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6
206-230

  • Although the destination of these two ways is unto Thee alone, yet the battle is never like the banquet.”
  • Hearken to the explanation thereof given by God in the Qur’án, (namely) the Verse they shrank from bearing it.
  • This perplexity in the heart is like war: (when a man is perplexed he says, “I wonder) whether this is better for my case or that.”
  • In perplexity the fear (of failure) and the hope of success are always in conflict with each other, (now) advancing and (now) retreating.
  • A prayer and a seeking refuge with God from the temptation of free-will and from the temptation of those things that minister to free-will; for the heavens and the earths dreaded and feared free-will and the things that minister to it, while the nature of Man is addicted to seeking free-will and all that ministers to his free-will; as (for example) if he is sick he feels himself to have little free-will and desires health, which ministers to free-will, in order that his free-will may be increased; and he desires high office in order that his free-will may be increased. And it was excess of free-will and of whatever ministers to it that caused the wrath of God to fall upon the peoples of the past. No one ever saw Pharaoh destitute.
  • From Thee first came this ebb and flow within me; else, O glorious One, this sea (of mine) was still. 210
  • From the same source whence Thou gavest me this perplexity, graciously (now) make me unperplexed likewise.
  • Thou art afflicting me. Ah, help (me), O Thou by whose affliction men are (made weak) as women.
  • How long (will) this affliction (continue)? Do not (afflict me), O Lord! Bestow on me one path, do not make me follow ten paths!
  • I am (like) an emaciated camel, and my back is wounded by my free-will which resembles a pack-saddle.
  • At one moment this pannier weighs heavily on this side, at another moment that pannier sags to that side. 215
  • Let the ill-balanced load drop from me, that I may behold the meadow of the pious.
  • (Then), like the Fellows of the Cave, I shall browse on the orchard of Bounty— not awake, nay, they are asleep.
  • I shall recline on the right or on the left, I shall not roll save involuntarily, like a ball,
  • Just as Thou, O Lord of the Judgement, turnest me over either to the right or to the left.
  • Hundreds of thousands of years I was flying (to and fro) involuntarily, like the motes in the air. 220
  • If I have forgotten that time and state, (yet) the migration in sleep (to the spiritual world) recalls it to my memory.
  • (Every night) I escape from this four-branched cross and spring away from this (confined) halting-place into the (spacious) pasture of the spirit.
  • From the nurse, Sleep, I suck the milk of those bygone days of mine, O Lord.
  • All the (people in the) world are fleeing from their free-will and (self-)existence to their drunken (unconscious) side.
  • In order that for awhile they may be delivered from sobriety (consciousness), they lay upon themselves the opprobrium of wine and minstrelsy. 225
  • All know that this existence is a snare, that volitional thought and memory are a hell.
  • They are fleeing from selfhood into selflessness either by means of intoxication or by means of (some engrossing) occupation, O well-conducted man.
  • Thou (O God) drawest the soul back from that state of not-being because it entered into unconsciousness without Thy command.
  • Neither for the Jinn (genies) nor for mankind is it (possible) to pierce through the prison of the regions of the temporal world.
  • There is no piercing through the cavities of the highest heavens save by the power of Guidance. 230