Then comes the Throne (‘arsh) ...

Then comes the Throne (‘arsh) , the heavenly Chair (kursi) , seven heavenly spheres, and four elements, the three kingdoms of minerals, vegetables, and animals. The last in the series is man who is the acme of creation. Though temporally last in the series, man is logically first, as tree is potentially prior to the seed. The entire world was created for him while he was created for himself, as the embodiment of God’s highest manifestation.

But he possesses certain baser elements which, however, are essential for his moral progress. A mirror, to be able to reflect things, must have one side totally blackened. If it were a crystal, it would cease to serve as a mirror. As man is the final cause of creation, everything is made to obey his command. All things are manifestations of the different names of God, but, being the reflection of the Named, man comprises within himself all the names; therefore, all the creation is within him.

He is the most marvellous creation of the Lord and owes everything to Him, his power, knowledge, and will are all God’s. Reason is perfectly useless, according to Shabistari. It’s a long, winding, and arduous path. A philosopher is like a cross-eyed man who sees duality everywhere. He starts with the objects of the world conceived as real. On this basis he argues the existence of the Necessary, as distinct from and other than the contingent.

Arguing on the basis of a continuous series of causes and effects, Shabistari asserts that the Necessary Being is the Primal Cause of the process of creation. The whole process of reasoning, according to him, is wrong. There is no possibility of the knowledge of God through the category of contingency as the latter does not possess any similarity to the former.

“It amounts to discovering the burning sun with the help of the dim light of a tiny candle.” The best method, therefore, is to give up logical reason and enter the valley of gnosis.[^3] Knowledge gained though discursive reason leads one to sleep, while gnosis awakens one from slumber.

Like Abraham, one must go beyond the divinity of the stars, the sun, and the moon which, according to him, represent sense-perception, imagination, and reason, respectively.[^4] In the sixth question of Gulshan-i Raz the Sheikh explicitly rejects the usefulness of reason in the mystic search for truth. He holds that there is “a way” beyond reason by which man is able to know the secret of reality.