opposites in nature

why do the four of them

seem to embrace in an excess of unity

in a single place like

loving brothers? or if you say

they re not opposites in essence

why have they been given NAMES

which express their opposition?

BEGIN NOW

KNOW THYSELF and turn

your steed away from the

whirling spheres

and this duststained toy.

How can you taste Divine Mysteries

with the DEVIL in you

slashing about with his sword

duelling the inner ADAM?

Your vision of the

spiritual essence of things

reminds me of a blind man

dropped in the middle of the

soul-nourishing Garden of the Spirit

trying with his sightless eyes

to visualise the shapes and colours

of its delights.