The Sixth Letter

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)

May God’s peace and His mercy and His blessings be upon you and upon your brothers so long as day and night continue and the ages follow on in succession and the sun and moon endure and the two stars in Ursa Minor are in opposition.

My hard-working  brothers,  zealous friends,  and means of consolation  in these lands of exile known as the world!

Seeing that Almighty God has made you shareholders in the notions He has imparted to my mind, it is surely also your right to share in my feelings. So as not to sadden you unduly, I shall skip the excessively grievous part of my loneliness in exile and tell you about another part, as follows:

These last two or three months I have been very much alone. Sometimes, once every two or three weeks or so, I have a guest with me; the rest of the time I am alone. For nearly three weeks now there has been no one working in the mountains near me; they have all dispersed.

One night in these foreign mountains, silent and alone amid the mournful sighing of the trees, I saw myself in five exiles of different hues.

The first: because of old age I was alone and a stranger  far from most of my friends, relations, and those close to me; I felt a sad exile at their having left me and departed  for  the Intermediate  Realm.  Then  another  sphere  of exile  was disclosed within that one: I felt a sad sense of separation  and exile at most of the beings to which I was attached, like last spring, having left me and departed. Then within that one a further sphere of exile opened u, which was that I had been parted from my native land and relatives, and was alone. I felt a sense of separation and exile arising from that too. Then because of it, the loneliness of the night and the mountains made me feel another pitiable exile. And then I beheld my spirit in an overwhelming exile: