Tāj al-rasāʾil
The Crown of Epistles
“O Kaʿba of God, o Zamzam! How strongly you desire my friendship, but no, no! If I must get involved in a friendship with you, it is through compassion and not desire towards you. The Kaʿba is nothing other than our essence, the essence of curtains of reverential fear. The True God is not contained by heaven or earth or any word…
... I considered my constitution to be more excellent than that of the Kaʿba and her rank, and that as a place of theophany of divine realities she was inferior to mine. I spoke of her as of a mineral constitution, on the first level of engendered beings...”
“Let us not say that the worlds are known, that the spiritual stations are established... All of that is just dust in comparison with that which is not manifest.”