insightful ones, whom we long to be servants to carry their sandals, and slaves under their command? Do you see after this that it is permissible for the likes of us, of little knowledge and deficient understanding, to plunge into this overflowing sea, or to tread this thorny course? But in compliance with your desire, in obedience to your command, and coveting your supplication, I will attempt to collect for you—I said I will collect, without addition and without subtraction—what has been narrated from the noble masters, glorified is their glory, and the grand chiefs regarding this matter, and what the unitarians have inscribed and the gnostics have written concerning this affair, hoping from Allah, glorified and exalted is He, to grant me success in arranging what I have collected, and coordinating what I have read, that you might see in it a step on that long path, and a glimmer of light that uncovers for you some of the ambiguities in that majestic secret. If you find in what I have collected for you a benefit, and see in it a return, then that is what is sought, and the bounty, all the bounty in that, belongs to the predecessors from the people of bounty, beneficence, guardianship, and faith.