12. Yusuf

And the ʿAzīz's wife, the one called Zulaykhā, to whom he entrusted his [the heart's] welfare with his statement, 'Give him an honourable place. Maybe he will be useful to us, or we may adopt him as a son', is the very self-reproaching soul which sought illumination by the light of the spirit, the vestige of which reached it, but which failed to attain fixity (tamkīn) therewith and did not attain the degree of the reassured soul. God's establishing of him [Joseph] in the land constitutes His empowering of him, after the cleansing and being illuminated by the light of the spirit, to [be able to] resist the soul and the faculties, and His granting of him mastery over the land of the body by the use of his instruments in the actualisation of perfections and in the governance of it by means of acts of [spiritual] discipline until such time as that [potential] perfection which resides in his preparedness emerges into actuality, as He says, that We might teach him the interpretation of events, in other words, that We might teach him about Our act, what We did with him in the way of delivering [him] and empowering [him] with fixity. And God's way [always] prevails, through His reinforcement, His facilitating of success and assistance until such time as he reaches the full extent of the perfection of his prime at the station which his preparedness entails so that He might then endow him with knowledge and wisdom, as He says:

And when he reached his prime We gave him [power of] judgement and knowledge: [one's] 'prime' is the end-stage of the arrival at the original primordial nature by means of disengaging from the coverings of created nature, that which we [Sufis] call the station of chivalry (futuwwa). However, most people are not aware that such matters are [completely] in the hands of God and so they press on to [spiritual] striving, struggling and training unaware that the striving, the struggling, the training and the spiritual discipline are also [all] from God. God has made these causes and means for what He has predetermined and that is why He has not separated them by saying, after stating We gave him [power of] judgement and knowledge: Thus, We reward those who are virtuous, in [their] pursuit, will, struggle and spiritual discipline.

Zulaykhā's tempting him away from his soul and her closing of the doors to him is an allusion to the manifestation of the self-reproaching soul in her - for variegation at the station of the heart takes place as a result of the manifestation of the soul, while variegation at the station of the spirit takes place as a result of the presence of the heart [there] - and [an allusion] to her attracting of the heart [Joseph] to her soul by seducing it and gaining mastery over it and adorning its attributes and its pleasures for it, and her closing of its [the heart's] exit to the spirit by blocking the thoroughfares of reflection and the outlets of light with her [the soul's] veiling attribute.

His desiring of her is the inclining of the heart to her [the soul] because of the lack of fixity and uprightness. His seeing of the proof of his Lord is [his] perception of that variegation by the light of insight and the consideration of the intellect, as is related in the story to the effect that his father appeared to him and forbade him, or raised his voice at him - it is also said that he struck the back of his neck with the palm of his hand such that his lust was expelled through his fingernails until it dissipated. All of that is an allusion to the intellect's forbidding him [Joseph the heart] from mixing with the soul by [seeing] the proof [of his Lord] and [perceiving with] the light of insight and guidance, and [an indication of] its effect on him through luminous power and support that necessarily brings about the dissipation of her [the soul's] lust and darkness, permeating her to her extremeties and removing from her the dark configuration by means of a luminous configuration. The tearing of his shirt from behind is an allusion to her piercing of the garment of the luminous attribute, which he possessed as a result of [his] virtuous character traits and righteous deeds, by exercising an effect on the heart by means of its attribute, for this is an attribute which the heart acquires from the aspect that lies adjacent to the soul, the one called the breast, which is without question the rear [aspect].

As for His words, whereupon they encountered her master at the door, this is an allusion to the emergence of the light of the spirit upon the heart's turning to it by means of remembering the rational proof and the coming upon it [the heart] of the holy inrush, its attempt to make the soul subordinate to itself while it struggled to draw it down to its [lower] aspect and the mastery acquired [by the light] over the heart then over the soul by means of this [holy inrush]. As for her statement, 'What is to be the requital of him who desires evil against your folk: this is an intimation that the soul insinuates its individual desires in the form of its rational best interests and adorns them such that its corruption is confounded with its rational best interests which [interests] the intellect is obliged to be mindful of, to uphold and to meet [the soul] with. Its [the intellect's] contravention of it [the soul] with regard to these [desires] is the desiring of evil against her [the soul] and [the desiring] of repulsive qualities by virtuous ones, which pertain to matters of everyday life, such as the conniving of women against men and the inclining of the heart to the upper aspect through its [the soul's] false words and claims.As regards the witness from her own folk, it is said that he was a paternal cousin of hers, that is to say, reflection (fikr) which knows that the corruption that afflicts character traits and deeds only comes about because of the soul and its mastery. For, were it to come from the direction of the heart and from the latter's inclination to the soul, then that [corruption] would afflict belief and resolve, and not simply deeds. It is also said that he was a maternal cousin of hers, that is to say, corporeal nature which acts as an indicator of the lower inclination in the soul, that [inclination] which attracts the heart from the direction of the breast and which pursues activities in the earth of the body. His consenting [with Joseph] and his apprising of the spirit by the light of guidance of the fact that the defect lay in the deed and not in the belief or resolve [of Joseph], which [defect] can only arise from the ego-centric provocation of the soul, is the significance of His words:

So when he saw that his shirt was torn from behind, he said: 'Indeed this is of the guile of you women. Verily your guile is great.

As for His words: O Joseph, ignore this; and you [O woman], ask forgiveness for your sin, this is an allusion to the rising of the light of the spirit upon the heart and his [the heart's] attraction to its [that light's] side because of the luminous descending inrush (nāzil) and the spiritual incoming thought (khāṭir) which turns him [the heart] away from the direction of the soul and commands him to reject her [the soul's] deeds, reminding him lest that inclination occur again. The effect of that inrush and that incoming thought upon the soul takes place as a result of illumination and purification; her illumination by the light of the spirit, which is reflected onto her from the heart, is her asking forgiveness for the dark configuration with which she had overwhelmed the heart. When the heart attains this status of conjunction with the spirit and irradiation by its light and the spirit has been illuminated by the rays of the light of the heart and purified of its impurities, she [the soul] comes to love him fervently, since she is now being illumined by his light and shaped by his configuration. [Her] drawing close to him and [her] desire to arrive at his station is not in order to attract him to his soul or to fulfil her need from him by using him to actualise natural pleasures or by dragging him down from his station and level to her level and where he is then shaped by her configuration and participates in her acts and pleasures as was the case when she was the [evil-] commanding [soul] such that her faculties, even the natural faculties, are affected by what affects her: that is the significance of the statement of the women in the city:

'The ʿAzīz's wife has been seducing her boy. Indeed he has smitten her heart with love. The more that the heart acquires mastery over her with his luminous configuration and the sensorium of his essence the primordial and the one earned through his gradual elevation to the vicinity of the spirit and his attainment the waystation (manzil) of the mystery, the more that the corporeal faculties are illumined by his light because of his subordination of the soul and her subordination to him such that their attention is diverted from their acts and they are bewildered, desisting from their conduct with regard to [securing their] nourishment, distracted from the knives of their instruments by which they used to regulate the task of seeking pleasure, nourishment and enjoyment, injuring that power of theirs by which they employ their instruments in their [various] disposals, and remaining dumbfounded in their repasts which constitute [their] acts of slyness in the organs of the body which the soul has prepared for them during her hospitality to them. That is the significance of His words: