For this reason, he said: "O One manifest by His power, O One hidden by His wisdom." This is a rigorous discourse whose meaning becomes problematic for the weak. Whoever interprets it exactly as it is stated in this phrasing and uses it to point toward the Essential Stations (al-maqamat al-dhatiyyah) has erred; rather, this is by way of veiling within the Analogical Stations (al-maqamat al-mithliyyah). We have refrained from clarifying it further only because we demonstrated at the beginning of the book what the knowledge of the Light of the Essence is, thereby dispensing with its explanation here—and this is a discourse that accommodates interpretation.

If a questioner asks: "Indeed, hiddenness (al-butun) is nobler than manifestation (al-zuhur), and you say that He manifests through the Name and is hidden through the Gate; it would then logically follow from this that the Gate is nobler than the Name by virtue of hiddenness being through it ¹ , and this is sheer heresy (al-ilhad) and an inability to recognize the Truth—given that the Name is nobler than the Gate."