Explaining the Point's taqīya in Year 2 of the Manifestation
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[In regard to the translation of the second clause of the 2nd theophanic sequence of the ḥadīth kumayl/al-ḥaqīqa صحو المعلوم] The "realization of the Known" or "the realization of what can be realized." These are the two ways I have rendered it. Basically, what it means is that God opens the veils of Glory (كشف سبحات الجلال مِن غير إشارة) in Year 1 with the publication of QA *, the composition of the First Unity, travel to the ḥājj, etc. The Point has proverbially laid His cards down. The primordial summons-question of “Am I not your Lord” (ألستُ بِربّكم) has been made; the first symbolic trumpet-blast of the qiyāma [has] occurred. The Proof has Revealed Himself! A lot of the commentaries on this section of the ḥadīth kumayl (even the earliest known by Allāmih Ḥillī) all impute, in one way or another, that after the lifting of the veils, in this theophanic sequence they partially drop down again, or appear to be for those who are not ready to see further beyond them and proceed, i.e. that this its symbolic manzil (i.e. waystation), because they have been dazzled and put to fright (and flight) by the intensity of the Revelation of God's Majesty. In His own commentary, the Point says:
“…the ‘negation of all speculation’ denotes ‘the glorifications’ (السّبحات) and the ‘realization of what can be realized’ is ‘the [divine] Majesty’ (الجلال), and this is the singular reality (الحقيقة الواحدة) but with [its] expressed locutions [occurring instead] within [the world of] multiplicity (كثرة)…” (my trans.)
The allusion here is deep and has to be very deeply meditated upon in order to be unpacked; but let us remember that the Point subscribes as a methodology to the Hermetic dictum of "As above, so below" (i.e. that abstract metaphysical concepts [,principles] and realities, or symbols, ‘up there’ attain or realize and actualize themselves in real-world causal events ‘down here’; or, such things are mirrored and reflected in the spatiotemporal, everyday world; or, that there is a thread of continuity between Heaven and earth and that they reflect/mirror each other). This principle is also echoed very clearly in Qurʾān 41:53: ‘We shall show them our Signs in the horizons and in themselves/their souls until it becomes plain/manifest to them that it is the Truth!’
So this is how the situation has read to me as to how this 2nd theophanic sequence of the ḥadīth kumayl then unfolds in the phenomenal world as the dramaturgy of Year 2: Those who have responded positively now know Who the Point is and what He is doing. But Year 1 concludes with very heavy, this-wordly consequences as a result of the negative reactions by the establishment to the Point and the Claim He puts forth in QA (particularly the mullāhs, but also Ottoman authorities in Baghdad to a great extent after Mullā ʿAlī Bastāmī's arrest and public trial), i.e. an aporia. So, in order to temper things down (particularly given the negative reception in Bushihr and henceforth after the anticipation of an actual Bābī insurrection in the ʿAtabāt based on what QA proclaimed), the Point outwardly retreats in what He says in the world of appearance while inwardly gathering strength and containing the Light, thus acting as the Manifest (الظاهر) in the reality [حقيقة] of the Hidden (الباطن). ʿAlī (ع) Himself did this after Abu Bakr and ʿUmār (ل) stole the caliphate from Him when He has was compelled to give those evil schmucks a very iltizāmī bayaʿat (with Miqdād, Abū Dharr, Salmān and ʿAmmār as His only companions; this situation went on, if some of the sources are to be believed, for nearly 20 years!)
But to return to the period of the Revelation of the Bayān: believers Who are real Believers by the end of Year 1 - from the Letters on down - know and have faith in what the Point is doing strategically and the manner in which He is doing it because it is exactly what the Imāms (ع) did in the face of Their own enemies with their accusations and persecution. To the outside world, that means that in certain expressions (i.e. what you write), you conceal the Secret [which you have already proclaimed] in broad daylight and so make the non-initiates, at least temporarily, think that one is saying and doing the opposite of what they have accused Him of. This is a paradox – or, rather, the exercise of a paradox -- but not a contradiction. So He says and does what He says and does at the Masjid-i-Vakil, but under compulsion in the same manner ʿAlī (ع) was compelled to pay brief, very pro forma, allegiance to the caliphate. Therefore, what taqiya means here is not merely dissimulation (i.e. blanket denial or lying), but precisely what the Imams (ع) meant by it, i.e. the exercise of the discipline of the arcane (the beautiful way Henry Corbin rendered it) -- or initiatic silence -- or even what the Gospels mean by it when Jesus (ع) says, "cast ye not pearls before swine lest they trample them underfoot" (Matthew 7:6). But here it unfolds in time as a temporary organizational measure and strategy (remember this ḥadīth as context here, “do not inveigh against Time, for Time, It is God” لا تسبّوا الدّهر فَإنّ الدّهر هو الله); or, from the viewpoint of Above, as a waystation (manzil) – or what the Point Himself in the Persian Bayān means by His usage of the word صُقع –- before the next one, which is The nullificative annihilation of the secret by the victorious rending of the veil off the mystery of the secret (هتكْ السّتر لِغلبة السّرّ).
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So, to make somewhat clearer what is going on in Year 2 and why the Point implimented the discipline of the arcane: let us split both clauses of the 2nd theophanic sequence of the ḥadīth kumayl into two. The first is, ‘the erasure of conjecture’ (محو الموهوم). On the one hand, this is what the believers accomplish within themselves in realizing the Known that occurs in the second clause in erasing and annihilating the idle fancies, illusions and delusions (and denial) from themselves. On the other hand, there are those who have gotten trapped in wahm (i.e. conjecture, delusion, idle fancy, illusion, etc.), i.e. the majority of people, and so cannot erase it from themselves. These are the unbelievers and decriers of the Point who have either remained silent or turned their backs altogether on, as it were, the primordial summons-questioning of Alast. In this context, this first clause of the 2nd theophanic sequence of the ḥadīth kumayl therefore here acts now in the reality of nafy (negation) and so becomes the epiphanic locus of the first clause of the tahlīl (i.e. “there is no god” لا إله). Conversely, those who have erased their conjectures by the realization of the Known, i.e. the believers, now stand in the reality of ithbāt (Affirmation) and so become the epiphanic locus of the second clause of the tahlīl (i.e. “but God” إلّا الله) and so represent the second clause of the 2nd theophanic sequence of the ḥadīth kumayl. In this way, the phenomenology of the Veiling of the Divine Majesty in the spatiotemporal world of cause and effect, for the purposes of the 2nd Year of the Manifestation, becomes clearer and so why He undertook the actions that He did because those who have denied, have denied, and those who have affirmed have erased all conjecture in their realization of the Known Who is the Proof, and as such the exercise of ad hoc taqīya on their part (and why He commanded it for that period) becomes understandable.
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The Point Himself both alludes to as well as plainly expresses the situation of His command [to all the believers to exercise the discipline of the arcane] regarding Year 2 in a variety of places, including the Persian Bayān as well as Panj Shaʾn and elsewhere. But the information Mazandarānī has put forward (in vol 3. of ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq), which is corrborated by the Point’s own Writings at the time (including the Ṣaḥifeh-i-ʿAdlīya by inference), is that He did in fact command the exercise of the discipline of the arcane, especially since in this particular Year all of the sources agree that He was outwardly, at least, acting in the capacity of a promoter/promulgator (مُروّج) of ‘orthodox’ Islam. Obviously, since that was the temporary strategy, those among the believers were commanded to exercise kitmān/taqīya and not do things like proclaim the Point’s Name in the aʾẓān from public pulpits and similar. MacEoin discusses this at length, although briefer than I would have liked, in the relevant section of his Messiah of Shiraz as well as references he gives directly in his Sources book.
* QA: Qayyūm al-Asmāʾ, the Commentary on the Sūrah of Joseph.
