After he has cleansed his soul of the corrupting impurities...

After he has cleansed his soul of the corrupting impurities of the morals with the pure water of useful knowledge and lawful, good austerity, he will have to set upon purifying the heart, the capital which, if reformed, all kingdoms will be reformed, and if it is corrupt, all will be corrupt. The impurities of the world of the heart are the origin of all impurities, such as being attached to other than Allah, to oneself and to this world.

This is originated by the love of this world, which is at the head of all sins, and by self-love, which is the mother of all diseases. As long as the roots of this love are still deep in the heart of the sālik , he will see no marks of the love of Allah in it, and he will find no way to his destination and objective. So, as long as there are remnants of this love in the heart, his journey will not be to Allah, but to the self, to the world, and to Satan.

So, being purged of the love of self and of the world is the first stage of purifying the journey to Allah in reality, because before this purgation the journey would not be to Allah, and it would be a sort of carelessness to refer to sālik and sulūk in this instance.

After this stage there are other stages, after which there will appear a model of 'Attār's Seven Cities of Love , the reciter of which, as a sālik , could see himself at the bend of a lane, while we remain behind walls and thick veils, and think that those “cities” and “kings” are nothing but of the weavings of our presumption.

I have nothing to do with Shaykh 'Attār or Maytham at-Tammār, but I do not deny the original (gnostic) stations, and I cordially love their owners, and, by this love, I hope to be relieved. You yourself be whom you may, and bind yourself to whom you like.

The pretender wanted to come to look at the Beloved [Friend], The hand of the invisible came and pushed off the stranger.[^1] But I do not approve of disloyalty by brethren in faith and by spiritual friends to the gnostic friends, and I will not refrain from offering advice, which is the right of the believers to one another.

At the top of the spiritual impurities, which cannot be purged even with the seven seas, and which caused despair to the great prophets (' a ), is the impurity of “the compound ignorance” [ jahl-i murakkab ], which is the origin of the incurable disease of denying the stations of the people of Allah and of knowledge, and is the source of doubting the people of the heart.