How strange it is that when the father lost his beloved son he lost his vision and long afterwards on smelling the shirt of his missing son his sight returned. Can it be that the beloved himself is one’s vision? If you can no longer see the face you love, what does, in that case, sight or seeing matter? Perhaps the desire to see is sight. Perhaps the face of the beloved not only forms the basis of sight but is also its termination.
The beloved affects the life of the lover in a strange manner. Love blinds a man. He can see nothing save the beloved. Even when he looks at something else he fails to register its presence. There is only one manifestation in his heart and vision, that is, the manifestation of the beloved.
The beloved is the tiding of oases in the sahara of life. The beloved makes the lover feel lonely in the midst of life’s fiesta. The beloved alone is the reason why you travel, the beloved is also your fellow-traveller, he is your guide, and in the end the beloved alone is your travel’s gain.
Sometimes the beloved reveals himself as a manifestation and at times becomes an al-encompassing remembrance. The beloved never leaves you, not even when he goes away. He does not pass away even when he passes away. He lives on in the lover’s eyes. When the eyes no longer see the beloved he takes up his abode in the lover’s heart. He never comes to an end, he never disappears, never passes into nothingness.
All the hustle and bustle in the world is because of the beloved. Man devotes his entire life to keep his beloved in a happy frame of mind. Why speak of man only, the entire creation represented by the cosmos is on the move for the beloved’s sake. The dance of the peacock, the frisking of the deer, the song of the nighthingales the lament of the partridge, the tumult of the waves, are the blandishments of the beloved. The beloved, by instilling in the lover an awareness of life, helps him to gain the awareness of self. Unaware of Adam’s loveliness, Satan refused to prostrate before him and was deprived of love. He despaired of Allah’s mercy and was counted among the accused. Satan did have someone he could worship but did not have anyone he could love. That alone is enough to lead one to damnation. To bow down before Allah without loving men is to bow down out of one’s ego’s vanity. Allah loves man whereas Satan and his minions don’t love man. And how could they love him!
