12. Yusuf

Return to your father and say, " O our father! Surely thy son has stolen. " When Jacob became distracted and distraught in separation from Joseph, helpless in his pain with- out remedy, he wanted to make the remembrance of that dear one a balm for his wound and to be passionate with someone linked to Joseph. He made Benjamin his reminder and sympathizer, for he had drunk water from the same drinking place as Joseph and had been nurtured on the same lap. The heart of the passionate man always inclines toward someone who has a link or some sort of similarity with the object of passion. Do you not see that Majnūn of Banī ʿāmir went out to the desert hunting for a gazelle? He saw that its eyes and neck were like those of Laylā. He was passing his hands over its neck, kissing its eyes, and saying, " Your eyes are her eyes, your neck is her neck! " When Jacob fastened his heart to Benjamin and when a part of him came to rest in him, the venomous sickle was once again drawn from the sheath of time and Benjamin was separated from his father. Then the name of thief was thrown on him, and this added trial to his trial-salt was sprinkled on his wound and the burn was once again burned. Just as fire wants to kindle burnt rags, so also the pain of separation wants to settle down with a burnt heart. Whenever pain steps forth from this heart of mine another pain takes its place in the breast. I become the companion of every pain for fire flares up when it reaches the burnt. Whenever Jacob saw Benjamin, he was consoled by him, for " He who is prevented from gazing is consoled by a trace. " 4 Then, when he was held back from Benjamin, the burning reached the utmost limit and he moaned at the pain in his heart. With the tongue of longing he said,

and the caravan with which we approached, from among the animal faculties. So ask them that they might inform you of your son's thievery.

'Nay,' he said, 'but your souls have beguiled you into something: that is, your physical bodily natures adorned for you the delighting in corporeal pleasures and sensory passionate desires, such that you supposed these to be perfection and [supposed] the pursuit of rational concepts, adherence to divine precepts and being under the command of virtues a deficiency. Yet beautiful patience!, in other words, it is for you to be beautifully patient in always implementing the divine precepts and [conducting yourselves according to] the virtues, to halt with the judgement of the Law and [that of] the intellect; or [it means] beautiful patience in partaking of enjoyment according to the [dictates of the] Law is more comely for you than disregarding the Law and dogged pursuit of the judgements of nature; or [it means], then for me it is to be beautifully patient with regard to Joseph and his brothers continuing to seek the irradiation of the holy lights, the sending down of revealed judgements and deducing of the bases thereof, something to which I have no access. Therefore I must be separated from them until they are free to look after the best interests of both sides and to fulfil the dues of both matters, namely, those of everyday life and the final return. For just as the intellect entails the pursuit of perfection and the making good of the final return, so it entails the making good of the body and the organising of the means of livelihood, as well as the balancing of the constitution by means of nourishment and the nurturing of faculties by means of pleasures; or [it means] then it is my task to endure with beautiful patience [all of] that. It may be that God will bring them all [back] to me, from the direction of 'the highest horizon' [cf. Q. 53:7] and by elevation from my stage to what my consideration and vision entail in the way of being mindful of both sides and [what] my station and my level [entail] in the way of mediating between the two waystations. Indeed He is the Knower, of realities, the Wise', in governing the worlds, and so He does not leave them to be mindful of the upper aspect but oblivious to the lower aspect so that the city of the body is then ruined and its people perish. That was before the complete protection, which we have mentioned, since this is the station of striving after the unveiling and the wayfaring along the path of uprightness after the affirmation of the Oneness.

" Oh, my grief for Joseph! " And his eyes turned white because of the sorrow that he was suppressing. Revelation came from the Compeller of all engendered beings: " O Jacob! You grieve so much for him, but you do not grieve for what you are missing of Me by being busy with grief for him! " O Jacob, how long this sorrow and regret at separation from Joseph? How long will you suffer grief and coldly sigh? Do you not suffer grief that you are held back from Me while busy with him? " With two kiblahs you can't walk straight on the road of tawḤīd- either the Friend's approval, or your own caprice. [DS 488] " O Jacob! Be careful not to pass Joseph's name over your tongue any more, or I will remove your name from the register of the prophets. " The Pir of the Tariqah said, " Jacob's remembrance of Joseph was the seed of heartache, and Joseph's remembrance of Jacob was the seed of ease. Since Jacob had all that rebuke for remem- bering Joseph, everything other than remembering God is loss. It is said that remembering the Friend is like the spirit. Look more carefully: remembering the Friend is the spirit itself! " When Jacob saw the harshness of the Real's rebuke, he no longer mentioned Joseph's name. Then the mercy and gentleness of the Exalted Threshold gave this command to Gabriel: " O Ga- briel, go to Jacob and remind him of Joseph. " Gabriel came and mentioned Joseph's name. Jacob sighed. Revelation came from the Real: " O Jacob, I know what is beneath your moaning. By My exaltedness, were he dead, I would resurrect him because of the beauty of your loyalty. " And his eyes turned white because of the sorrow that he was suppressing. Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq said, " Jacob wept because of a created thing, so his eyesight went. David wept more than Jacob, but his eyesight did not go, because his weeping was for the sake of his Lord. " Weeping for the Real is of two sorts: weeping from the eyes and weeping from the heart. Weeping from the eyes is the weeping of repenters in fear of God; they weep at seeing their own disobedience.

As for their saying: 'you will never cease remembering Joseph, this is an allusion to the intensity of his affectionate yearning, longing and attraction to the aspect of the heart, in that condition, to the exclusion of them, by virtue of the intimate correspondence between them in terms of disengagement and inclination to the higher world.

It was on the basis of that knowledge that he said, O my sons, go and enquire about Joseph and his brother, and that was at [the moment of] his being unengaged in wayfaring totally and at the arrival of the effect of that disengagement to the intellect, by virtue of its proximity to his level in terms of descent (tanazzul) and drawing down close (tadallī), such that he commands [his children] the faculties to draw him [Joseph the heart] down to their station by seeking the shares in the form of the corporeal concentration (jamʿiyya) and [by] managing their particular livelihood and best interests. That was the spirit which forbade them from despairing of Him, since the believer finds this spirit and beatitude in the second life which will be through God and in which he will be alive through Him and will enjoy in His presence all manner of bliss and the pleasures of the Gardens of the acts, the attributes and the Essence, by means of the soul, the heart and the spirit, in contrast to the disbeliever, as He has said: Indeed none despairs of the [gracious] Spirit of God save the disbelieving folk'.

As for their statement: ['O ʿAzīz] misfortune has befallen us and our family, this is an allusion to their difficult situation, their evil state and straitened condition as they halt with dues; and we have come with reject merchandise: an allusion to their weakness, by virtue of the paucity of the substrata of their faculties and the falling short of their nourishment to secure [for them] what they desire. And their saying, so fill up for us the measure, is an attempt to solicit his sympathy by seeking the shares.

As for his statement, 'Do you realise what you did to Joseph and his brother [�]ḍ, this is an allusion to the descent of the heart to their station in the locus of the breast so that they might recognise him and remember their state at the beginning and what they did to him during the time of ignorance and misguidedness.

As for their saying, 'Is it really you, Josephḍ', this is a marvelling on their part at his state in that luminous configuration and courtly splendour and the remoteness of [all of] that from his state at the very beginning. As for his words, God has truly shown favour to us, to the end of this [verse]: is an allusion to the causative factor in all of that and the cause of his perfection.