EXORDIUM. TRANSLATION
In the Name of God, the Inaccessible, the Most Holy.
Praise and sanctification are due to the regal substance of holiness, glory, and majesty, Who has existed eternally and will continue to exist in the being of His own Essence, Who has always been and always will be exalted in His own eternity, far above the comprehension of all things. He did not create the sign of His knowledge within any other being other than by means of the incapacity of all things to know Him; nor did He shine forth upon any other thing other than through His own Self. He has, therefore, always been lifted high above association with any other thing, and He brought all things into existence in order that they might all confess before Him on the Day of Resurrection within the being of their true selves that He has neither peer nor equal, nor rival, nor likeness, nor similitude.
No, He has been and remains alone in the dominion of His own Godhood, He has been and remains glorified in the sovereignty of His own Lordship. Nothing else has ever recognized Him as He deserves to be recognized, nor can anything ever hope to do so, for whatever mention of existence they might apply to Him would itself have already been created by the sovereign power of His own Will, and He Himself would already have shone forth on it with His own Self upon the exalted heights of His Throne. He created the sign of His knowledge within the depths of all things in order that they might be sure that He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden, the Creator and the Sustainer, the Powerful and the Knowing, the Hearing and the Seeing, the One Who Buries and the One Who Raises the Dead, the Giver of Life and the Giver of Death, the Mighty and the Inaccessible, the Exalted and the All-Highest. He it is Who has never guided and will never guide anyone unless it be to the exaltation of His glorification and the sublimity of His praise and the inaccessibility of His Oneness and the elevation of His magnification.
No beginning is there for Him save in His own primacy, and no end is there for Him save in His own finality. And all things have acquired their essences according to what He has ordained or shall ordain within them through His own Essence, and they have taken on reality through His Being. Through It God began the creation of all things, and through It He will return the creation of all things to Himself. All the beautiful names have existed for Its sake, and it is for Its sake that they continue to exist. The depths of His Essence are sanctified from all names and descriptions, and the purity of His Reality is lifted up above every splendour and every exaltation, and His naked Essence is far above any inaccessibility or altitude. He is the First, but He cannot be known as such; He is the Last, but He cannot be adequately described as such; He is the Outward, but He cannot be characterized as such; He is the Inward, but He cannot be grasped as such.
And He is the first to believe in Him Whom God Shall Manifest (man yuzhiruhu’llāh), and He is the first to have believed in him who has appeared. He is a single thing, through whose creation all things are created, and through whose sustenance all things are sustained, and through whose death the death of all things is manifested, and through whose life the life of all things is manifested, and through whose resurrection the resurrection of all things is manifested.
The eye of creation has never seen nor shall it ever see anything like Him, whether in the past or in the future. He is the Name of the Essence (ism al-huwiyya) and the Face of Lordship that resides within the shadow of the Countenance of Divinity and gives token of the sovereignty of the Divine Singleness. If I only knew that all things might taste His love, I would not even mention the Fire, for Hell was created in its essence according to what is within it and what is upon it, for the sole reason that it did not bow down before Him. Otherwise, were all things to taste His love, they would be light created from light within light unto light upon light. God guides to His light whomever He wishes, and God lifts up to His light whomever He wills. He is the One Who begins and the One to Whom all things return in the end.
He it is for Whom God, the One, the Single, through the manifestation of His own Self, created seventeen persons who were brought into being before the creation of all other things, out of His own Person. He then caused the sign of their recognition to reside in the realities of all beings, in order that all things might bear witness in their inmost essences to the truth that He is the primal Unity, the One who lives for all eternity. He has not commanded anyone among the contingent beings other than to know its own self and the singleness of the depths of its own reality. For all others but Him are nothing but His creatures, brought into being through His command. Both creation and command belong to Him, in the past and in the future. He is Lord of all the worlds.
Wherefore, let it not be concealed from anyone who looks on these words that God has caused the creation of the Qur’ān to return on the Day of Judgement through the manifestation of His own Self upon that Day. Whereupon, He has created all things freshly, as if they had all just been brought into existence at that very instant. For all that has ever been created was for the Day of the appearance of God, for He it is in which all things reach their end, and He it is in Whom they achieve their destiny. After He manifested Himself through the appearance of the signs of His power, there can be no doubt at all that all things have reached the Divine Presence in that state of perfection which they are capable of attaining. God, may He be praised and glorified, has created the Primal Will once more, and through It He has created all things. And, since all things have been mentioned in a new creation, this is a proof that His creation has neither beginning nor end. Wherefore, there has never been a situation in which God was Lord and there were no created beings to worship Him. God has existed eternally in the exaltation of His Holiness, and all others have existed in the degradation of their own limitations.
The beginning of the creation of all things at this instant, which is a Friday, has taken place through the words God has uttered. His Holiness, the Lord of Glory, brought this new creation into being through His own decree and caused it to rest beneath His shadow in order that it may return to Him. For there can be no doubt that God brings that creation into existence and then makes it return to Himself. God, indeed, is powerful over all things. He structured the creation of all things according to the number of ‘All Things’, through the decrees which He caused to come down from the court of His holiness and which He caused to shine forth from the sun of His own bounty, in order that all things, through the mention of all things, might reach a state of perfection for the sake of the manifestation of the next resurrection, so that He might reward each thing with the reward due to all things. If this reward should turn out to be that of rejection, it will be part of His justice; if it should turn out to be that of acceptance, that will be on account of His grace, for His knowledge of all things before the existence of all things is identical to His knowledge of them after their coming into being; and His power over all things before their creation is the same as His power over them after their creation. From all eternity, God has possessed knowledge of all things and power over them. To Him belong the most beautiful names, both before and after; all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth and all that lies between them recites His praise. No god is there but He, the Powerful, the Beloved. Behold with the eyes of certitude how the gates of the religion of the Bayān have been arranged according to the number of All Things. In the shadow of each gate, by God’s permission, the angels that belong to the heavens and to the earth and to all that lies between, are bowing down, praising, sanctifying, glorifying, and magnifying Him, as they carry out their tasks on His behalf. On the day of the appearance of God, which is the appearance of the Point of the Bayān, all things shall return to Him when it draws to its close. And if blessed individuals to the number of All Things should return to Him, the fruit of all things will have been manifested in His presence. Blessed be he that is raised up on the Day of Resurrection before God, for God will welcome him from one of the gates of all things, inasmuch as he is the essence of that soul to which anyone who has believed in the Bayān shall return, on account of what he has performed in that gate. Wherefore, listen to that, then hasten, then hasten, then hasten, then hasten, for God is the swiftest of reckoners.
If all the gates of all things should not appear before Him, then He will decree the return of the creation of the Bayān, and will fold up in His hand all the heavens that have been lifted up within it, just as in the Qur'an a multiplicity of gates without number were rendered even more numerous before those who believed in Him, and yet at the moment when God decreed the return of the creation of the Quran, there was no-one in His presence but a single individual, who becomes one of the gates of the decree of the Remembrance before Him. Thus God performs whatever He wishes and decrees whatever He desires. He shall not be asked of His doings, but all shall be asked of all that they do.
At the moment when the creation of the Qur'an returned and the creation of all things in the Bayan commenced, the dwelling-place of the Point, who is the Manifestation of Lordship, was upon the Land of the name Basit. Whereupon, the heavens that had been raised up in the Qur'an were all folded up and returned to the Primal Point. None bears witness to that but God and he that is with Him, although He did not send down in the Quran any subject more important than that of the resurrection and its revelation. God is the Reckoner of the number of souls who had believed in the religion of the Quran. And at the moment of return, out of all these souls, there was only one soul in God’s presence, who became the number of All Things; and the creation of all things took place in a second creation at the command of God, the Exalted. Wherefore, watch over your souls, O people of the Bayān, lest you be veiled from God your Lord, though you desire day and night to sanctify yourselves.
Chapter One, Section One
In the first chapter of the number of All Things, the decree which God — praised be He and glorified — has rendered obligatory is the declaration: ‘there is no god but God, truly, truly’.
Wherefore, the whole of the Bayān shall return to this declaration, and the appearance of a new creation shall take place from it. The recognition of this declaration is conditional on recognition of the Point of the Bayān, which God has made the essence of the Letters of the Seven. Whoever realizes that he is the Point of the Qur’ān in his end and the Point of the Bayān in his beginning, and that he is the Primal Will that exists in its own self, through whose decree all things are created and in whom they subsist, his essence has borne witness to the singleness of his Lord. But whoever has not believed in him is rejected and shall enter the fire. What fire is further removed than he who has not believed in him? And he who has believed shall enter into affirmation. What paradise is more exalted than the one who believes in him? It is a declaration that has praised and magnified and extolled and sanctified and glorified its Lord at morn and eventide.
Regard not this declaration except as you look upon the sun in the heavens, and regard not him who believes in him except as you regard the mirror. Indeed, whosoever believes in the essence of the Letters of the Seven, his inner being shall be given assistance by one of the names of God, praised be He and glorified, and his outer being shall be a leaf among the leaves of the Tree of Affirmation. All things return to this one thing, and all things are created through this one thing. This one thing shall be, in the next resurrection, none other than he whom God shall manifest, who, in every degree, utters the words, ‘Verily, I am God, no god is there beside Me, the Lord of all things. All save Me is my creation. Wherefore, O My Creation, worship Me!’ And know that he is the mirror of God, from whom the mirror of the physical universe (mulk) is rendered luminous, which is made up of the Letters of the Living. In him none can be seen except God Himself. Whoever in the Bayan utters the declaration, ‘there is no god but God’, turns towards God through him, for his creation began in him and to him his creation shall return.
The fruit of this knowledge is that, at the time of the appearance of him whom God shall manifest, you should not say, ‘we say “there is no god but God” and this is the basis of religion’. For what you say is but a reflection from his sun, which has shone forth in his first manifestation. He is more worthy of this declaration in his own self than are the realities of all created things, for if the mirror should say ‘the sun is in me’, it is evident to the sun that it is but its reflection speaking.
O creation of the Bayān, we have caused you to know the exaltation of your existence in the declaration of your Lord, that you may not be veiled by the truth from him whom God shall manifest on the Day of Resurrection. That of which you speak resembles its appearance in your hearts and that concerning which he speaks. That it is to which God has borne witness in Himself, that there is no god but He, the Preserver, the Self-Subsistent. In this day, whoever in the Qur’ān should utter this declaration, which is the essence of the faith, it cannot be doubted that he shall have uttered what Muhammad, the Messenger of God, uttered before this. The sun of this declaration was in his (Muhammad’s) heart, and its reflection shone forth in those who utter (that declaration) today. Wherefore, it returns to him in his second appearance, which is the appearance of the Point of the Bayān, not in his first appearance, for in his first revelation the tree of oneness had not been raised up in the realities of created beings. Now that one thousand two hundred and seventy years have passed, this tree has reached the stage of fruition. Everyone in whom there is a reflection of that sun of the Point of the Qur’ān, which is identical with the Point of the Bayān, must needs be manifested before him.
I have used as an example the highest declaration, upon which the faith of all men depends. The beginning of faith is confirmed through its utterance, and all speak it at the moment of death and finally return to it. Wherefore, the reflections of the mirrors return only to that in which they had their origin. If the mirror should remove that portion of the sun’s reflection that lies within it, it will return to it [the sun], for that is where it had its inception. Both its return and its going back exist in nothing but the limitation imposed upon it by being nothing more than a mirror.
Since the exaltation of the word of the Qurān in former times and the elevation of the word of the Bayān after it may be considered thus
when face to face with the Sun of Reality, what is the state of those matters that are derived from that word, matters such as the recognition of God’s names, or those of the Prophet, the Imams of Guidance, the Gates of Guidance, as well as secondary questions without number or end? Anyone who has been veiled by one of these things from the reality that is the source of his existence, and unto which it returns, should he belong to the Tree of Affirmation and should the sign of his oneness be a token of the Sun, well and good; but, God forbid, should it not be a token of it, he would be unworthy of any mention.
For how often did those individuals who associated themselves with the Qur’ān issue decrees contrary to what God had revealed. This was mentioned with respect to their realities, not with regard to what is connected to the realities; for whatever connects itself to anything but God will return to the reality of that thing. And since its reality is not a token of God, it is not mentioned in His presence. But whatever is connected to true realities will return to them. If they are signs (naturally) situated within the mirrors of their own hearts and not (artificially) placed there, they will return to their own seats in the beginning and at the end. Since the sun has been shining from eternity, those mirrors have at all times been tokens of it; God’s grace has never been interrupted under any conditions, nor shall it ever come to an end.
Whosoever says: ‘God, God is my Lord, and I associate no-one with my Lord. The Essence of the Letters of the Seven is the Gate of God [bab Allāh], and I do not believe in any gate other than him’; (whoever says this) and believes in the one God shall manifest, such a man has attained to this first gate of the first unity. Blessed be they who have attained to the bounty of a mighty day, the day on which all shall bring themselves into the presence of God, their Lord.
Chapter One, Section Two
The substance of this chapter is that Muhammad and the manifestations of his self have returned to the world. They were the first servants who presented themselves before God on the Day of Judgement and who, after confessing to His singleness, brought the verses of His Gate to all men. And God made them Imams, according to His promise in the Qur'an: ‘We desire to show Our bounty unto them that have been brought low upon the earth, and to make them Imams and to render them the inheritors’.
By that same proof whereby the prophethood of Muhammad was established in days gone by, his return to the world has been made clear in the eyes of God and those who possess knowledge. That proof consists of the verses of God, verses whose like cannot be produced by all who dwell on the earth. There can be no doubt that the honour of the servant consists in affirming the singleness of his Lord, in recognizing Him, in confessing to His justice, in obedience to Him, and in (obtaining) His good-pleasure. Nor is there any doubt that these holy souls attained to the essence of all exaltation and grandeur before all other men. For any being endowed with spirit who reflects will see no glory in anything except in the good-pleasure of God. There can be no doubt that they were the first lights to bow down before God, to accept the verses that had been sent down upon His Gate, and to spread them abroad among men. There is no exaltation higher than this in the world of creation, than for man’s heart to show the way to God, and for him to never to be veiled from his Beloved, even for so much as a ninth of a ninth of a tenth of a tenth of a ninth part.
For whatever any soul may perform during its lifetime, it seeks for nothing but the good-pleasure of God, since that is the ultimate goal to which all things aspire. Nor can there be any doubt but that God’s good-pleasure is no revealed in anything but the contentment of that individual to whom God has given His proof. Nor can there be any doubt that these holy lights were content with God’s good-pleasure before anything else came into existence. This is the highest exaltation, above all other exaltation, and the most splendid elevation, above all other elevation. No doubt is there that their return in the second revelation is mightier in God’s sight that their first appearance in days gone by.
In this day, the station of the Imam (wilāya) is established by the very same thing that established the station of the Prophet in former days, even though the manifestation of the Point of the Bayān is absolutely identical with that of Muhammad, which has been brought back to life. Nevertheless, since he has appeared in the (form of the) revelation of God Himself, all the names beneath his shadow are God’s tokens, for he is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward, and the Beautiful Names belong to him. In this dispensation (kur), God has singled out their names as the Letters of the Living, for there were fourteen holy souls, as well as the hidden and guarded name, which is known by the names of the Four Gates, or the Lights of the Throne, or the Bearers of Creation, Sustenance, Death, and Life. All of these together form the number of ‘the Living’ (hayy), who were the nearest of the Names to God.
All others were guided by their guidance, for God started the creation of the Bayān through them, and through them He shall cause it to return. They were the lights that bowed themselves down from all eternity before God’s Throne, and they are still there in prostration. In every revelation, they have been known to God by a (different) name, and in every revelation their physical names have been altered. But the names of their real selves, which are God’s tokens, which are manifest in their hearts, and without which they would be unable to present themselves before God in the nearness of their realities, have ever been and continue to be (exactly the same). God possesses Names infinite and without end, but all things have been illumined by these names, for all things are guided by their guidance. Within the hearts of these names, nothing but God can be seen; indeed, within the heart of any believer whatsoever, be it man or woman, nothing can be seen but that name through which the heart receives assistance from God, and in that name nothing can be seen but God and God alone, except that creation and command are His, in the past and in the future. No God is there save He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting. Every soul who has been a believer in Muhammad or in someone other than him, has returned in his shadow. Each one shall have his reward for what he has done. God is witness over all things.
Chapter One, Section Three
Concerning this, that ‘Ali has returned to the world, together with those who believed in him and those who believed in someone else. He was the second to believe in the Point, after the Letter Sm.
Chapter One, Section Four
Concerning this, that Fatīma has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in her, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Five
Concerning this, that Hasan has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
From this point, the Bab lists the twelve imams, Fatima, and the four gates.
Chapter One, Section Six
Concerning this, that Husayn has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Seven
Concerning this, that ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Eight
Concerning this, that Muhammad ibn ‘Ali has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Nine
Concerning this, that Ja'far ibn Muhammad has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Ten
Concerning this, that Mùsā ibn Ja'far has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Eleven
Concerning this, that ‘Ali ibn Musā has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Twelve
Concerning this, that Muhammad ibn ‘Ali has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Thirteen
Concerning this, that ‘Ali ibn Muhammad has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Fourteen
Concerning this, that Hasan ibn ‘Ali has returned to the life of the world, with those who believed in him, and those who believed in someone else.
Chapter One, Section Fifteen
Concerning this, that His Holiness the Proof has appeared with signs and explanations in the revelation of the Point of the Bayān, which is identical to the revelation of the Point of the Qur’ān, although the Point of the Bayān was mentioned in the first place and that of the Qur'an in the second, while the revelation of His Holiness was mentioned in the fifteenth chapter.
The hidden meaning of this is that the Point, in the station of absolute nakedness, which is the pure revelation of God, in which it manifests itself as God [in person], was mentioned in the first station; and in the station of determination, which is the Primal Will, it was mentioned in the second station; and in the station of rising up above all souls, which is the special privilege of the fourteenth revelation, it was mentioned in the fifteenth station.
But the Point itself has ever been and shall ever be in the station of primacy, and is more worthy of the mention of all names than are the names themselves. For example, when the name of divinity exists, there also exists that of lordship and all the (other names), despite the fact that appearance in the name of divinity has always been and shall always be mentioned in the station of the Point. The likenesses of all the names appear in the elevation of their own places.
Wherefore, He is the First at the same time that He is the Last, and He is the Hidden at the same time He is the Manifest, and He it is Who is mentioned by every name at the same time as He is not mentioned by any name. No god is there but He, the One Who arises, the Self-Subsisting.
Chapter One, Section Sixteen
Concerning this, that the First Gate has returned to the world with everyone who believed in him, whether truly or not.
Chapter One, Section Seventeen
Concerning this, that the Second Gate has returned to the world with everyone who believed in him, whether truly or not.
Chapter One, Section Eighteen
Concerning this, that the Third Gate has returned to the world with everyone who believed in him, whether truly or not.
Chapter One, Section Nineteen
Concerning this, that the Fourth Gate has returned to the world with everyone who believed in him, whether truly or not.
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