higher limit for a created being. Do not aspire, then, or weary yourself trying to rise above this degree, for no higher degree exists at all; beyond it is only pure nonexistence. He is your mirror in which you see yourself, and you are His mirror in which He sees His names and the manifestation of their effects; they are none other than His very Essence. Thus the matter becomes entangled and obscure. Some of us are ignorant even as they know, and say:

“And inability to attain comprehension is itself comprehension.”

Others among us know and do not utter such a statement, though it is the loftiest statement. Rather, knowledge has brought them silence, not incapacity. Such a person has the highest knowledge of Allah.

This knowledge belongs only to the Seal of the Messengers—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and the Seal of the Saints. None of the prophets or messengers perceives it except through the lamp-niche of the Seal of the Messengers—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and none of the saints perceives it except through the lamp-niche of the Seal of the Saints. Indeed, even the messengers, whenever they perceive it, do so only through the lamp-niche of the Seal of the Saints. For messengership and prophethood—by which I mean lawgiving prophethood and messengership—come to an end, whereas sainthood never ends.

Thus, insofar as the messengers are saints, they perceive what we have mentioned only through the lamp-niche of the Seal of the Saints. What, then, of the saints below them? Although the Seal of the Saints follows, in matters of law, the legislation brought by the Seal of the Messengers, this neither detracts from his station nor contradicts our position. For in one respect he is lower, just as in another respect he is higher.

Support for our position also appears in the outward aspect of our revealed law: in Umar’s merit concerning the judgment on the captives of Badr, and in the pollination of date palms. Thus, the perfect man need not take precedence in every