As for his statement, As for one of you, he shall serve his lord wine to drink, this is a designation of the task of the first [youth], after being judiciously guided to avoid idolatrous association, [the designation] being the granting the love of pleasures mastery over the spirit; and as for the other, he will be crucified so that the birds will eat from his head, an illustration of what the outcome of the affair of the second one will be: his crucifixion represents the preventing of him from the acts of his own soul, the curbing of him from his own exigencies, making him firm and establishing him in the stem of the vegetative natural faculty such that the imaginal faculty has no power of disposal on him nor he on it or on any of the other animal faculties. That is the mortification of vain desire, so that after this mortification and crucifixion the birds of the faculties of the soul eat from his head by the command of the Truth, this being the halting with the dues; decided is the matter regarding which you sought opinion', in other words, your matter stands firm and established in this way [shown]. That is the moment of his arrival and his [attainment of] propinquity to God and the time when the station of sanctity (walāya) through annihilation in God becomes manifest. If the two faculties are empowered with regard to the matter he has designated for each of them, followed by His command for the arrival at the station of the presential vision of the Essence and his solitariness comes to an end, then the length of the period of imprisonment will constitute the duration of his wayfaring to God. Once he is able to complete the annihilation, the status of the two faculties would then be proper, since they would then be [functioning] through God and not through themselves, whereupon the period of solitariness would end with the incipience of the period of subsistence through the existence bestowed from the Truth; but this had not yet been completed because of the existence of a remnant, the one alluded to in his words: