To what point belongs the aphorism, ‘I am The Truth!’?
Why call you that impostor a vain babbler?

Or it could be expressed this way:

Who can validly say, Ana al-Haqq (I am The Real)?
And why would you call such a person deranged?

 

Shabistari’s answer recalls Question 3, which established that “I” always refers to God, and that the human self is therefore just an artifact of the universal Self (and see comments) which is God, and that there is nothing but God. We can therefore assimilate our own existence as a ta’ayyun^[1] (contrast) of God, and the person who has done this can validly say, I am The Real. The person who knows himself or herself as a ta’ayyun of God is no longer a deluded, apparently separate individual but an expression of God. Thus it is God who says, I am The Real.

Shabistari reminds us that the most famous person who did this was Mansur Hallaj^[2] (whose last name means ‘wool-carder’, or ‘cotton-carder’), and he seemed to be drunk. In this, he was like the atoms of the world, the seven heavens, the earth, and all that is within them (Q17:44), who continually praise God and validly say, like the burning bush (Q28:30), I am The Real (couplet 444). I am wondering if Shabistari is assuming that they would sound deliriously drunk as they do this, because self-control reveals the presence of the artifact ego that is seeking to survive as a separate entity. If we could hear them, the illusion of separateness would vanish, but we do not hear them because God has deafened us (Q17:46) as if with cotton earplugs. Carding the cotton earplugs would remove all that made them able to block out the call of The One, The Almighty (couplets 441–443) and leave us, free of delusion, knowing ourselves to be but ta’ayyunat of God, able to join the song of praise and joyous self-knowledge.

In couplets 448–450, we are reminded that regardless of appearance, there is no separateness, no otherness, no individual ego, and therefore there cannot be union but only unity, tawhid (couplets 448–451), and in that state we can look at the appearance and say He is The Real, or we can look at true being and say I am The Real (couplets 466–467). And isn’t that, after all, why the Hidden Treasure created the universe – so that He could know Himself by apparently external perception and by inner truth, like someone looking at himself or herself in a mirror.

 

[1] Scroll to diagram of circle 1 and discussion below it

[2] Scroll below “Singularity” for Mansour Hallaj
“I said: If you do not know Hu (IT, He) then get to know ITs side-effects (Divine Artifact), and ‘I’ (is) such a side-effect (Artifact of Allah’s Presence), ‘I’ (is) the Absolute Reality (Haqq that of Allah), for sure ‘I’ did not (shall not) cease or die down by means of Al-Haqq (Absolute reality due to Allah) for true.”