THE SEVENTY-FIRST DISCOURSE On the seeker and the sought

You must be either one or the other of two things. You are either a seeker, or the object sought for. If you are a seeker or a disciple you must be burdened and be a carrier of burden carrying everything difficult and heavy. This is because you are a seeker and a seeker is to toil and he is reproved until he attains his object and succeeds in obtaining his beloved and attains his goal. It does not beseem you that you should flee from troubles which befall you in the matter of your life and wealth, and the members of your family and children until you are relieved of your burden and the load is taken away from you and your sufferings arc removed from you as also your humiliation. You will be kept secure from all kinds of vices and dirt and filth and humiliation and abasement and illness and sufferings and neediness to people. You will be made to enter the category of people who are loved by God and nourished by Him lavishly and are His objects. On the other hand, if you are the thing sought for, then do not blame God if He made a calamity befall you in the same way; and you should by no means entertain doubt with regard to your position and rank with Him, because He has put you in trial in order to make you attain the status of high personages and He wants to raise your position to the position of the awliya and the abdal. Do you like that your position be lower than theirs, or that your robe of honour and light and blessings be other than what are theirs? Even if you are pleased with your inferior status, God the Mighty, the Glorious, will not be pleased with it. In this connection He says: And Allah knows while you know not (2:232). He has chosen for you what is more elevated and brighter and higher and better, whereas you decline to have it. Then if you say: How is it right that the perfected devotee should be put into trial when according to your division and description, the trial is meant for the lover, whereas the favourite one of God is the beloved? We say: we have mentioned the rule first and have spoken of the possible exception next. There is not the shadow of a doubt that the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was the chief among the beloved and at the same time was the one who was tried the most. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has said: "I have been affrighted so much on account of God that no one else is threatened like me, and I have been made to suffer so much on account of God that no one else is made to suffer equally; and there have come on me thirty days and nights in which we had not so much of food as could be hidden under the armpit of Bilal." He further said: "Surely we prophets are most severely tried; next to us come those of lower grade and so on." Still further he said: "I am the best in the knowledge of God and most afraid of Him among you all." Now, how can the beloved be tried and affrighted since he is the favourite and the perfect devotee? This is so only because the object is to make the favourites attain, as we have already pointed out, the higher stations of heaven, and because the grades of heavenly life are not raised except through good deeds in the worldly life. The life of the world is a cultivation ground of the life hereafter and the good deeds of the prophets and awliya, after the performance of commandments and prohibitions, consist in patience and pleasure and reconcilement in the midst of trial. It is then that the trial is removed from them and they are made to experience the blessings of God and His favour and lavish care till they meet the Lord in the eternity.