Allah in that state, just as he is a friend of Allah in all his other states. He is Allah’s friend, never His enemy in any state. Nor is his state when conveying the message inferior to his state when he prays, supplicates to Allah, and communes with Him.

Moreover, what does this man who strains to interpret his words make of this venerated man’s statement that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is a silver brick, whereas he himself is two bricks, one gold and one silver? He claims that Muhammad’s brick, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, represents outward knowledge, while his own two bricks represent inward knowledge—the gold—and outward knowledge—the silver—and that he receives this without an intermediary. In his Fusūs (Bezels), he explicitly states that the rank of sainthood is greater than the rank of prophethood because the saint receives without an intermediary, whereas the prophet receives through an intermediary. Thus, the distinction by which he claims superiority over the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is, in his estimation, greater than what he shares with him.

In short, he has not followed the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in anything. For he claims to have received from Allah even those things in which he outwardly follows him, just as one jurist exercising independent judgment may agree with another, or one messenger with another. In his view, therefore, he neither follows the Messenger nor receives anything from him at all, whether truths conveyed in revealed reports or truths concerning religious law.

Furthermore, he was not content for his relationship with the Messenger to resemble that of Moses with Jesus, or one scholar with another, regarding the religious law in which he agreed with him. Rather, he claimed that he receives inwardly from Allah the religious law that he acknowledges the Messenger to be correct in teaching. His reception of religious law from Allah would thus be greater than the Messenger’s reception of it.