If that "thing" were a person, he would be older than the Mim and nearer to the Meaning than him; such a statement is impermissible and impossible. Blessed be God and sanctified be His Name far above this.

The Name is the one established in Prophecy and Messengership; he is the intermediary outwardly. Inwardly, he is the Name, the Veil, the Throne, and the Place. Similarly, the Meaning—Exalted—is outwardly Imamate and Succession, while His inward is an unperceivable Unseen. However, the Imamate falls upon the Lord Name in the line of the Imams; the Meaning manifest through Succession and Imamate is the Unseen whose inward reality is not perceived through the Divinity and the spiritual Meaning. He is one thing and one Essence, self-subsisting, a solid part transcendent above His attributes.

As the Mighty Speaker said in describing His God-fearing knowers: {Who believe in the Unseen, establish prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them.}¹

The Unseen: He is our Master, the Prince of Bees. Faith in Him is the knowledge of His Oneness and that He is an unperceivable Unseen. As for the establishment of prayer: it is the knowledge of the Mim and that he is connected to the Meaning by the reality of his status toward Him. God the Almighty described them in another place in His Noble Book by the establishment of prayer and the giving of zakat; zakat is the Gate and the knowledge of his status.

Had we said there is a difference or a gap between the Meaning and His Name, we would have contradicted the predecessors and would not have been correct, according to the words of the Mighty and Sublime in His revealed Book—to which the people of the groups return, by which they prepare against their adversaries, and from which they draw proof—regarding those who separate the Name from the Meaning. He said: {Indeed, those who disbelieve in God and His messengers and wish to discriminate between God and His messengers and say, "We believe in some and disbelieve in others," and wish to adopt a way in between—}²