THE NINETEENTH DISCOURSE On promises

While you are weak in faith, certainly if a promise is made to you it is fulfilled and it is not broken lest your faith should be diminished thereby or your certainty vanish. But when this faith and certainty are strengthened and established in your heart and you are addressed by His word: Surely thou art in Our presence today dignified, trusted. (TheQur'an, 12:54), and this address is repeated to you many times, then you become among the selected ones, rather the select among the selected ones, and there does not remain any will of yours nor any purpose nor any action which you like, nor any nearness which you notice, nor any position which you may covet so that your ambition rises towards it. Then you become like a holed vessel in which no liquid can stay, so that no purpose and no habit and no determination for anything of this world or of the other can stay in you and you become cleansed from everything which is besides God, the Mighty, the Glorious, and you are made fit to be pleased with God, and you are promised the pleasure of God with you and endowed with the grace to enjoy and feel blessed with all the actions of God. Then you will be given a promise and when you feel satisfied with it and any sign of will is found in you, you are transferred from this promise towards another which is higher than this; and you are turned towards one which is more honourable and you are rewarded with a feeling of self-sufficiency with regard to the first and the doors of knowledge will be opened to you; and you will be enlightened concerning the mysteries of Divine affairs and the truth of wisdom and the deeper purpose in changing the previous promise into the one which followed and in your new position you will experience an increase in the preservation of (your spiritual) state (hat). Further, you will be granted a spiritual rank in which you will be entrusted with the preservation of secrets and you will experience an increase in the expansion of your breast and enlightenment of your heart and the eloquence of your tongue and high degree of knowledge and love instilled in you. Thus you will be made a beloved of all people and of both men and the Jinn and those besides them in this world and the hereafter. When you become the beloved of God, the people are subordinate to God and their love is included in His love just as their hatred is included in His hatred. And so you are made to attain this rank in which you will have no desire for anything at all. After this, you will be made to desire for something and your desire for that thing will be removed and made to disappear and you will be turned away from it. Thus you will not be given that thing in this world and will be given in the hereafter something in its place which will increase your nearness to God, the Great, and that something will cool your eyes in the high heaven and the abode of paradise. And if you have not asked for it, nor hoped for it, nor inclined towards it while in this world's life, which is a place of transience and sufferings, but the desire which you did indeed cherish while in this world's life and your object and purpose and goal was that Being Who creates and manifests and withholds and gives and has spread this earth and has held the sky high — if you have done so, you will also be given something in this world's life which will be equivalent to it, or may be inferior to it, after your heart has been broken by turning you away from that object and goal, and after the establishment in the after-life of the thing which you will be given in exchange and which we have already described.