“Beyond blackness, no color can go.”[256]
Every one, as long as he is in the state of progress, cannot have arrived at the condition
“Where there is no fear and no care.”
Because care and fear derive from ascent and descent. Fear at ascending is in the expectation whether the ascent will succeed or not, but whoever disregards ascent and descent, and elevates himself above care and fear, he obtains tranquillity in tranquillity, and rectitude in rectitude. And the verse of the merciful is:
“Keep thyself upright as thou wast directed.”
Hence is also understood, that the Súfi remains steadfast in the dignity of perfection, for rectitude is perseverance. O Muhammed! it is necessary; remain fixed in the dignity of professing the unity of God, which is free from the misfortune of inconstancy. And the verse of the merciful is:
“The day on which I perfected religion for your sake, and rendered complete my favor towards you.”
This indicates clearly the meaning that, by this perfection also, the prophet (upon whom be the peace and the blessing of the most High!) is manifested. And those who, on account of the infinity of revelation, hold progress to be perpetual, are not right: because, as long as the sight is illuminated by the light of the revelation, the revelationists and the illuminated are still separate, and not yet become one:[257] in this state there is duality and infidelity in the individual who has not yet been liberated from the idea of something double in himself, and he to whom an atom of something else but that one remains attached is reckoned, by all professors of unity and by all perfect saints, to be one who gives partners to God or an infidel, and in a state of deficiency.
“It behoves thee to keep neither soul nor body,
And if they both remain, I do not remain;