Innate love is present in all existents...

Innate love is present in all existents, for the heaven (falak) possesses a lave that impels it to its motion. Every element that seeks a natural location possesses a love of that location. The same applies to love in other natural states pertaining to position, quantity, action and reaction.

It is also present in compounds, such as in the magnet which attracts iron, and to a greater degree in plants, wherewith they make movements leading to growth, nourishment, production of seeds and procreation. In animals it is greater than in plants, as is displayed in their affection and friendly feeling for those of their own kind, the affinity for the opposite sex, and affection for offspring and other members of the species.

However, acquired love is predominant in the human species and its cause pertains to three things: First, pleasure, physical or non-physical, imaginary or real. Second, benefit, which is also either illusory-as in mundane love, whose benefit is accidental-or real, whose benefit is essential.

Third, the similarity of substance, which is either commonplace-such as between two persons of similar dispositions and temperaments, who are delighted by each other's dispositions, characteristics, and conduct-or special, as between the men of God (ahl-a haqq) and the love of the seeker of perfection for the absolutely perfect One. The causes of love may at times be composed of two or three of these causes.

Love may also derive from gnosis (ma'rifah), and since the gnostic receives all pleasure, benefit, and good from the Absolutely Perfect, he attains to the love of the Absolutely Perfect, which surpasses all other loves, and herewith is disclosed the meaning of: ... those that believe love God more ardently.

(2:165) The mystics (ahl-e dhawq) say that hope and fear, longing and intimacy, expansion (inbisat), trust (tawakkul), resignation (rida'), and submission (taslim) are all essential elements of love, for love at the aspect of the Beloved's compassion inspires hope, fear at the aspect of His awe, longing at non-attainment ('adam-e wusul), intimacy (uns) with the achievement of realization, expansion with exceeding intimacy, and trust with confidence in His care, resignation with relishing everything that He makes to occur, and submission at the aspect of one's inadequacy and inability and His perfection and omnipotence.