It was also reported from the Master al-Sadiq—peace be upon him: "He who does not understand the allusion (taʿrīḍ) does not benefit¹ from the explicit declaration (taṣrīḥ). Were it not for the allusion, the explicit declaration would not be known, and no one would be ignorant of Allah."

It was also reported in The Egyptian Epistle (al-Risāla al-Miṣriyya) from al-ʿAdawī from Yūnus ibn Ẓabyān from the Gnostic—peace be upon him—that he said: "Allah hid this matter until it was thought He desired not to be worshipped."

And he [Ali]—peace be upon him—said in the Sermon of Lights (Khutbat al-Anwār): "I am the Heaven; I am the Earth."

And in the Sermon of the Essence (al-Khutba al-Jawhariyya): "I raised its heaven and I spread its earth."

How then can it be valid, established, or realized by an intellectual to affirm this except by rejecting the Outward (al-Ẓāhir) which is the opposite of the Inward (al-Bāṭin), and affirming the Inward which is the opposite of the Outward? For he who raised the heaven and spread the earth cannot [literally] be the heaven, nor can he be the earth. The doer of a thing cannot be the thing he did, for he is prior to it and precedes it.

Likewise, the existence of the heaven and earth in the Outward [the physical world] is prior to the existence of the Commander of the Faithful [Ali] in the Muhammadian Manifestation (al-ẓuhūr al-Muḥammadī).