However...

However, sufficient meditation upon Islamic teachings and formulations, and a weighing of these against the agitated and ecstatic states of the Islamic mystics, will prove the opposite and will show that hidden within themselves and by allusion, these teachings elucidate all of the stages of perfection which are traversed on the mystical way, although a true and detailed comprehension of these states is only possible through mystical intuition.

The travellers on the spiritual path, who as a result of their natural and primordial readiness have surrendered their hearts to the infinite Beauty and Perfection of the Truth, worship Allah only out of love, not out of hope for reward or fear of punishment, for to worship Him in order to gain Paradise or to avoid hell is, in fact, to worship that very reward and punishment in place of God.

As a result of the divine attraction which has engulfed their hearts, and more particularly as a result of having seen that God has revealed the verse “Therefore remember Me, I will remember you” (1) and hundreds of other Quranic verses where the remembrance of God is spoken of, wherever and in whatever state they happen to be the mystic travellers are occupied with His remembrance: “Such as remember Allah, standing, sitting and reclining.” (2) And when they hear the messages of the Beloved, “Lo!

in the heavens and the earth are portents for believers”.(3) “And there is not a thing by hymneth His praise”,(4) and “And whither so ever ye turn, there is Allah’s countenance”,(5) they understand that all existent things are mirrors, each displaying the unique Beauty of the Truth in accordance with the possibilities of its own being. Other than their quality of being mirrors they have no existence in themselves.

Hence, such men look to every phenomenon with love and eagerness and have no object other than to contemplate the Beauty of God. And when they hear God’s messages “O ye who believe! Ye have charge of your own souls.

He who erreth cannot injure you if you are rightly guided (6) and “Thou, verily, O man, art working towards thy Lord a work which thou wilt meet (in His presence)”.(7) They understand that by the nature of creation itself, they are bound within the framework of their own souls, and other than the way of their souls there is no road open to them to reach God. Whatever they see or find in the expansiveness of the world they see and find in themselves.