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Vengeance, Exaltation and Abasement, Guidance and Deception. To attempt to assume God’s point of view and “mix everything” at this level, results only in staying at this level. Therefore, human beings must always separate God’s point of view from their own point of view and the fact that all creation assumes the divine Names and Traits. Thus, the first Divine Command is BE! And that includes Being and Non-Being instantaneously. Therefore, the second law is “follow Being or Non-Being according to your choice and your inherent nature”. All creation is a result of the engendering command. So, in this respect, there is no Evil. But the second, prescriptive law determines to which “Face of God” one will return: Life or Death. If the engendering command alone is considered, there is no imperfection in the cosmos, since all creatures follow what God desires for them. In this respect, what is normally called “imperfection” is in fact perfection, since it allows for the actualization of the various levels of existence and knowledge. In other words, were there no imperfections - in the sense of diminishment, decrease, and lack - there would be no creation. Were there no creation, the Hidden Treasure would remain hidden. Hence Being would be unseen in every respect. There would be no self-disclosure of the Divine Reality, Light would not shine, and God would be the Nonmanifest but not the Manifest. But all this is absurd, since it demands the imperfection of Being Itself, which by definition is nondelimited perfection. Being’s perfection requires the manifestation of Its properties. The effects of the Names and Attributes must be displayed for God to be God. [...] In other words, Imperfection is demanded by existence itself. To be “other than God” is to be imperfect. ...But it is precisely the “otherness” which allows the cosmos and all the creatures within it to exist. If things were perfect in every respect, they would be identical with God Himself, and there would be nothing “other than God”. But then we could not even speak about the cosmos, since there would be no cosmos and no speakers. ...So, imperfection is a kind of perfection. [Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, CUNY Press.] At the particular stage of existence in which man finds himself, he is equally “receptive” toward the Two primary Faces of God: Being and Non-Being. The Shaykh tells us that whatever property, or trait, any human being ultimately “chooses” is what it originally possessed in its state of immutability. The task of the Seeker is to discover what is immutable within and to purify and amplify it. This is the development of Will. Will is a relationship, which follows knowledge while knowledge follows the object of knowledge. In the process of “ascension”, the object of knowledge is you. Knowledge, in and of itself, has no effects. You, however, the seeker, can give to knowledge what you actually are, in yourself, thereby displaying yourself in knowledge by your actions in concert with your knowledge. of Will. 407 High Strangeness — Part Four