Love itself is at once the bird and the nest; it is the Essence (dhāt), the attribute; it is the feather, the wing; it is the air, the flight; it is the hunter, the prey; it is the qibla (direction of prayer), the one who stands toward the qibla; it is the seeker (ṭālib), the sought (maṭlūb); it is the first, the last; it is the sultan, the subject; it is the sword, the sheath; it is the garden, the tree; it is at once the branch, the fruit, the nest, and the bird. (Sawāniḥ, 32)
The beloved (maʿshūq) said to the lover (ʿāshiq): Come, make yourself me. If I make myself you, then the beloved would be in need; but if you become me, then the increase is in the beloved. Thus, everything becomes the beloved, not the lover; everything is pride (nāz), not supplication (niyāz); everything is present and existent, not in need; all is wealth, not poverty; everything is remedy, not helplessness. (Sawāniḥ, 39)
The process by which the lover loses himself in the beloved reaches such a point that the lover becomes jealous of himself, even from his own gaze and even from himself.
I love you because of you, my beloved
Out of jealousy, I am not even a friend to myself through my own eyes
My sorrow is not from being apart from you
My pain is not being in the same body as you
This subtlety sometimes reaches such a point that if one day the beloved were to become even more beautiful, the lover would be hurt and angered. This is a state that cannot be understood by those who have not tasted this delight. (Sawāniḥ, 40)
By its very nature, love is tribulation; intimacy and comfort are foreign and alien to it. For separation in love is, in essence, duality, while union (wuṣla) is, by its nature, oneness. Everything else is not true union but only its illusion. On this, it has been said:
Love is tribulation—I do not shrink from it, but press on
If it sleeps, I wake it myself
Friends tell me, "Escape this tribulation!"
But tribulation is the heart—how can I distance myself from the heart?
The tree of love has blossomed in the very center of my qalb (the heart)
When it thirsts, I water it with my tears
Love is sweet, but if its pain is not sweet
It is sweet to me—I balance the two together
To be a lover is to be entirely He; to be the beloved is to be entirely You. For being yourself does not befit you; what befits you is to belong to the beloved. What befits the lover is never to belong to himself, nor to be left to himself.
As long as you are attached to desire (hawā), your path is either gold or woman
Become a lover, for therein lies your salvation from these
Does it befit the lover to have two qiblas on the path of tawhid (the oneness of God)?
Either follow your own desire or win the riḍā (contentment with God's decree) of your friend
Kings have no value at our door
No one but the humble lover befits our dignity
As long as you say "I, I," you cannot reach the secret of our master
For our crown only suits the headless ones
Love is a mysterious mirror for both lover and beloved: a mirror that shows itself, the beloved, and the others (everything else). If the jealousy of love prevails, the lover cannot look at another; the perfection of the beloved's beauty can never be seen except in the mirror of love. (Sawāniḥ, 109)
Sometimes the tribulation and hardship from the beloved, with utmost care and the grace of love, becomes a seed cast into the soil of the lover's desire, from which the rose of apology (iʿtidhār) grows, buds, and leads to union (wuṣla).
And if fortune is favorable, this union transforms into unity (ittihād). Provided that the lightning of ittihād does not strike, the thunderbolt does not fall, and no obstacle arises on the path; may fortune be favorable. For this reason, the lover realizes that the path of love is not safe. Thus it is said:
If you think I have given you my heart, know this:
Hundreds of caravans have passed this road before
If you see my heart joyful from union with you
I also see the share of separation in between
Just as union is not hidden in separation
So too is separation clear in union
Ittihād is defined as making two essences (dhāt) into a single essence. It occurs only in number, and it is a ḥāl (spiritual state). (Iṣṭilāḥ, 538)
Ittihād is impossible—
Who can say otherwise?
None but one who has strayed from the path of reason
None but the ignorant
There are three classes among the people of ittihād: the first are those who hold that ittihād is outward (ẓāhir); the second, those who hold that ittihād is inward (bāṭin); the third are those who advocate absolute (muṭlaq) ittihād. (Rawḍa, 439)
Know that among the eminent Sufis, those who believe in waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of being) and see things as identical with the Real (al-Ḥaqq), and judge that everything is He, their aim is the identity of things with the Real.