Whatever I say in explanation and description of love,
when I come face to face with love itself, I am ashamed of those words.
The beauty of God, on the Day of Alast, brought love into existence and offered it as a gift to humanity. Hafez explains this beautifully:
At the dawn of pre-eternity, a ray of Your beauty shone forth in manifestation;
love was born and set the entire world aflame.
Your face revealed itself in a single glance—
the angel, lacking love, turned into pure fire from jealousy and struck Adam.
In the human being, the seat of love is the heart, which is the abode of God. When the embryo begins to grow in the mother’s womb, the very first organ to take shape is the heart.
Baha’u’llah states:
O Son of Dust!
All that is in heaven and earth I have ordained for thee, except the human heart, which I have made the habitation of My beauty and glory; yet thou didst give My home and dwelling to another than Me; and whenever the manifestation of My holiness sought His own abode, a stranger found He there, and, homeless, hastened unto the sanctuary of the Beloved. Notwithstanding I have concealed thy secret and desired not thy shame. (The Hidden Words) www.bahai.org/r/326525665
And He has kindled a lamp within the heart. He states:
O Befriended Stranger!
The candle of thine heart is lighted by the hand of My power, quench it not with the contrary winds of self and passion. The healer of all thine ills is remembrance of Me, forget it not. Make My love thy treasure and cherish it even as thy very sight and life.(The Hidden Words)www.bahai.org/r/889172469
In this ghazal, Rumi enters his own heart to offer greetings at the presence of Bahá’u’lláh. His heart becomes filled with His light (The candle of thine heart). In that inner sanctuary, Muhammad—whom Rumi refers to as the Universal Intellect—and Jesus Christ, the Spirit, are also present.
One night I knocked upon the ring of the heart, longing to offer it my greeting.
A voice cried out, “Who is there?”
I said, “I am the servant of the heart.”
The flame of that moon’s light burst through the crack of the door,
Spilling over the heart and the eyes of the passerby—
From the noble radiance of the heart.
Waves of light from the heart’s face had filled the heart’s entire street;
The jug of sun and moon had become
The humblest cup of the heart.
If the Universal Intellect (Muhammad) should lift its head,
It would bow in service to the heart;
The neck of reason—and a hundred like it—
Is bound fast in the snare of the heart.
An uproar has reached the heavens, the cosmos is seized with wonder;
Creation has broken its chains
At the message sent forth by the heart.
From its radiance the Throne and the Supreme Heaven shine;
The Spirit (Jesus) sits at its door,
Gazing up at the roof of the heart.
No wandering ascetic is outside the human being—
I tell you this briefly:
All vision is but vision,
All speech falls silent before the heart.
All existence is drunk with the heart,
Humbled in the grip of the heart;
The stages of the nine heavens
Are, in truth, but two steps for the heart.
“All vision is but vision,
All speech falls silent before the heart..”
Human beings can in no way truly know God—this has been stated by the one, unique God Himself.
Whatever a human being says is only perception; in reality it belongs to creation, not to the Creator.
Bahá’u’lláh states:
From time immemorial He hath been veiled in the ineffable sanctity of His exalted Self, and will everlastingly continue to be wrapt in the impenetrable mystery of His unknowable Essence. Every attempt to attain to an understanding of His inaccessible Reality hath ended in complete bewilderment, and every effort to approach His exalted Self and envisage His Essence hath resulted in hopelessness and failure.(Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh)www.bahai.org/r/987953771
“The stages of the nine heavens are, in truth, but two steps for the heart.”
The number nine, according to the numerical value of the letters, corresponds to Bahá—the Name of Bahá’u’lláh. Recognition of Him is made possible through two steps of the heart.
Bahá’u’lláh states:
O Son of Love!
Thou art but one step away from the glorious heights above and from the celestial tree of love. Take thou one pace and with the next advance into the immortal realm and enter the pavilion of eternity. Give ear then to that which hath been revealed by the Pen of Glory.(The Hidden Words)www.bahai.org/r/866203931
In Rumi’s view, the ascetic is one who worships God out of fear of Hell, while the mystic worships God out of love for Him. He considers love to be the only path to reaching God and sees himself as the standard-bearer of the caravan of love.
My religion is to live through love;
life apart from this soul and surrender is my disgrace.
Do not ask me about love—ask no one;
ask love itself.
Love, when spoken of,
is like a lightning-filled cloud, my son.
I—and a hundred like me—have no need to interpret it;
in matters of truth,
love itself is its own interpreter, my son.
Love is not the work of sleepers
or of the delicate and soft;
love is the work of the brave-hearted
and of champions, my son.
Whatever I say in explanation and description of love,
when I come to love itself,
I am ashamed of those words.
Though interpretation by language may give some light,
love without language
is far more luminous.
When the pen hastened in writing,
on reaching love
it split itself in two.
Reason, in explaining it,
fell asleep like a donkey in the mud;
the explanation of love and loving—
is love itself that speaks.
The sun itself is the proof of the sun;
if you seek a proof,
do not turn away from it.
Love must be free of every color the colors of desire and impulse.
The color of love is colorlessness:
Loves that arise from color and form
are not love; in the end, they are disgrace.
When colorlessness becomes trapped by color,
Moses goes to war with Moses.
Love must take hold of one’s entire being:
Within my heart, inside and out, it is all He;
within my body—soul, vein, and blood—it is all He.
How could belief or disbelief find a place here?
When my being is without “how,” and all of it is He.
The purpose of love is the attraction of the Beloved:
Love has nothing to do with five or six;
its aim is nothing but drawing the Beloved near.
Love is not found in schoolbooks or classroom lessons:
Love is not in learning, knowledge, notebooks, or pages;
all the talk of people—this is not the path of lovers.
Know the branch of love to be in pre-eternity,
its root in eternity everlasting;
this tree leans on neither throne nor dust.
We have dismissed reason and set limits on desire,
for such majesty is not fit for this reason or these morals.
Or again:
Their ears have been seized by love,
and it draws them along hidden paths
where reason is no guide.