First Point: It is related to unknown signs.

FIRST POINT

We have perceived many signs from the Unseen suggesting that we are being employed in the service of the Qur’an directed by a hand of favour, and some of these we have pointed out. Now, a new sign is this: in most of the Words are ‘coincidences’ from the Unseen.¹ In short, there is a sign that a sort of manifestation of miraculousness is represented in the words ‘Allah’s Most Noble Messenger,’ the phrase, ‘Upon whom be blessings and peace,’ and in the blessed word ‘Qur’an.’ However hidden and weak signs from the Unseen are, since they indicate the acceptability of our service and rightness of the matters, in my opinion they are of great importance and power. Furthermore, they break my pride and have demonstrated to me categorically that I am merely an interpreter. They leave nothing for me which is the means to pride; they only show things which are the cause of thanks. Since they pertain to the Qur’an and pass to the account of its miraculousness; and since definitely our wills do not interfere; and since they encourage those who are lazy in their service, and afford the conviction that the treatises are true; and since they are a form of Divine bestowal to us, and to make them known is to make known a Divine bounty, and to do so reduces to silence those obdurate people who understand only what they see; it is surely necessary to make them known; God willing, it causes no harm.

One of the signs from the Unseen is this: out of His perfect mercy and munificence, in order to encourage us who are occupied with the service of the Qur’an and belief and to make our hearts easy, Almighty Allah bestowed a subtle dominical favour on us and a Divine gift in all the treatises we have written, and particularly in the Miracles of Muhammad, the Miraculousness of the Qur’an, and the Thirty-Three Windows, in the form of a sign from the Unseen indicating the acceptability of our service and that what we have written is the truth. That is, He causes the same words on a page to face one another. In this is a sign from the Unseen that they are ordered by an unseen will which says: “Do not rely on your own wills and comprehension. Without your knowledge and awareness, wondrous embroideries and arrangements are being made.” Especially the words ‘Allah’s Most Noble Messenger’ and ‘Upon whom be blessings and peace’ in the Miracles of Muhammad, they are like mirrors showing clearly the signs of those ‘coincidences’ from the Unseen. In a copy written by a new, inexperienced scribe, other than on five pages, the remaining more than two hundred ‘Upon whom be blessings and peace’s face one another in lines.

These ‘coincidences’ are not the work of chance, which might unconsciously give rise to one or two ‘coincidences’ out of ten, neither do they spring from the thought of an unfortunate like myself who is unskilled in art, and, concentrating only on the meaning, dictates thirty to forty pages at great speed in one hour, not writing himself but making others write.

Through the guidance of the Qur’an and due to the ‘coincidence’ of nine instances of the pronoun inna in the Qur’anic commentary, Signs of Miraculousness, I became aware of them only six years subsequently. When the copyists heard of them from me, they were astounded. The words ‘Allah’s Noble Messenger’ and ‘Upon whom be blessings and peace’ in the Nineteenth Letter became like a small mirror of a sort of miracle of Muhammad. Similarly, the word ‘Qur’an’ in the Twenty-Fifth Word, the Miraculousness of the Qur’an, and in the Eighteenth Sign of the Nineteenth Letter, manifested a sort of miracle: of the forty classes of humanity, before the class which relies on what they see with their eyes, a kind of the Qur’an’s miraculousness was manifested in all the treatises in the form of ‘coincidences’ from the Unseen, which is only one sort of the forty sorts of that kind of miraculousness. And of the forty types of that sort, it was manifested through the word ‘Qur’an.’ It was as follows:

The word ‘Qur’an’ was repeated a hundred times in the Twenty-Fifth Word and in the Eighteenth Sign of the Nineteenth Letter; only rarely, once or twice, did it not conform; all the rest look to each other. For example, on the forty-third page in the Second Ray, the word ‘Qur’an’ occurs seven times, and they all face each other. On page fifty-six, eight instances of it face each other; only the ninth is an exception. The five instances of the word on page sixty-nine, now open before me, face each other. And so on. The word ‘Qur’an’ repeated on all the pages face each other. Only rarely does one remain outside the pattern out of five or six.

As for other words, on page thirty-three -now open in front of me- the word am is repeated fifteen times and fourteen of them face each other. And on this page there are nine instances of the word ‘belief’; they face each other. Only, because the scribe left a large space, one of them has deviated a little. On the page now open before me, the word ‘beloved’ is repeated twice; one on the third line and one on the fifteenth; they look to each other in perfectly balanced fashion. Between them, four instances of the word ‘love’ have been arranged looking to each other. Other ‘coincidences’ from the Unseen may be compared to these. Whoever the scribe, and whatever form their lines and pages take, these ‘coincidences’ from the Unseen are bound to occur to such an extent that it cannot be doubted that they are neither the work of chance nor the creation of the author and scribes. But in the handwriting of some, the ‘coincidences’ are more striking. That means there is a handwriting particular to these treatises. Some of the scribes draw close to it. It is strange, but it appears most not in the most skilful of them, but in the most inexperienced. It is understood from this that the art, grace, and virtues of the Words, which is a sort of commentary on the Qur’an, are not anybody’s; the garments of the harmonious, well-ordered style, which fit the blessed stature of the orderly, beautiful Qur’anic truths, are not measured and cut out by the will and consciousness of anyone. It is rather their stature which requires them to be thus; it is an unseen hand that measures them and cuts them according to that stature, and clothes it in them. As for us, we are an interpreter among them, a servant.

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1. ‘Coincidences’ indicate mutual correspondence, and mutual correspondence indicates agreement, and agreement is a sign of unity, and unity shows unification, that is, the affirmation of Divine Unity, which is the greatest of the four fundamentals of the Qur’an.