the matter that is for Me: you are to worship Me without associating anything with Me. As for the matter that is for you, it is your deeds: I shall reward you for them when you are most in need of that reward. As for the matter between Me and you, yours is to supplicate and Mine is to answer. As for the matter between you and My creation, treat people as you would like them to treat you.’”
With regard to affirming Allah’s oneness—whether this encompasses both His sole right to worship and His lordship, or either of them—the servant has three stations.
The first is the station of distinction and multiplicity, through His bounty in the multitude of created beings and commanded acts.
The second is the station of unified awareness and self-effacement: he becomes so absorbed in the One he witnesses that he loses awareness of his witnessing; in the One he worships, awareness of his worship; in the One whose oneness he affirms, awareness of his affirmation; in the One he remembers, awareness of his remembrance; and in the One he loves, awareness of his love. This is the effacement of awareness of anything other than Allah, and it is the effacement of those who fall short.
Complete self-effacement, however, in accordance with Muhammad’s way, consists in abandoning worship of anything other than Allah, seeking aid from anything other than Him, and seeking the countenance of anyone other than Him. This belongs to the third degree: witnessing distinction within unified awareness, and multiplicity within oneness. Thus, he witnesses that all beings, despite their diversity, subsist solely through Allah Most High sustaining them and exercising His lordship over them. He recognizes that there is no creature but that my Lord holds it by its forelock; that He is the Disposer of all things and the Lord of the worlds; and that the servants’ hearts and forelocks are in His hand. There is no creator besides Him, nor anyone who brings benefit or harm, gives or withholds, preserves, honors or humiliates, other than Him. He also witnesses