And you would have supposed them awake, O you who is being addressed, on account of their eyes being open, their senses functioning and their voluntary animal movements, though they were asleep, in reality, in the slumber of obliviousness, with you seeing them [as though] looking at you while they are not in fact perceiving. And We caused them to turn over to the right and to the left, that is to say, at times We turn them towards the aspect of goodness and pursuit of qualities of excellence, and at others, towards the aspect of evil and what nature entails, and their dog, that is, their soul, [lay] stretching its forelegs, that is, with its irascible and appetitive faculties unrolled, on the threshold, that is, in the courtyard of the body. He did not say, 'and their dog [lay] asleep', since it [their soul] did not sleep but stretched forth its twin faculties across the courtyard of the body, adhering to the latter and not parting with it. The right foreleg represents anger, since it is stronger, nobler and more receptive to the exigencies of the heart when it comes to the edification of it. The left one represents passionate desire (shahwa) on account of its weaker nature and its baseness. If you had observed them, that is, [observed] their disengaged realities and their brilliant states and the luminosity and brilliance which He has deposited in them and the might and splendour with which He has garbed them, you would have turned away from them, fleeing for your lack of belief in disengaged souls and their states and for your lack of preparedness to receive their perfections; or [it means] you would have turned away from them in order to flee from them and from their interactions (muʿāmalāt) on account of your inclination to sensory pleasures and matters of nature; and you would have been filled with awe because of them, [in awe] of their states and spiritual acts of self-discipline; or [it means] had you observed them after the arrival at perfection and [had you observed] their innermost secrets and their stations in the unity, you would have kept away from them and would have fled from their states and you would have been filled with awe of them because of the extent to which God has garbed them with His tremendousness and magnificence: and how, I ask you, can the temporally originated (ḥadath) compare with the eternal (qidam) and how can nonexistence (ʿadam) encompass existence (wujūd)!