Hundred Questions

Excerpt:
“It is said in a sacred Tradition (spoken by Allah, narrated by the Prophet): “I am not contained by the heavens or by the earth; I am contained only by the heart of a mu’min”. This tradition presents two realities to us. Clearly, one is that since the heaven and the earth cannot contain God, then the [physical] Throne and the [physical] Ka’bah cannot contain Him either. The second is that if a true mu’min’s heart can contain Him, then first of all, He must necessarily and certainly be contained by the pure and purified heart of the Commander of the faithful and the Perfect Man, i.e. the true Imām. This means that in the true sense it is the Perfect Man who is the house of God that contains everything which belongs to God (e.g. all esoteric knowledge). When the Ka’bah, in this sense, is the ta’wīlī (esoteric) symbol of the Imām and the Imām is its symbolised, this means that in the sharī’at the House of God is the physical qiblah (direction of prayer), [while] in the haqīqat the House of God is the spiritual qiblah. Thus the ta’wīl of facing the Ka’bah in the matters of sharī’at (exoteric Islam) is to face the spiritual qiblah in the matters of haqīqat (matters of esoteric Islam, such as acquiring esoteric knowledge through ‘facing’ (recognising) the Imam of the Time). The spiritual qiblah is the Imam of the Time” 

This excerpt has been taken from page 135.