be seen in the Hereafter except as He was seen in this world: He is seen only in the forms of existing things. As the author of al-Fusūs said in the chapter on Seth:

“As for grants, gifts, and bestowals from the Essence, they can only ever come through a divine self-disclosure. Self-disclosure from the Essence can only ever occur in a form corresponding to the recipient’s receptivity; it cannot be otherwise. Thus, the recipient has seen nothing but his own form in the mirror of the Real. He has not seen the Real, nor can he see Him, although he knows that he has seen his own form only in Him. This is like a mirror in ordinary experience: when you see an image in it, you do not see the mirror, although you know that you have seen the images—that is, your own image—only in it.

“Allah has presented this as an analogy for His self-disclosure in His Essence, so that the recipient may know that he has not seen Him. No analogy is closer or more similar to vision and self-disclosure than this. When you see the image in the mirror, strive to see the mirror itself: you will never see it at all. Some who grasped something of this in the example of the mirror even came to hold that the visible image lies between the viewer’s sight and the mirror. This was the utmost knowledge such a person could attain. Yet the matter is as we have stated and maintained. We have explained this in