The Divine Visions.

■ The Divine Visions.

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī, may Almighty
Allāh sanctify his secret says in Al-Manāẓir al-Ilāhiyyah (The Divine Visions)

▪︎ The First Vision
(Worship Allāh as though you see Him)

Divine, merciful breezes descend upon the servant, enabling him to envision the Presence of the Truth Allāh in His majesty and glory. Thus, all the servant’s words, actions, and states become acts of worship, as they are drawn from the Divine Presence.

▪︎  The Second Vision
(Watchfulness, Murāqabah)

It is the servant’s witnessing, with his heart,
of the Presence of the Exalted Truth, whereby the insignificance weakness, smallness, and humility of the self become manifest beneath the manifestation of Divine Greatness.

▪︎ The Third Vision
(Absolute Theophany, Tajallī)

When the servant becomes upright in the station of faith, a luminous, merciful radiance emanates from his heart, these are the lights of faith. From this light, a divine meaning is cast into his heart, causing him to withdraw from sensory perception into that light. Allāh then opens for the servant gates of knowledge and spiritual influxes, granting him insights into the unity of the outward within manifestations.

▪︎ The Fourth Vision
(Witnessing, Mushāhadah)

In this vision, the servant beholds Allāh in all His creation. He witnesses Reality through the Truth, without confusion, imagination, illusion, or falsehood. This witnessing occurs without incarnation (ḥulūl), mixture, embodiment, or anthropomorphism. Do you not see how Allāh manifested to our master Moses in the created fire?

▪︎ The Fifth Vision
(Being, Wujūd)

The Truth manifests through the very essences of appearances, becoming both the outward and the locus of manifestation. This is the
first unveiling of the station of Divine Unity (al-Wāḥidiyyah). Here, the servant has no actions.

▪︎ Imām Al-Junāyd said:

“When the originated is compared to the Eternal, it leaves no trace.”

When Allāh manifests to the servant in this station, diverse sciences of manifestation
are opened to him, unveiling the realities, knowledge, and secrets of the entire cosmos.

▪︎ The Sixth Vision
(Manifestation of Actions)

In this station, the servant’s own actions, power, ability, and will are stripped away nothing remains of them. Allāh unveils the inner sight of the servant, who then sees all actions as attributed to Him.

The servant perceives that the true Doer
within him is Allāh. He may even be shown the Preserved Tablet, witnessing what Allāh wills before it occurs, gaining insight into destiny (qadar).

Yet, the servant may become tested by witnessing decree and become veiled from
the Decreer.

▪︎  The Seventh Vision
(Manifestation of Attributes)

Here, the attributes of the Truth are witnessed. Whenever one of His attributes appears to you, one of your own attributes fades away until all your attributes vanish.

When your qualities perish, you witness His attributes alone, becoming without attributes: no life, knowledge, power, will, hearing, sight,
or speech remains attributed to the servant.

▪︎ The Eighth Vision
(Leave Yourself and Come)

Leaving the self means denying your ego-identity and affirming the Divine Identity. You are no longer “you”; rather, you are “He” indeed, you are nothing but “He,” for He alone is.

In this station, the Divine Names are ascribed to you, descending upon you one by one, as do the merciful attributes each according to your capacity to receive.

You are granted inner (ladunnī) knowledge
of the spiritual presence, its relations, manifestations, hiddenness, firstness, and lastness.

Yet, one may become veiled by the lights of
the Names and Attributes themselves.

▪︎ The Ninth Vision
(Dialogues of the Names and Attributes)

In this vision, every Divine Name and Attribute addresses you according to its realities of beauty, majesty, and perfection.

You hear them address one another. Divine meanings descend upon you, and secrets are unveiled from the sciences of Oneness (Aḥadiyyah), Unity (Wāḥidiyyah), Divinity,
and Mercifulness.

Every Name you encounter speaks to you of
the divine secrets it contains. Yet, one may
be veiled by these dialogues from giving each Name and Attribute its proper due.

▪︎ The Tenth Vision
(Essential Annihilation, Fanā’ Dhātī)

In this station, your very essence dissolves. You vanish from your attributes and from all that is ascribed to you, qualities, actions, traces. Your existence fades; your composition is undone.

You perceive no body, soul, heart, secret, form, or meaning. You are annihilated under His manifestation from every direction no knowledge, identity, action, or reality remains for you.

▪︎ The Eleventh Vision
(Annihilation of Annihilation)

Here, the rulings of effacement, obliteration, erasure, and non-existence are fully realized. You first vanish from yourself and all that is attributed to you, then you vanish from even that annihilation.

A necessary pull draws you to the Essence
of the Necessary Being. Your witnessing becomes in Allāh, as He said:

“Has there not come upon man a time when
he was nothing worth mentioning?”
(Qur’ān 76:1)

▪︎ The Twelfth Vision
(Subsistence – Baqā’)

In this station, Allāh causes you to remain by His essential Light.

Your existence is returned to you, and you witness your hearing, sight, knowledge, power, strength, life, speech, actions, and states as belonging to you, yet you know that Allāh’s Life, Knowledge, Hearing, Sight, Will, Power, and Speech are unlike yours. You thus witness

Truth as truth and follow it, and falsehood as falsehood and avoid it. You recognize your created nature and your self, and you refrain from them. This is the beginning of the people of True Certainty (Ḥaqq al-Yaqīn).