ÜÇÜNCÜ FEN · BİRİNCİ BAB · DÖRDÜNCÜ FASIL · Onuncu Madde
The tenth item states that the human heart finds dignity and delight through knowledge of God (Marifa Allah), and is blessed with happiness in both worlds through the love of the Most Merciful.
O esteemed one! Know that the friends of God have said: The elevation and joy of the human heart lies in its recognition of God (Marifa Allah). Its greatest blessing and felicity is the love of God, for every pleasure and bliss, every delight and tranquility, arises from a thing attaining to its own nature. Just as the ear finds pleasure in hearing beautiful sounds, melodies, and sweet tunes; the eye finds pleasure in beholding beautiful forms and pleasing sights; the brain finds pleasure in inhaling fragrant scents; the pleasure of lust is found in eating, drinking, and sleep – desires of the self; the pleasure of anger is found in cursing, striking, and avenging oneself upon an enemy. Similarly, the pleasure of reason lies in understanding the truths of things and the subtleties of meanings. The heart finds its delight in beholding the beauty and majesty of God, thereby attaining to the most delightful of all delights.
Therefore, the pleasure and felicity of humankind, which is comprised solely of the heart, lie only in knowing (Marifa Allah) and loving God. A heart devoid of the yearning for knowledge of God and the desire for divine love becomes merely a seeker after sensory pleasures and a follower of desires. Such a heart is like a sick person who has no appetite for wholesome food but craves instead things that are not nourishment – like earth [204/a]. If such a patient does not receive immediate treatment and fail to develop an appetite for wholesome foods, he will remain with his disordered constitution, consuming harmful substances until they overpower him day by day. Ultimately, he dies, and his body perishes; worldly happiness departs from him. Similarly, if a person whose heart is sick does not treat it with divine knowledge, good deeds, remembrance and contemplation of God, and does not strive to cultivate within himself the yearning for knowledge of God and divine love, he will be left alone with his disordered thoughts, embracing worldliness and that which distracts from God. Consequently, evil qualities and illnesses will overpower his heart at every moment. May God protect us; through heedlessness, the soul is destroyed, and eternal felicity departs. For all transient pleasures arising from fleeting sensations like waves on the sea are cut off by natural death and vanish. Only the dignity of knowledge of God and the delight of love for God that is bound to the heart remain. When the five external senses perish with death, the light and illumination of the heart will prevail, and the desire to behold the beauty of God will increase.
**Verse Recitation:**
1- Heart, who’s tavern do you inquire about?
2- Whose intoxicated gaze do you inquire about?
3- What homes has this love that burns the world consumed?
4- Whose abode is this fire? Do you inquire?
5- Thousands of Kaisers and Khans and Khusraws have passed on.
6- Whose encampment, whose legend do you inquire about?
7- While your poverty held thousands of treasures and seas;
8- Whose jewels, whose pearl grains do you inquire about?
9- The world is like a lamp, and you are the candle, O soul!
10- Whose moth is this with that flame, do you inquire?
11- You are the life of all the worlds, beloved to everyone;
12- Whose companion are you with this beauty, do you inquire?
13- Your heart’s palace has risen like the ceiling of the Majestic Throne.
14- Whose abode is this palace, do you inquire?
15- May I glorify myself! How exalted is my essence!
16- Whose mirror is this with that state, do you inquire?
17- Yours is a goblet whose draught is an ocean, O Truth!
18- Whose drinker are you with that goblet, do you inquire?