You were created. Its simplicity is its humiliation. Because you merged with the earth, you made it abased. Therefore, I separated from it, and two more parts were missing from me.
When I came to the element of air, I was transformed into air. He (Allah) said to me, "Air (rūḥ) is that in you which is from Me." This air did not separate from Me, because it does not need to exceed its own value or stretch its foot beyond its carpet. You must desire something other than what corrupts your alchemy. If it were not for that (air), your alchemy would not become masnūn (settled, matured, customary). I am pure in essence, not because of my companionship with those around me. Its (that which is around me) companionship and neighborhood have defiled me. At the miʿrāj (ascension) of the rūḥānī (spirit), it was said: "There is settled clay in it; the impurity of that clay has stained it." For that (clay) is characterized by impurity.
Then He, the Being who transformed me, turned me into a temperament capable of perceiving scent. I said to Him, "Why do you keep it with you?" He replied: "I kept it with Me so that it may be purified from the impurity that befell it due to its corruption and its association with your earth and water."
When I reached the element of fire, it was said: "Fakhkhār (baked clay) has arrived." And it was asked: "Has it been sent to him?" He said, "Yes." "With whom?" it was asked. "With Jibrīl of force, who is obliged to travel with him and to be separated from his children." He said: "At his birth, there is a part of Me in him. I do not leave him with that part, for he has reached the station where the angelic and the powerful are manifest. Thus, his management remained alone, and I passed to the first heaven. With me, from my bodily birth, nothing remained that could be trusted or regarded. The shaykh's words end here. (This is the miʿrāj of analysis [analytical ascension].) As the shaykh indicated, bodily birth dissolves and disperses there. Just as its composition was in relation to his consciousness, so too its dissolution is only in relation to the consciousness of the sālik (spiritual traveler). (Asfār, 148)
miʿrāj of the rūḥānī! (kerādis) (Kerādis: heaps, groups, communities, collectively)
The day I was among them
on the path of my miʿrāj
I loaded the purest of their lineages with your sabr (patient endurance)
The miʿrāj of the rūḥānī (spiritual ascension), is the ascension in which its possessor is shown the verses (āyāt) of his Lord only within his own nafs (lower self). In the rūḥānī miʿrāj, the inner (subjective) verses are not seen. The outer (objective) verses are seen only by means of the sensory miʿrāj. (Asfār, 313)