Original content

English translation

Book Three — Section 203 — Commentary on This Report of Mustafa, Peace Be Upon Him: "For the Quran there is an outward (ẓahr) and an inward (baṭn), and for its inward an inward, up to seven inner depths (abṭun)"

Know that the word of the Quran has an outward — beneath the outward is an inward most overpowering.

Beneath that inward lies a third inner depth, in which all intellects become entirely lost.

The fourth inner depth — no one has seen it from the Prophet himself, save God, the Incomparable, the Unseen.

You, O son, do not behold from the Quran only the outward — the devil sees in Adam nothing but clay.

The outward of the Quran is like the human form, whose figures are visible and whose soul is concealed.

For a hundred years his paternal uncle and maternal uncle cannot see so much as a hair's tip of his inner state.