This work is an epistle whose addressee is none other than Ibn ʿArabî himself. Shaykh Akbar addresses in this text of great beauty, written in rhymed prose, one of the most delicate questions of Sufism: the union without confusion between the human and the divine.

Universal Man, who has achieved this union, is symbolized here by the essential Tree, created and uncreated, place of opposites. The four Birds, for their part, symbolize the active and passive, hylic and corporal principles, which govern all beings. Principle of the manifestation, the universal Man is also the imam, through whom the return to the Origin is accomplished.

Now, every man is virtually a “universal Man” and the five principles symbolized by the Tree and the four Birds have their microcosmic correspondence in each of us. This is why Ibn ʿArabî recalls, in conclusion, that the symbols of this treatise must be meditated on by all those who seek spiritual elevation.