Likewise other sorts of knowledge...

Likewise other sorts of knowledge, which are so numerous that these pages, as well as the broken pen of the writer, have no patience to count them nor to relate the effects of each one of them, since it needs writing a huge book which can be expected only from the powerful pen of the people of knowledge, or from a warm soul of “the people of ecstasy” [ ahl-i hāl ]: “My hand is short, while the dates are (high) on the date-palms.”[^1] Similar is, for example, contentment [ ridā' ] as a character, which is one of the human moral perfections.

It is effective in purifying and polishing the soul, rendering the heart a place for special divine manifestations, elevating faith to a perfect faith, the perfect faith to tranquility [ tuma'nīnah ], tranquility to its perfection, its perfection to vision [ mushāhadah ], the vision to a perfect vision, its perfection to “reciprocal love” [ mu ' āshaqah ] (with the Beloved), the reciprocal love to its perfection, its perfection to courting [ murāwadah ], the courting to its perfection, its perfection to union [ muwāsalah ], the union to its perfection, and to what neither you nor I can imagine.

The character of contentment has a surprising effect on the kingdom of the body and on the formal marks and acts, which are leaves and branches. It changes hearing, seeing and other powers and organs into divine ones, and the secret of “I will be his hearing and seeing”[^2] is somewhat manifested.

As those stages have an effect, or rather, effects, on the appearance, they are also affected so surprisingly by the outer shape, all the ordinary and extraordinary movements and pauses, and all the acts and abstentions, so that it sometimes happens that a scornful glance by a sālik at a servant of Allah causes the sālik to fall from his high status to the lowest of the low, and this will need him years to make up for it.

Now, as our helpless hearts are weak and shaky, like the weeping willows, losing their stillness, by every gentle breeze, it would be, therefore, necessary, even in ordinary situations one of which is the instance of choosing one's clothes to observe the conditions of the heart and to take care of it.

As the soul and Satan have quite firm snares and clever delusions which we are unable to understand, we have to do our best, as much as we can and is in our capacity, to resist them, and to ask, in all cases, Allah's help and support for success.