694 ISLAMIC MYSTICAL LITERATURE
and realm, he ordered them to testify,
'Bow down before my regent, my right hand.'
"Some waverers chose Salman. They were saved.
But the faithless Iblis rebelled. His second,
third, and all the followers of Iblis showed
their stupid disbelief a thousand times.
This denial of the realm reads in the Qur'an,
'We have created people of damp clay.'^101"Then the high king said to Salman, 'Remove
the covering of emerald green from the faithless
and unjust, make it earth, and then transform
the carnelian realm, now earth, into their sky,
and keep these wretched beings prisoners there.'^102
"Salman struck them with terror, removed them
from clarion green light. He made a green curtain
and held them prisoners, blind to the fire realm.
"After a thousand years the high king shone
again, and as confronting them before,
he asked them to affirm divinity.
But Azazi'il said, 'I will never do it,
for you are as I am and cannot be our god.
There's only one god in the highest realm.'THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE DIVINE
"God stands beyond all 'when' and 'how,' beyond
description, and beyond known qualities.
He was not made by anyone. No one made him.^103
The words, 'Say, he is god,'^104 are words
of Azazi'il in that emerald realm,
but only superficially. The prayer
of all confessors of the one who is notQur'an sura 15.
Human beings are imprisoned in this world, according to gnostic texts.
The Secret Book of John opens with such a statement of divine transcendence.
Qur'an sura 112.