True Knowledge is in His treasure-house, [access] to which He grants to whomever He wants among His Servants. Those debarred from it stray in perdition and wander in blindness. On their hearts are locks which cannot be opened, and on their intellects are chains which cannot be lifted. The Friends of God graze in the pastures of Paradise, picking fruits from its trees without being ever sated and swimming in its rivers without ever tiring. They have recognized the One whom they worship, holding Him separate and pure from the traits of the creatures and keeping Him aloof from all their attributes.
The Lords of Perdition have likened the Creator to the creatures, confined Him within definition, and pictured Him with attributes to the point of numbering them! Indeed they have become incapable of recognizing the angels (firishtagān) and the degrees of creation, ignoring established knowledge and believing in unfounded assertions; whereas the Lords of the True Realities are cognizant of God’s angels and possessed of the science of the degrees of creation.
They do not recognize the unknowable, but they know the knowable, and place their hope in that which may come to be, [namely], that the angels will descend upon them. For the Friends of God there is no pain in preserving True Knowledge in such a way that the sciences of the True Reading (ʿulūm-i taʾwīl) become patterns engraved on their spiritual souls and will be of the essence of the substance of their Soul. Indeed, whatever belongs to the essence of a substance is never severed from it, as with the motion of fire which is not separable from fire.
May God preserve us and you from the yokes and fetters of non-cognition and ignorance, and may He allow us and you apprehension of the true realities and search for the growth of True Knowledge, which is the ‘Heaven of Refuge’ and the ‘Highest Paradise’! May He keep us on the ‘Straight Path’! Indeed He is ever-generous and noble, the Possessor of abundant gra
Excerpts of Bundahishn
