11. Hud

Perhaps thou art putting aside some of what is revealed to thee, and thy breast is strait- ened by it, that they say, " Why has a treasure not been sent down upon him or an angel come with him? " A command came from the Threshold of Unity and the Side of Self-Sufficiency to the paragon of the engendered beings, the master of the masters, the sun of guidance, the alchemy of good fortune, the Canopus of felicity, the ocean of purity: " I sent you to the creatures to be the physician of the hearts of the grief-stricken, the balm of the pain of the burnt, and the ease of the spirits of the faithful. Recite this book of Mine to them and thereby put out the blaze of their passion's fire and the burning of their hearts in their wish to see Me today. Give them the promise of union and vision tomorrow. " Know also that a few of those who have been deprived by My justice and suffered the wound of severance from Me do not want to hear it, for they do not know how to taste it and do not have the capacity for it. Then, when they ask you to put it aside, you set it aside, and, hoping for their wholesomeness and faith, you seek what they desire. Do not do this, O MuḤammad! Do not seek what they desire and do not attach your hearts to them, for I drove them away in the Beginningless and placed upon them the brand of deprivation and abandon- ment. O Master! They are your enemies and they want bad for you. If they say something in criticism or they try to harass you, do not let your heart be tight. If they do not have faith, do not grieve. They are vile, and My Exalted Presence is pure, giving access only to the pure. 'Surely God is goodly and accepts only the goodly.' When someone is not Mine, even if he is purity itself, consider him defiled. God says, 'The associaters are impure' [9:28]. When someone is Mine, even if he is impurity itself, count him as pure, whether he be a man or a dog. God says, 'And their dog was stretching its paws at the doorstep' [18:18]: A dog took a step in loyalty to the religion and We sent Gabriel to be at his service. We kept it with those chevaliers in this world, We preserved it from blights, and We took its impurity as purity. It was with them in this world, it was with them in the cave, it will be with them at the Resurrec- tion, and it will be with them in paradise.' " So, if a faithful servant has stood on the carpet of submission for seventy years, tasted the flavor of faith, and walked in the footsteps of MuḤammad, while the God of the world has called him pure and placed love for Him in his heart, how can He make him despair at the resurrection? Drive us not away like beggars at Your door! Look, O idol-I'm one of the passionate, the poor.

Whoso desires the life of this world and its adornment, We shall pay them in full for their deeds therein, and therein they shall not be defrauded. " When someone is satisfied with this world without Me, despite the lowliness of its attributes, I will not hold him back from the enjoyment of some days. But the sweetness of its perfection will be followed by the bitterness of its disappearance. The flavor of its honey will be succeeded by the poison of its colocynth. " When someone wants this world from Me, this world will not be held back from him, but he will be helpless in the next world, and this world also will not stay with him. " It is mentioned in the traditions that whoever turns his face towards this world has turned his back on God. Turning one's back on God is to sleep always with thoughts of this world and to wake with thoughts of this world while one's moments are drowned in them. A poor wretch like this does not know that this world is the enjoyment of delusion [3:185]. It is the carpet of playing and jesting, the toy of the ignorant and the cause of their deception. He who keeps to this world is like a traveler sitting in a ship, this world his traveling supplies. If he takes more supplies than he needs, the ship will sink and cause his destruction. It is said that Dhu'l-Qarnayn went to the land of the west, and the kingdom of that region was held by a woman. Dhu'l-Qarnayn said, " Surrender this kingdom to me. " She said, " No! And there is no honor in it. " He wanted to take the kingdom by severity, but he was ashamed to fight against a woman. The woman said, " I invite you to be my guest. After the invitation is completed, I will surrender the kingdom to you. " When he came to the table, he saw a table laden with gold. All the cups were gold, and in place of food there were pearls and gems. Dhu'l-Qarnayn said, " What will I eat? I need food. None of this is fit for eating. " The woman said, " Since your portion of this world is no more than bread, where will you take the kingdom of the earth? It is fitting that you have no kingdom, for your portion is no more than two loafs of bread. Everything else is bane and torment. " Abū Bakr Warrāq said, " The life of this world is one thing, the adornment of this world some- thing else. The adornment of this world is what was said in the verse, 'Adorned for the people is the love of appetites' and so on [3:14]. The life of this world is the abhorrence of death. Whoever loves this world will have no awareness of God and will never wish for death. He will consider life to be just the life of this world-the perfection of appetite and heedlessness without end. He will have no awareness of the goodly life [16:97] with which the friends are busy. " The Splendorous Qur'an and exalted Speech of the Lord God makes this allusion:

And what of him who is upon a clear sign from his Lord? The life of the heedless and the life of the recognizers will never be equal. The life of the heedless is what He says: " Whoso desires the life of this world and its adornment " [11:15]. The life of the recognizers is And what of him who is upon a clear sign from his Lord? He is saying: The recog- nizers have the brightness of familiarity based on the light of the religion and the spirit of certainty. They have gone on the road of success and arrived at the goal of realization. Their hearts are filled by disengagement and solitariness. In the tongue of the folk of allusion, the clear sign is the seed of the pain of passion that He scattered on the first day, at the beginningless covenant, in the hearts of His friends. Thus, it has come in the report, " Then He sprinkled them with some of His light. " Their makeup was a sweet clay which, in the era of the creation of Adam, had come from the goodly sort, receptive to the seed of passion's pain. Then the sun of And the earth will shine with the light of its Lord [39:69] shone forth on it and it received a complete nurturing. When the jasmine of the covenant came up, the flower of intimacy bloomed. The breezes of felicity blew over it and it became the place of the gaze of the Divinity, 360 times in a day and night. The servant was asleep all night, and this gaze was flowing over his heart. He slept, and the gaze of God was his protector. If he inclined even once from the avenue of the Haqiqah or took flight in the air of mortal nature, the call came from the World of the Unseen: " Be penitent toward your Lord " [39:54]. O falcon taken to the sky, come back, don't go! My fingers hold the end of your thread!