The Answer: If man consisted of only a heart, it would be necessary to give up everything other than God, and to leave behind even the divine names and attributes and bind one's heart to the divine essence alone. But man possesses many senses and subtle faculties such as the mind, spirit, soul, and others, which all have their functions. The perfect man is he who, driving all those subtle senses towards reality on the different ways of worship particular to them, marches heroically like the Companions in a broad arena and rich fashion towards the goal, with the heart as commander and the subtle faculties as sol­diers. For the heart to abandon its soldiers in order to save itself alone and to proceed on its own is the cause not of pride, but of distress.

FOURTH QUESTION: Where does the claim of the Companions' superiority spring from? And who advanced it? Why should this question be discussed at the present time? Also, why do some people claim to be the equals of the great interpreters of the law?

The Answer: There are two groups who say these things. Some are the sincere religious scholars and men of religion who, seeing certain Hadiths, open up such discussions in order to hearten the pious and the upright at this time. We do not have anything to say to them. They are anyway few and are quickly made aware of matters. The other group, however, consists of awesomely arrogant people who want to spread their denial of the schools of law by claiming equality with the great interpreters of the law, and to further their irreligion by claiming equality with the Companions. Firstly, those misguided people are depraved and are addicted to depravity. They cannot carry out the obligations of the Shari'a since they hinder them in their depravity. So in order to find a pretext for themselves, they say: "These questions may be interpreted. The schools of law are opposed to each other in these matters. The interpreters of the law were human beings like us and may have made mistakes. In which case, like them we shall interpret the divine law and perform our worship as we wish. Why should we be compelled to follow them?" Thus, due to such Satanic wiles, those wretches put themselves outside the fold of the schools of law. It is demonstrated clearly in the Twenty-Seventh Word just how baseless and rotten their claims are, so we refer you to that.

Secondly: the above group of the people of mis­guidance saw that the matter does not end with the interpreters of the law, for the field of their exertions was restricted to the theoretical matters of religion. But this group wants to give up and change the essential teachings of religion. When they say: "We are better than them," the matter does not end there. For interpreters of the law may intervene in theoreti­cal matters and in secondary matters that are not cat­egorical, but these people of misguidance who fol­low no school of law want to mix their ideas in the essentials of religion as well, and to change matters that may not be changed, and to oppose the incon­trovertible pillars of Islam. So they are bound to attack the Companions, who are the bearers and sup­ports of the essentials of religion. Alas! It has been proved decisively in the Twenty-Seventh Word that not animals in human form like them, but true human beings and the greatest of the saints even, who are the most perfect of true human beings, can­not win the case claiming equality with the least of the Companions.