X. Love, Gnosis, the Vision, Union

Though, as we have already mentioned, some Sufi writers give a place to the stages of Sincerity, Contemplation, Self-examination and Meditation on death, yet Love as conceived by the Sufis was so allembracing that we shall here consider it as the last and highest stage to be attained by the adept, including Satisfaction (rida ’), Longing (shawq) and Fellowship (uns); rida ‘representing, on one side, the acquiescence of the lover in the will of the Beloved, shawq the longing of the lover to meet with the Beloved, and uns the intimate relation which exists between the lover and the Beloved. From Love the adept passes directly to the true knowledge of the Divine mysteries (ma ‘rifa), is enabled to see God unveiled in His Beauty and becomes one with Him in mystic union-a union obtained for brief moments only in this life, but for ever in the life to come. Satisfaction (rida ’) has two sides to it; it is both subjective and objective; there is human satisfaction with God and Divine satisfaction with man. AlHujwīrī makes the distinction plain when he says: Divine satisfaction really consists in God’s willing that man should be recompensed and in His bestowing grace upon him. Human satisfaction really consists in Man’s performing the command¹ of God and submitting to His decree. Accordingly the satisfaction of God precedes that of Man… because Man’s satisfaction is connected with God’s satisfaction and subsists thereby. In short, human satisfaction is equanimity towards Fate, whether it withholds or bestows, and spiritual steadfastness in regarding events, whether they be the manifestation of Divine Beauty or of Divine Majesty, so that it is all one to a man whether he is consumed in the fire of wrath or illuminated by the light of mercy, because both wrath and mercy are evidences of God and whatever proceeds from God is good in His eyes. Al-Qushayri quotes the sayings of a Sufi: “If my heart is satisfied with God Most High (i.e. acquiesces in His Will) I know that He is satisfied with me”. Ruwaym gives a striking illustration of his conception of rida. “Satisfaction means that if God were to put Hell on His right side, (the servant) should not ask Him to change it to His left”, and Ibn Khafif defines Satisfaction as “the acquiescence of the heart in God’s decisions and the agreement of the heart with what He wills and chooses”, and again “Satisfaction is the acceptance of God’s decisions with joy”. AlQushayrī gives as another example of the Satisfaction of the true Sufi that ‘Atba al-Ghulam spent the night until dawn saying, “If Thou dost chastise me I will love Thee (for it) and if Thou dost have compassion on me, I will love Thee (for it)”. Al-Hujwīrī speaks of four classes of those who are satisfied: (1) those who are satisfied with God’s gift, which is gnosis; (2) those who are satisfied with happiness, which is this world; (3) those who are satisfied with affliction, which consists of diverse probations; and (4) those who are so, the perfection of love in which we possess God, by a grace most intimate and special, lives in the soul in this life when it has reached it, satisfied with being chosen, which is love.^2,3,4,5

Of the last two classes he says: He who is satisfied with the affliction that God sends is satisfied because in the affliction he sees the Author thereof and can endure its pain by contemplating Him Who sent it; nay, he does not count it painful, such is his joy in contemplating his Beloved. Finally, those who are satisfied with being chosen by God are His lovers, whose existence is an illusion alike in His anger, and in His satisfaction: whose hearts dwell in the presence of Purity and in the garden of Intimacy; who have no thought of created things and have escaped from the bonds of “stations” and “states” and have devoted themselves to the love of God. Their satisfaction involves no loss, for satisfaction with God is a manifest kingdom. So he finally identifies Satisfaction in its highest form, with Love. Another element in mahabba is shawq, the passionate yearning of the soul for God. A dervish once asked Shaykh Abū Sa ‘id b. Abi al-Khayr, “What is this tumult within our breasts?” The Shaykh replied: This is the fire of supplication, and God Almighty has created two fires, one unto life and one unto death. The living fire is the fire of supplication which He has placed in the breasts of His servants in this world, so that their carnal Self may be consumed; that fire burns brightly and when the Self is consumed away, suddenly that fire of supplication becomes the fire of longing and that fire of longing will never die either in this world or the next, and this is that flame of which the apostle of God spoke when he said, “When God willed good to His servant He kindled a light in his heart”. They asked the Apostle of God what was the sign of that light, and he said, “Separation from the abode of vanity and turning towards the abode of eternity, and preparing for death, before the descent of death”. The questioner asked the Shaykh, “When God grants that fearful vision, does that fire of longing become rest?” The Shaykh said:⁶ That vision increases thirst, it does not produce satiety… everyone who sees it, sees it according to the measure of his faith. That was the light of faith which came into the hearts through sight, so that that light of faith sees (God’s) majesty and beauty according to (the capacity of) the eye of faith. Al-Sarrāj also speaks of shawq as “the fire of God Most High which He has kindled in the hearts of His saints, so that it may burn up in their hearts all vain desires and wishes and hindrances and needs”. Again he says that the highest degree of shawq is attained by the one who beholds his Lord near at hand, and sees that He is present and not absent, and so his heart rejoices in His worship and says to itself that longing is only for the absent, but He is present, not absent, and so he, in his desire is without consciousness of shawq and he is the true mushtaq without shawq. Bound up with mahabba too, is uns; where the worshipper feels awe, the lover feels the sense of intimacy. Al-Sarrāj describes it as the heart’s joy in the Beloved and he defines the highest degree of uns, like that of shawq, as becoming unconscious of uns, in the sense of reverence (in the Presence of God) and proximity to Him, and of His greatness, all combined with intimacy with Him. Al-Hujwīrī shews the difference between the relation of the ordinary worshipper, who fears God, and the mystic, who loves Him. He says: When God manifests His glory to a man’s heart, so that His Majesty predominates, he feels awe, but when God’s beauty predominates he feels intimacy, those who feel awe are distressed, while those who feel intimacy are rejoiced… A servant of God seeing His favour, cannot fail to love Him, and when he has loved, he will become intimate, because awe of one’s beloved is estrangement, whereas intimacy is oneness… The power of awe is exerted upon the lower souls and its desires, and tends^7,8,9 to annihilate human nature, while the power of uns is exerted upon the heart and tends to foster gnosis in the heart. Therefore God annihilates the souls of those who love Him by revealing His Majesty and endows their hearts with everlasting life by revealing His beauty. Abū Tālib, comparing shawq and uns, says that shawq is a longing to see what is invisible and hidden and this state causes sorrow, but uns is a state of proximity through the unveiling of God’s presence, and in this station is joy. He quotes al-Junayd as saying with regard to uns that the sign of perfect love is the abiding remembrance of God in the heart, in joy and delight and great longing for Him and intimacy with Him. Love includes all these elements and transcends them. To the Sufi mystic the servant was the lover and God the Beloved. Since the origin of every action must be referred to God, He is also the Giver of Love, and Abū Tālib writes that God’s love to His saints precedes their love to Him, but the Sufis have little to say of the love of God to man, in comparison with what they say of man’s love to God. The latter was incumbent upon the servant, the former but an act of grace to which the servant had no claim. The Sufis would not dream of attributing to God feelings akin to their own, He was to them the unique and incomparable object of adoration. Such a conception as that of the Christian mystic who thought of God’s love as pursuing the soul, a conception which had reached its highest development in the Christian doctrine of Redemption, was impossible to the Sufis; hence they describe God as the Beloved and throw all the emphasis on the human side. Al-Hujwīrī says that God’s love to Man is in His goodwill towards him and His having mercy on him. Man’s love to God is a quality which^10,11,12,13 manifests itself in the heart of the believer… so that he seeks to satisfy his Beloved and becomes impatient and restless in his desire for vision of Him and cannot rest with anyone except Him and grows familiar with the remembrance of Him and abjures the remembrance of everything besides. He goes on to say that Believers who love God are of two kinds: (1) those who regard the favour and beneficence of God towards them, and are led by that regard to love the Benefactor; (2) those who are so enraptured by love that they reckon all favours as a veil (between themselves and God) and by regarding the Benefactor are led to His favours. To this latter class al-Sarrāj refers when he says that the love of the saints and the gnostics arises from their vision and their knowledge of the eternal and causeless love of God, therefore they also love Him without any cause. Al-Qushayri defines Love as the enduring inclination of the love-intoxicated heart, the preference of the Beloved over all companions, harmony with the Beloved, whether present or absent, the effacement of the lover’s qualities and the establishment of the Beloved’s essence, and finally the agreement of the heart with the Will of the Lord. Among the sayings of the Sufis which he quotes is that of al-Junayd defining Love as “the entering in of the qualities of the Beloved in place of the qualities of the lover”-being changed into the same Image till^14,15,16 the two become one; that of Abū ‘Abd Allah al-Qurashi to the effect that Love “means to give all that thou hast to (Him) whom thou lovest, so that nothing remains to thee of thine own”; and those of Shibli when he says of Love that “it is called love, because it obliterates from the heart all save the Beloved”, and again, “Love is a fire in the heart consuming all save the Will of the Beloved”. Of the effect of this Love upon the mystic it is related that Yahya b. Mu’adh wrote to Abū Yazid: “What do you say of one who drinks a single drop of the ocean of Love and becomes intoxicated?” Bāyazid wrote in reply, “What do you say of one who, if all the oceans in the world were filled with the wine of Love, would drink them all and still cry for more to slake his thirst?” and Hujwiri explains that this intoxication with the cup of Love arises from regarding the Benefactor. Abū Tālib also, speaking of the effect of Love and that to which it brings the lover, says that Love leads to knowledge of the Divine mysteries and those who love abide in God and look to Him only and He is nearer to them than all else, and to them is given the vision of Him unveiled, and they see Him with the eye of certainty. Thus, through the stage of Love, the mystic attains to his goal, and having cast aside all the veils, which hindered him from seeing God, he at last beholds the Divine Beauty unveiled. So Plato also describes the reward of Love: He who has been instructed thus far in the things of Love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty-not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning… but Beauty only, absolute, separate, simple and everlasting… He who under the influence of true love rising upward^17,18,19,20 begins to see that Beauty, is not far from the end… This… is that life above all others which a man should live, in the contemplation of Beauty absolute… What if man had eyes to see the true beauty-the Divine Beauty, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life-thither looking, and holding converse with the true Beauty-Divine and Simple? Remember how in that communion only, beholding Beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities and… to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. So he makes Diotima of Mantineia set forth the doctrine of Love leading to the Beatific Vision, and foreshadow the ideals of the mystics of all creeds who were to come after her, and who were to seek the way to God through Love. On the subject of the Vision of God which is the reward of the mystic who, having passed through the stages of the Path, reaches the knowledge which comes to him directly from God, and from knowledge passes to sight and from sight to Union, al-Junayd says that God gives to the adept the sharp desire to behold His Essence, then knowledge becomes vision, and vision revelation, and revelation contemplation, and contemplation existence (with and in God). Words are hushed to silence, life becomes death, explanations (necessary for finite minds in this world) come to an end, signs (a concession to those who are weak in faith) are effaced, disputes are cleared up. Perishability (fanā ’) is ended and subsistence (baqā ’) is made perfect. Weariness and care cease, the elements perish and there remains what will not cease, as time that is time-less ceases not.^21,22

So also writes the Christian mystic, John of Ruysbroeck, of the attainment of Union through Love: The spirit perceives that through love it has plunged itself into the depth… and through this intimate feeling of union, it feels itself to be melting into the Unity and, through dying to all things, into the life of God. And there it feels itself to be one life with God. The Godseeing man who has forsaken self and all things and does not feel himself drawn away because he no longer possesses anything as his own, but stands empty of all, he can always enter, naked and unencumbered with images, into the inmost part of his spirit. There he feels himself to be an eternal life of love, which craves above all else to be one with God. In the transformation within the Unity, all spirits fail in their own activity, and feel nothing else but a burning up of themselves in the simple Unity of God. Where the soul is burnt up… it feels nothing but unity… for the flame of the Love of God consumes all that it can enfold in itself… And in this Love we shall burn and be burnt up without end, throughout eternity-for herein lies the blessedness of all spirits. The Sufis, and chief among them Rabi’a, felt within themselves, or at least sought diligently that they might attain to “that eternal life of love, which craves above all else, to be one with God”. Though Rabi’a was not the first among the Sufis to realise that the way to God must be sought through love, she was perhaps the first to lay stress upon the doctrine and to combine with it the doctrine of Kashf, the unveiling at the end of the Way, of the Beloved to His fires… even the darkness, desolation and abandonment, the bitterness of the spiritual death… were they not needed, the soul had almost demanded them, that thus it might test for Him its courage and its truth “(The Spiral Way, p. 113).^23,24,25 lovers. ‘Attār speaks of her as “that woman on fire with love and ardent desire… consumed with her passion (for God)”, and a writer of the present day says of her, “With Rabi’a… Love, the unquenchable flame smouldering in the ashes of ceremonial religion and kindling the torch of Mysticism through the darkest ages began its conquest of Mohammedan hearts”. She was one of the first to teach the doctrine of disinterested love to God, a new conception to many of her fellow-Sufis, who for the most part served God in hope of eternal reward or in fear of eternal punishment. With regard to the element of rida ‘in the stage of Love Abū Tālib relates that Sufyan al-Thawri said one day in Rabi’a’s presence, “O God, mayst Thou be satisfied with us”, and she said, “Are you not ashamed before God to ask Him to be satisfied, when you are not satisfied with Him?”(i.e. not acquiescent in His Will for you) and Sufyan said, “I ask forgiveness from God”. Ja’far then said to her, “When is the servant satisfied with God Most High?” and she said, “When his pleasure in misfortune is equal to his pleasure in prosperity”. Some people were speaking in Rabi’a’s presence of a devotee, who was known to be holy and in the favour of God, and who lived on what he collected from the refuse-heap of one of our kings, and a man said in her hearing, “What harm would there be in this, if he is in favour with God, that he should ask of Him to provide him with food by some other means?” and Rabi’a said to him, “Be silent, O worthless one, have you not realised that the saints of God are satisfied with Him, that they accept His Will even if He takes from them their means of livelihood, so long as it is He Who chooses this for them?”^26,27,28,29

Of shawq Rabi’a said, “The groaning and the yearning of the lover of God will not be satisfied until it is satisfied in the Beloved”. In verses quoted by Al-Hujwiri, for which no author is assigned, but attributed to Rabi’a by Suhrawardi, she says of the one who claims to be a lover of God but does not accept His Will unquestioningly, “You rebel against God, yet appear to love Him. I swear by my faith, that this is most strange. If your love were sincere, you would have obeyed Him, since the lover obeys that one whom he loves.” She said further in regard to uns, “Everyone who obeys (i.e. the true lover) seeks intimacy”, and then recited these lines: I have made Thee the Companion of my heart, But my body is available for those who desire its company, And my body is friendly towards its guests, But the Beloved of my heart is the guest of my soul. There is an incident recorded by the Persian writer Aflākī which shews how Rabi’a sought to make her contemporaries understand how the true Sufi must love God for Himself alone. One day a number of saints saw that Rabi’a had taken fire in one hand and water in the other and was running with speed. They said to her, “O lady of the next world, where are you going and what is the meaning of this?” She said: I am going to light fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell so that both veils (i.e. hindrances to the true vision of God)^30,31,32,33 may completely disappear from the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure, and the servants of God may see Him, without any object of hope or motive of fear. What if the hope of Paradise and the fear of Hell did not exist? Not one would worship his Lord or obey Him. Al-Ghazālī, in dealing with the love of the servant for his Lord, relates that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya said one day when in the company of the Sufis, “Who shall lead us to our Beloved?” and her servant (probably that ‘Abda bint Shuwal, who had learnt much from her mistress) answered, “Our Beloved is with us, but this world cuts us off from Him”. Then someone asked Rabi’a, “What is your love to the Apostle of God like?” and she replied, “Verily I love him greatly, but love of the Creator has turned me aside from love of His creatures”. ‘Attār also mentions among her sayings on this great subject of all-absorbing love to God, that one day Rabi’a was asked, “Do you love the Lord of Glory?” Perhaps her questioner thought it was impossible or presumptuous for her to love One so far above her. But she said, “I do”. Then she was asked, “Do you hold Satan as an enemy?” She replied, “No”, and the other, astonished, asked, “How is that?” Rabi’a said, “My love for God leaves no room for hating Satan”, and she went on to say, “I saw the Prophet in a dream, and he said to me, ‘O Rabi’a, dost thou love me? ‘I said, ‘O Prophet of God who is there who does not love thee? But my love to God has so possessed me that no place remains for loving or hating any save Him.” Then someone said to her, “What is Love?” a question no less searching than Pilate’s “What is^34,35,36,37 Truth? “She said,” Love has come from Eternity and passes into Eternity and none has been found in seventy thousand worlds who drinks one drop of it until at last he is absorbed in God, and from that comes the saying ‘He loves them (His saints) and they love Him ” (Qur’an, v, 59). ‘Attār gives another anecdote shewing how she tried to emphasise her teaching of disinterested love to God, in which he relates how a number of elders came to Rabi’a, and she asked one of them, “Why do you worship God?” He said, “There are seven degrees in Hell, which are a source of dread to me, and everyone must pass by them, willy-nilly, in fear and terror”. Another said, “The different spheres of Paradise are places of rare delight, and much rest is promised”. Then Rabi’a rejoined, “He is a bad servant who worships God from fear and terror, or from the desire of reward-but there are many of these”. They asked her, “Why do you worship God, have you no desire for Paradise?” and she replied, “The Neighbour first, and then the House. Is it not enough for me that I am given leave to worship Him? Even if Heaven and Hell were not, does it not behove us to obey Him? He is worthy of worship without any intermediary (motive).” Al-Qushayri, in the chapter on Love in his Risāla, mentions Rabi’a in connection with what is really the^38,39,40 right conception by the servant of God’s love to him. He says: “It is related that Rabi’a prayed once, ‘O my God, wilt thou burn in Hell a heart which loves Thee? ‘and an unseen voice answered her, ‘We shall not do thus. Do not think of Us an evil thought! ’”, which may be considered as a rebuke to Rabi’a for lack of faith or for having too low a conception of God’s love for His saints, but her view is in accordance with the view of the earlier Sufis, that it was incumbent on the servant to love his Lord, but not incumbent on Him to return that love. It is told how someone blamed worldliness in her presence, and Rabi’a said, “The Prophet of God said, ‘If anyone loves anything more than the remembrance of God, then your remembrance of that thing leads your heart astray, since you are a vessel for something else that you are remembering besides Him”. Another story shewing how Rabi’a felt that love to God must be all absorbing and exclude all else but Him is related by Abū Sa’id b. Abi al-Khayr, who says that he heard it from Abū ‘Alī the Jurist. Rabi’a was asked by what means she had attained to such pre-eminence in the spiritual life and she replied, “By constantly saying this, ‘I take refuge in Thee, from everything which has distracted me from Thee, and from every hindrance which has hindered me from Thee ’”. Abū ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami in his “Tabaqāt”, dealing with devout women, says that a group of them were in his cell seeking a blessing, and they asked for a benediction to be pronounced for them and Rabi’a^{41,42,43,44,45} gave them what they desired in quoting the words, “God has separated from you every cause of separation which has separated you from Him”. Sufyan al-Thawri asked her once what was the basis of her faith, and her answer revealed the secret of her whole life and the essence of all her teaching, when she said, “I have not served God from fear of Hell, for I should be like a wretched hireling, if I did it from fear; nor from love of Paradise, for I should be a bad servant if I served for the sake of what was given, but I have served Him only for the love of Him and desire for Him”. It was on this occasion that she is said to have recited her famous verses on the two types of love, the type which seeks its own ends, and that love which seeks only the Beloved and His glory. Abū Tālib says that these verses were attributed to Rabi’a by the people of Başra, and by others to either Ja’far b. Sulayman al-Duba’i or Sufyan al-Thawri or Hammād b. Zayd or ‘Abd al-Wahid b. Zayd, but Abū Tālib himself gives them as Rabi’a’s own. They run thus: I have loved Thee with two loves, a selfish love and a love that is worthy (of Thee), As for the love which is selfish, I occupy myself therein with remembrance of Thee to the exclusion of all others, As for that which is worthy of Thee, therein Thou raisest the veil that I may see Thee.^46,47,48

Yet is there no praise to me in this or that, But the praise is to Thee, whether in that or this. Abū Tālib comments on these verses in detail and says that in regard to her saying “The Selfish love” and her saying “the love of which Thou art worthy” and her distinction between the two loves, it is necessary to make this distinction and he will explain her meaning to those who do not understand these sayings or the nature of the two loves. In the selfish love, she has seen God and loved Him through contemplation, which is the essence of certainty, not through mere report and hearsay, but she has been given assurance through God’s grace and kindness. Her love has come by way of personal intercourse, and she has drawn near to God and fled to Him (away from this world) and occupied herself with Him, to the exclusion of all but Him. Before this she had earthly desires, but when she saw her Lord, she cast these away and He became all-in-all to her heart and the sole object of her love. God had freed her from all (objects of desire) save Himself, and this although she was not worthy of that love and was not fit to look upon Him at the last, unveiled and manifest in the place of satisfaction. Her love for God need not have been reciprocated by Him, though it must needs be given by her to Him. He had shewn favour to her and He was worthy to bestow favour, and He had shewn her His Face in His Presence at the last (i.e. when the Vision was revealed to her),^49,50 as He had shewn it to her at this time in her presence first. To God was due the praise for the grace He had shewn in this world (i.e. while she was still traversing the Way) and to Him was the praise for the grace He had shewn in the next world (i.e. when the Goal was attained and she saw Him unveiled and face to face), and there was no praise due to her in this here, or in that yonder, because it was God who had brought her to both stages. So Abū Tālib explains Rabi’a’s words, believing that she had reached the highest truth in regard to Love. Al-Ghazālī also, in dealing with the Sufi doctrine of Love, gives these verses of hers, and adds in his commentary upon them, what he believed to be the interpretation of them. He says: She meant by the selfish love, the love of God for His favour and grace bestowed and for temporary happiness, and by the love worthy of Him the love of His Beauty which was revealed to her, and this is the higher of the two loves and the finer of them. The delight arising from the Beauty of the Lord is that which the Prophet of God explained when he said, speaking of his Lord Most High, “I have prepared for my faithful servants what eye hath not seen nor ear heard and what has not entered into the heart of man,” and some of these delights are given beforehand in this world to the one who has wholly purified his heart. Someone said, “If a man reaches this high knowledge, he will be stoned, because his words have passed beyond the limits of their minds (the minds of those who lack enlightenment) and they will consider his speech mad and unbelieving”. The purpose of the gnostics is only to attain to this knowledge and possess it, for it is a consolation unknown to the souls from which it is hidden, and when it is attained it destroys all anxieties^51,52,53 and sensual desires and the heart becomes filled with its grace. Even if the gnostic were cast into the fire he would not feel it because of his absorption and if the favours of Paradise were spread out before him, he would not turn towards them because of the perfection of the grace that is in him and his perfect attainment, which is above all else that can be attained. How can he who understands only the love of sensible things, believe in the joy of looking upon the Face of God Most High? For such a one there is no vision or form, and what meaning is there for him in the promise of God Most High to His worshippers and in His statement that He gives the greatest of all graces? But he who knows God, knows that all joys (save only sensual desires) are included in this joy. With the Sufi doctrine of the Beatific Vision, and the joy of the mystic to whom it is granted at the end of the path, we may compare the conception of Plotinus, from whom indeed the Sufis have plainly derived something of their own mystical doctrine. Plotinus, dealing with the Vision Beautiful, says: Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul’s sight, and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth. This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen: and this the souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love just as all take delight in the beauty of the body, but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers. Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, desired of every Soul. To attain it is for those that will take the upward^54,55,56 path, who will set all their forces towards it… until, passing, on the upward way, all that is other than God, each in the solitude of himself, shall behold that solitary dwelling Existence, the Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, that from Which all things depend, for Which all look and live and act and know, the Source of Life and of Intellectuation and of Being. And one that shall know this vision-with what passion of love shall he not be seized, with what pang of desire, what longing to be molten into one with This, what wondering delight! If he that has never seen this Being must hunger for It as for all his welfare, he that has known must love and reverence It as the very Beauty… he loves with a veritable love, with sharp desire; all other loves than this he must despise, and disdain all that once seemed fair. What are we to think of one that contemplates Absolute Beauty in Its essential integrity-so perfect Its purity, far above all things? Beholding this Being… resting, rapt, in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to Its likeness, what Beauty can the soul yet lack? For This, the Beauty supreme, the absolute and the primal, fashions Its lovers to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love. And for This, the sternest and the uttermost combat is set before the Souls: all our labour is for This, lest we be left without part in this noblest vision, which to attain is to be blessed in the blissful sight, which to fail of is to fail utterly. Only he has failed, that has failed of only This, for Whose winning he should renounce kingdoms and command over earth and ocean and sky, if only, spurning the world of sense beneath his feet, and straining to This, he may see.⁵⁷

Al-Ghazālī, turning aside from the distinction between the two loves in Rabi’a’s verses, seems to concentrate on the Vision which is the object of the higher love. He and Plotinus are at one in their conception of “the delight arising from the Beauty of the Lord”; in the course of his travels and of his studies of different schools of philosophical thought, it is not unlikely that he had come across the ideas of Plotinus, who may also have affected the earlier Sufis, if not directly by his writings, at least indirectly by his influence. A later Sufi, the greatest of all the Arabic mystic poets, wrote in a like strain on this same theme: With my Beloved I alone have been, When secrets tenderer than evening airs Passed, and the Vision blest Was granted to my prayers, That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame, The while amazed between His Beauty and His Majesty I stood in silent ecstasy Revealing that which o’er my spirit went and came. Lo, in His face commingled Is every charm and grace; The whole of Beauty singled Into a perfect face Beholding Him would cry, “There is no God but He, and He is the most High”. It is possible that Abū Talib and al-Ghazālī read more into Rabi’a’s verses than she herself meant to express. She seems to have been chiefly concerned to distinguish between the love towards God-which finds a satisfaction for itself and seeks to gain something for itself, out of loving Him, even though it loves Him exclusively, and which is therefore only of the same type as the human love of the lover for the beloved, which includes its own satisfaction and enjoyment as⁵⁸ a result of loving-and the love which seeks nothing for itself, but only the glory of the beloved, a height to which the love of one human being for another rarely attains. The former has always some taint of selfishness, but in the second type the soul is content to seek only the glory of God and to carry out the will of the Beloved, even to its own hurt, and in beholding the Vision of the Everlasting, is content. So we read in The Dream of Gerontius of the eager soul, after death, inspired by pure love and adoration, escaping from the hold of its companion angel, darting to the very Throne of God and there, scorched by the Divine Fire of God’s perfect purity, lying in acquiescent rapture, seeking only to carry out the will of God. Only this type of love is worthy of God. To sum up Rabi’a’s teaching on Love, that is the love of the servant to his Lord: she teaches, first, that this love must shut out all others than the Beloved, that is, the saint must turn his back on the world and all its attractions, he must cut himself off from the creatures of God, lest they should distract him from the Creator, he must even rise above the claims of the senses and allow neither pleasure nor pain to disturb his contemplation of the Divine. To Rabi’a God seemed to be a jealous God, Who will suffer none to share with Him that love which is due to Him alone.^59,60,61,62

Then, secondly, she teaches that this love, directed to God to the exclusion of all else, must be disinterested, that it must look neither to hope of reward, nor to relief from punishment, but seek only to do the Will of God and to accomplish that which is pleasing to Him, that He may be glorified. So will the love of the servant be transmuted into that higher love, which is truly worthy of the Beloved. Only to the servant who loves thus, can God reveal Himself in His perfect Beauty and only by treading this Way of self-renouncing love, can the loving soul at last be united with its Beloved and in His Will find its peace. By means then of Love and all the stages which have passed before, the Sufi attains to the mystic gnosis and “the heart becomes filled with its grace”. That knowledge comes directly as a gift from the Lord and from it the gnostic proceeds to contemplation of the unveiled Essence of God. With the enlightened eye of gnosis, the mystic gazes upon that Vision, and thus beholding, is rapt up into union with the Divine, and the final Goal of the Quest, the End of the Path, is attained, not by annihilation, but by absorption and transmutation, so that the soul transmuted into the Divine Image, and become itself part of God, in Him abides and lives for ever. As Suso, the Christian mystic, describes it in his Book of Truth: This highest state of union is an indescribable experience, in which all idea of images and forms and differences has vanished.^63,64,65

All consciousness of self and of all things has gone, and the soul is plunged into the abyss of the Godhead and the spirit has become one with God… In this highest state God becomes the inner essence, the life and activity within, so that whatever the person does, it does as an instrument… Like a being which loses itself in an indescribable intoxication, the spirit ceases to be itself, divests itself of itself, passes into God, and becomes wholly one with Him, as a drop of water mingled with a cask of wine. As the drop of water loses its identity and takes on the taste and colour of the wine, so it is with those who are in the full possession of bliss; human desires influence them no longer; divested of self they are absorbed in the Divine Will, mingled with the Divine Will and become one with it. So Rabi’a in one of her poems says, “My hope is for union with Thee, for that is the goal of my desire”, and again she says, to Hasan of Başra, “I have ceased to exist and have passed out of self. I am become one with Him and am altogether His.” Again she said in a time of spiritual distress that the cure for her sickness was Union with her Friend and in the next life she would attain it. Rabi’a, throughout her life, had her eyes fixed upon that Goal, and when the end of life came she might have said, with Jalal al-Din Rūmī: Up, O ye lovers, and away! ‘Tis time to leave the world for aye… O heart, toward thy heart’s love wend, and O friend, fly toward the Friend. She had looked upon the Vision and experienced Union for brief moments in this life, and it was not without reason that her Sufi friends, after her death, believed they heard her say, “I have attained to that which I beheld”.^{66,67,68,69,70}