ÜÇÜNCÜ FEN · İKİNCİ BÂB · İKİNCİ FASIL · Yedinci Madde
Seventh Point
It indicates that light sleep is a polish for the human heart and kohl for the perceptive eye of the saints.
O beloved! It must be known that the friends of God have said: Spiritual truths cannot be witnessed (observed) without struggle with the ego (jihad). For he who does not strive, cannot witness, and the inner eye does not open. Witnessing becomes ready for one who strives. Whether he desires it or not, he finds witnessing. Therefore, striving is necessary until witnessing is attained.
For the striver, fasting and nightly devotion are necessary. [214/b] For when the traveler of the path of gnosis eats little and sleeps little, the four humors (akhlat-i arba) which constitute his body dissolve and diminish. When the limbs of his body become refined and softened (latafa) through the remembrance of God, his heart detaches from the veil of elements and sheds its bodily garment. Just as he finds comfort in traveling to the intermediate realm (barzakh) in sleep, he also sees both the barzakh realm and the kingdom of the subtle (malakut) while awake, finding comfort and felicity. Thus, just as the body experiences ease in normal sleep, so too does the soul. Indeed, God Most High has said in the Quran: “We have made sleep a rest for you” (Nebiyyun, 78/9), announcing that normal human sleep is a respite for both body and soul. The traveler of the path of gnosis, in his early days, sets aside sleep and relaxation, and through nocturnal darkness, witnesses the life of the soul with observation.
Poem
1-The conflict has become peace through this nightly struggle;
Night’s desert has become an ocean to us.
2-Night is the veil of one who witnesses the unseen;
No day has been a peer to the lover in the night.
3-He does not desire sleep, he flees from it;
If this eye could behold the spectacle of the night.
4-Many luminous hearts and countless pure souls
Have all become servants of the Lord of the Night.
5-The darkness of night is like a black rooster to the eye;
I taste the sweetness of the night’s halva, O heart.
6-Though the passion for gain may be daytime's pursuit,
A different delight is the passion for the night to the heart.
7-Night has bound its hands from the jewel of profit;
He revives the night until dawn in worship of God.