Meaning Salmān knew that the Creator, He is exalted, was before His creation without this witnessed, visible form in the heaven and the earth, and He said about Himself in His sermon: "I am the one whom the dust-colored [earth] does not carry, and the green [heaven] does not shade," and in another place He said: "Neither earth nor heaven contains Me."

[[Clarification of the Mode of Hiddenness and the impenetrable hiddenness]]

And this speech indicates the mode of hiddenness, and as for what indicates the mode of manifestation, [it is] His saying: {And He is the one who in the heaven is a deity and in the earth is an Imam}.

Contemplate, O my master—may Allah make you happy with the happiness of His guardians, and gift you the gift of His pure ones—how He deemed Himself transcendent by His saying: "Neither earth nor heaven contains Me," and He mentioned Himself in His Book: {And He is the one who in the heaven is a deity and in the earth is an Imam}. So He made us know by this noble saying: that the form which neither earth nor heaven contains is the attribute of pre-eternity, the mode of hiddenness,