You were created. Its simplicity is its abasement. Because you were united with earth, you made it abased. Therefore, I separated from it, and two more parts were diminished from me.
When I came to the element of air, I was transformed into air. He (Allah) said to me, 'Air (rūḥ, the spirit) in you is that which is from Me.' This air did not separate from me. For it does not need to exceed its own value, nor to stretch its foot beyond its carpet. You must desire something other than that which corrupts your alchemy. If it were not for that (air), your alchemy would not become established (masnūn, settled, habitual). I am pure in essence, not because of my association with those around me. When the friendship and neighborhood of what is around me contaminated me with filth, it was said: 'There is settled clay in him, and the filth of that clay has stained him.' For that (clay) is characterized by impurity.
Then He, the Being who transformed me, made 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 filth that befell it due to your corruption and its association with your earth and water.'
When I reached the element of fire, it was said: 'Fehhār (dry clay) has arrived.' And it was said: 'Has it been sent to him?' 'Yes,' He said. 'With whom?' He said, 'With Jibrīl (Gabriel) of compulsion, who is compelled to journey with it and to be separated from its children.' He said: 'At its birth, there is a part of Me in it. I do not leave it with that part. For it was an angel and reached the station where the one with power manifests. Thus, my governance remained alone, and I ascended 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 al-taḥlīl [analytical ascension].) As the Shaykh indicated in his ishāra (allusion) and pointed out, the bodily birth dissolves and disperses there. Just as its composition was in proportion to its consciousness of nisba (relation), so too its dissolution is only in proportion to the sālik's (traveler's) consciousness. (Asfār, 148)
When the sālik (spiritual traveler) makes his ḥāl (spiritual state) into a malaka (acquired faculty), that state becomes his maqām (spiritual station). Thus, in that station, he continually exercises authority through that state. Ḥāl is something that changes. It is that which dominates its possessor, but its possessor cannot dominate it. (Qawānīn, 17)
According to the men (the Sufis), after the sālik persists in the light of thabāt (steadfastness) of his observations...