From the way in which these lovers sing, we stand convinced that their drunkenness, wantonness, devotion, raptures are not all coloured by fancy’s brush and that the Deity enshrined in their hearts is not a mere metaphysical abstraction. Nay, the Beloved is the one single entity that is all in all to the Sufi. Take, for instance, the following verses from the Masnavi: —
“The Beloved is all in all, the lover only veils Him,
The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.
When the lover feels no longer Love’s quickening,
He becomes like a bird who has lost his wings.
Alas, how can I retain my senses about me,
When the Beloved shows not the light of His countenance?”
Again, the only Real Agent, the sole force and the motor of the Universe, is this One Supreme. Then, what are we?
Listen to the words of the father of Sufi Poetry: —
“We are the captured game; who is the snare?
We are the balls; who is the bat?
He tears and mends; who is this tailor?
He fans and kindles the flame; who is this kindler?”
Better still: —
“I am as the pen in the fingers of the Writer,
I am not in a position to obey or not at will.”
According to the Hadis (Tradition of Muhammad), “In existence there is none who works but God.” The author of the Mystic Rose Garden elaborates this saying in the following verses:
“Recognise the working of ‘The Truth’ in every place,
Place not foot beyond your own proper limits.
Ask of your own state what this free-will is,
And thence know who are the men of free will;
Every man whose faith is other than predestinarian,
So these ignorant fools say ‘I’ and ‘He’.
The attribution of actions to us is imaginary,
That attribution itself is but a play and a farce.
You existed not when your actions were originated,
You were appointed to fulfil a certain purpose.
By the uncaused sovereign will of ‘The Truth’,
By His fore-knowledge giving absolute command,
There was predestined, before soul and body were,
For every man his appointed work.
Since you are impotent in the hands of ‘The Truth’,
Abandon and forsake this self of yours.
In ‘The All’ you will obtain deliverence from self,
In ‘The Truth’ you will become rich, O Darvish,
Go, soul of your father, yield yourself to God’s will,
Resign yourself to the divine fore-ordinance.”
The Beloved of the Sufi is thus the Allah of the Quran, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the King of Kings, the Author of Good and Evil, the Master of Compassion and Retribution. This is as it should be. Conceived on the soil of Islam, this anthropomorphic idea of a patriarchal deity and its poetic expressions are but the periphrases of the well-known formula, “There is no deity but Allah”, a formula which sums up the system described by Palgrave as the Pantheism of Force or Act, exclusively assigned to God.