بخش 56 - در تفسیر این حدیث مصطفی علیه‌السلام کی ان الله تعالی خلق الملائکة و رکب فیهم العقل و خلق البهائم و رکب فیها الشهوة و خلق بنی آدم و رکب فیهم العقل و الشهوة فمن غلب عقله شهوته فهو اعلی من الملائکة و من غلب شهوته عقله فهو ادنی من البهائم

It is related in the Hadíth that the majestical God created the creatures of the world (in) three kinds.

One class (He made) entirely reason and knowledge and munificence; that is the angel: he knoweth naught but prostration in worship.

In his original nature is no concupiscence and sensuality: he is absolute light, (he is) living through (his) love of God.

Another class is devoid of knowledge, like the animal (which lives) in fatness from (eating) fodder.

It sees nothing but stable and fodder: it is heedless of (future) misery and glory (felicity).

The third (class) is Adam's descendant and Man: half of him is of the angel and half of him is ass.

The ass-half, indeed, inclines to that which is low; the other half inclines to that which is rational.

Those two classes (the angels and the beasts) are at rest from war and combat, while this Man is (engaged) in torment (painful struggle) with two adversaries.

And, moreover, this (race of) Man, through probation, has been divided: they (all) are of human shape, but (in truth) they have become three communities (families).

One party have become submerged absolutely and, like Jesus, have attained unto the (nature of the) angel.

The form (of such a one is that of) Adam, but the reality is Gabriel: he has been delivered from anger and sensual passion and (vain) disputation.

He has been delivered from discipline and asceticism and self-mortification: you would say he was not even born of a child of Adam.

The second sort have attained unto (the nature of) asses: they have become pure anger and absolute lust.

The qualities of Gabriel were in them and departed: that house was (too) narrow, and those qualities (too) grand.

The person who is deprived of (the vital) spirit becomes dead: when his spirit is deprived of those (angelic qualities), he becomes an ass,

Because the spirit that hath not those (qualities) is vile: this word is true, and the (perfect) Súfí has said (it).

He (the man of animal nature) suffers more anxiety than the beasts, (for) he practises subtle arts in the world.

The cunning and imposture which he knows how to spin— that (cunning) is not produced by any other animal.

To weave gold-embroidered robes, to win pearls from the bottom of the sea,

The fine artifices of geometry or astronomy, and the science of medicine and philosophy—

Which are connected only with this world and have no way (of mounting) up to the Seventh Heaven—

All this is the science of building the (worldly) stable which is the pillar (basis) of the existence of (persons like) the ox and the camel.

For the sake of preserving the animal for a few days, these crazy fools have given to those (arts and sciences) the name of “mysteries.”

The knowledge of the Way to God and the knowledge of His dwelling place—that only the owner of the heart knows, or (you may say) his heart (itself).

He (God), then, created in this composite fashion the goodly animal and made him familiar with knowledge.

That (bestial) class (of men) He named “like the cattle,” for where is the resemblance between waking and sleep?

The animal spirit hath naught but sleep (ignorance): the (bestial) class of men possess inverted sense-perceptions.

(When) waking comes, the animal sleep is no more, and he (the enlightened man) reads the (former) inversion of his senses from the tablet (of his clairvoyant consciousness)—

Like the sense-perceptions of one whom sleep has seized: when he awakes, the inverted quality (of his sense-perceptions whilst he was dreaming) becomes apparent.

Necessarily, he (the bestial man) is the lowest of the low. Take leave of him: I love not them that sink.