THE FIFTIETH DISCOURSE On how to treat the servant’s remoteness from Allah; explanation of how to achieve closeness to Him

The state of your affairs can be either one or the other of the following: (1) Either you are not enjoying nearness to God, the Mighty, the Glorious, or (2) You are close to Him. Now if you are away from Him, how is it that you are sitting idle and are remiss in obtaining your large share and blessings and abiding honour and plentifulness and security and self-sufficiency and lavish care in this world and in the hereafter? So get up and hasten in your flight towards Him with your two wings. One of these wings is the renunciation of enjoyments and of unlawful desires for them and also of permissible things and all comforts; the other is the bearing of pain and unpleasant things and embarking on difficult adventures and getting away from people and desires and wishes in this world and in the hereafter so as to be successful in union with God and nearness to Him. Then will you get all that a man may desire and obtain? You will then have great exaltation and honour. If you are among those who have been honoured with His kindness and whom His love has absorbed and who have received His mercy and compassion, then show the best of manners and do not be puffed up with the thought of the state you are in lest you should become negligent of your service and should lean towards the original arrogance, ignorance and oppression and hastiness. There is a word of God in this connection: And man has turned unfaithful to it Surely he is unjust, ignorant (33:72). Again: And man is ever hasty (17:11). Protect your heart from being inclined towards what you have renounced of people and desires and wishes and option and effort and from losing patience and harmony and pleasure with God at the time of the befelling of calamity, but throw yourself before Him in the manner of a ball before a polo-rider who makes it revolve by his stick, and like a dead body in front of a man who gives it the funeral bath, and like a suckling babe in the lap of his mother or nurse. Be blind to what is besides Him so that you do not see anything but Him — nothing that exists, neither any harm, nor any benefit, nor any gift, nor any withholding of a gift. Consider people and worldly means at the time of suffering and calamity as lashes from Him, the Mighty, the Glorious, with which He strikes you, and consider them at the time of comfort and ease and gift as His hand that is feeding you.