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Know that at all times and in all states, by the agreement of all the masters of this Path, the saints (awliya) are the followers of the prophets and those who affirm their call. And the prophets are more excellent than the saints, because the utmost limit of sainthood is the beginning of prophethood, and all the prophets are saints, but none of the saints is a prophet. The prophets are firmly established in the negation of the attributes of humanity, whereas the saints hold this only as a loan; and what is a passing state (hal) for this group [the saints] is an abiding station (maqam) for that group [the prophets], and what is a station for this group is a veil for that group. And none of the learned people of the Sunna, nor the verifiers of this Path, dispute this — except a party of the Hashwiyya, who are the anthropomorphists (Mujassima) among the people of Khurasan, speaking with contradictory speech concerning the principles of divine unity (tawhid), who do not know the foundation of this Path and yet call themselves saints. And truly they are saints — but saints of Satan. They say: 'The saints are more excellent than the prophets.' And this error suffices to condemn them, that they set an ignorant man above Muhammad the Chosen One (peace and blessings of God be upon him). And another party of the anthropomorphists (Mushabbiha) claim allegiance to this Path and hold permissible the indwelling (hulul) and descent of the Truth in the sense of transference — may God curse them — and affirm the permissibility of division upon the Essence of the Creator, Exalted is He. That subject belongs to those two blameworthy sects, which I have promised to treat fully in this book, God willing, Exalted is He.

In sum, these two groups, though they claim to belong to Islam, agree in denying the special distinction (takhsis) of the prophets; and whoever holds the belief of denying the special distinction of the prophets becomes an unbeliever. So the prophets — the blessings of God be upon them all — are the callers and the leaders (imams), and the saints are their followers in good conduct, and it is impossible that the one led should be more excellent than the one who leads.

And in sum, know that if you were to place all the states and breaths of the whole lifetime of all the saints beside a single step of the truthfulness (sidq) of a prophet, all of that would dissolve into nothing — because this group [the saints] still seek and journey, while that group [the prophets] have arrived and attained, and have returned by command of the call and are carrying a people onward.

And if one of these aforementioned heretics — may God curse them — should say: 'It is customary that when a messenger comes to someone from a king, this one to whom he is sent must be more excellent than the messenger, just as the prophets are more excellent than Gabriel' — this notion is an error on their part.

We reply: If a king sends a messenger to a single person, then the one to whom he is sent must be more excellent, just as He sent Gabriel to the messengers, and each one of them was more excellent than he. But when the messenger is [sent] to a group and a people, then inevitably the messenger is more excellent than that group, just as the prophets, peace be upon them, are [more excellent] than the communities. And in this no rational person falls into doubt, nor does any difficulty arise in the mind.

So a single breath of the prophets is more excellent than the entire lifetime of the saints — because when the saints reach their utmost limit, they give report from contemplation and are freed from the veil of humanity, though they remain human in essence; whereas for the messenger, the first step is already in contemplation. Since the beginning of the latter is the end of the former, the one cannot be measured against the other. Do you not see that all the seekers of the Truth among the saints agree that the station of union (jam') gathered out of separation is the perfection of sainthood? And the form of this is such that a servant reaches a degree, through the overwhelming of love, where their intellect is overpowered in beholding the act, and in yearning for the Agent they take the whole world to be Him alone and see Him alone — as Abu Ali al-Rudbari said, may God's mercy be upon him: 'Lauw zalat 'anna ru'yatuhu ma 'abadnahu' — 'If His vision were to depart from us, the name of servitude would fall away from us,' for we find no draught of worship except from His vision.

And these meanings, for the prophets, are the very beginning of their state; for in their lifetime separation takes no form. Their negation and affirmation, their setting out and their halting, their advance and their turning away, their beginning and their end — all are within the very essence of union. Just as at the beginning of his state, Abraham (the blessings of God be upon him) saw the star and the moon and said: 'This is my Lord' (al-An'am 76, 77); then when he saw the sun he said: 'This is my Lord' (al-An'am 78). Through the dominance of the Truth over his heart and his gathering in the very essence of union, he saw no other; and if he did see, he saw it with the eye of union, and in the very act of seeing he disavowed his own seeing and said: 'I love not those that set' (al-An'am 76) — beginning in union and ending in union. Thus sainthood has a beginning and an end, whereas prophethood has none: as long as they existed they were prophets, and as long as they shall exist they shall be prophets, and before they came into being, in the foreknowledge and will of the Truth they were the same.

And Bayazid, may God be pleased with him, was asked: 'What do you say concerning the state of the prophets?' He said: 'Alas! We have no power of disposal over them. Whatever we conceive of them is entirely ourselves, and God Most High has placed their affirmation and negation in a degree that the eye of creation cannot reach.' So, just as the rank of the saints is hidden from the perception of creation, the rank of the prophets is hidden from the disposal of the saints.

And Bayazid, may God be pleased with him, was a wonder of his age. He says: They bore my spirit to the heavens; it looked at nothing. Paradise and Hell were shown to it; it paid no heed to anything. They carried it past the hidden things and the veils, 'fa-sirtu tayran' — I became a bird, and I flew in the air of His He-ness until I looked out over the field of pre-eternity and saw therein the tree of Oneness (ahadiyya). When I looked, all of that was myself. I said: 'O my Lord, with this me-ness of mine there is no way for me to You, and there is no passing beyond my own selfhood. What must I do?' The command came: 'O Bayazid, your deliverance from your selfhood is bound up in following Our Beloved. Anoint your eye with the dust of his footstep, and persevere in following him.'

And this is a long tale, and the people of the Path call it the 'Mi'raj of Bayazid'; and 'mi'raj' is an expression for nearness (qurb). So the ascension (mi'raj) of the prophets was by way of outward manifestation, in person and body, while that of the saints was by way of aspiration (himma) and inner secrets. And the body of the prophets, in purity and cleanness and nearness, is like the heart of the saints and their innermost secret — and this is a manifest superiority. And it is such that the saint is overpowered in their state until they become intoxicated; then, by degrees, their innermost secret is made absent from them and adorned with the nearness of the Truth; and when they return to the state of sobriety (sahw), all those proofs have taken form in their heart and the knowledge of them has been attained by them. So there is a great difference between one whose very person is borne there, and one who is only borne there in thought. And with God is help and success.