On Majesty And Beauty

Or rather, to a certain extent things are just as they have said – that is, Majesty and Beauty are indeed two attributes of Allah and awe and intimacy two attributes of human beings, and when the souls of the Knowers witness Majesty they feel awe and diminution, while when they witness Beauty they feel intimacy and elation. Because this is so, the Knowers have equated Majesty with Allah's overpowering force and Beauty with His mercy; they came to this decision because of what they experienced in themselves.

I wish, if Allah so wills, to clarify the realities of the two to the extent that Allah enables me to explain them.

I say, first, that Allah's Majesty is a relation that proceeds from Him to Him, and He has prevented us from true knowledge of it. Beauty, though, is a relation that proceeds from Him to us, and it is this which grants us any knowledge we may possess of Him, as well as all revelations, contemplations, and spiritual states. Among us, it has two modalities: awe and intimacy. That is because this Beauty has an exalted aspect and a related aspect. The exalted aspect is called the Majesty of Beauty, and it is this of which the Knowers speak and which appears to them, though they believe that they are speaking of the first Majesty we
mentioned.

For us, this Majesty of Beauty has been linked to the state of intimacy, and the closer, related aspect of Beauty has been linked to the state of awe.

When the Majesty of Beauty manifests to us, we are drawn intimately close. Were it not for this, we would be destroyed, for nothing can continue to exist in the face of Majesty and awe together. Thus Majesty in Him is countered by intimacy in us so that we may keep our balance in contemplation and maintain a mental awareness of what we see, rather than falling into distracted terror.

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