Its opposite aims to prevent the untying of this knot of iman (faith) from the qalb (the heart) of the common people. In fact, sometimes instead of mutakallim (theologian), the term muwaḥḥid (one who affirms tawhid) is used—because, by means of his kalām (theological discourse), he preserves the tawhid (the oneness of God) in the hearts of the people and prevents the knot from being untied.
The third rank of the muwaḥḥid is that, due to the unveiling (kashf) of the Real (al-Ḥaqq) to him as He truly is, he sees no agent but the One. The one who, in reality, sees no agent but the One is said to have had the ḥaqīqa (inner reality) unveiled to him as it truly is. For he has made it incumbent upon himself to bind his qalb to the meaning of the word ḥaqīqa. This rank is that of the common people and the mutakallimūn (theologians), for there is little difference between the people and the theologians regarding belief. The only superiority the theologian has over the common people is perhaps his mastery of the art of kalām, which is aimed at refuting the deceptions of innovators (ahl al-bidʿa).
The fourth rank of the muwaḥḥid is that, in his witnessing (mushāhada), he sees only the One. He sees what he sees not in terms of multiplicity, but in terms of oneness. This is the highest aim in tawhid. In this ḥāl (spiritual state), the first rank is like the outer shell of a walnut, the second rank is the inner shell, the third rank is the kernel, and the fourth rank is like the oil extracted from the kernel. (Iḥyāʾ, IV, 303)
The Beloved said to the lover: Come, make yourself Me. If I make Myself you, then the Beloved becomes needy; but if you become Me, then increase is in the Beloved. Thus, everything becomes the Beloved, not the lover; everything becomes the one who is sought, not the seeker; everything is present and existent, not in need; all is richness, 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 even of himself and his own gaze.
I love you because of you, my beloved
Out of jealousy, I am not even friends with 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 becomes even more beautiful, the lover is hurt and angered. This state 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 extraneous to it. For separation in love is essentially duality, while union is, by its nature, oneness. Everything else is not true union, but the illusion of union. On this, it has been said:
Love is tribulation—I do not shrink from it, I press on
If it sleeps, I awaken it myself
Friends tell me: escape from this tribulation
But tribulation is the heart—how can I distance myself from my heart?
The tree of love has blossomed in the very center of my heart
When it thirsts, I water it with my tears
Love is sweet, but if its fire is not sweet
It is sweet to me—I balance the two against each other
To be a lover is to be entirely Him; 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 remain alone.
As long as you are attached to desire, your path is either gold or woman
Become a lover—your salvation is to be freed from these
Does it befit a lover to have two qiblas on the path of tawhid?
Either follow your own desire, or win the pleasure 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
For our crown only suits the headless ones
Love is a mysterious mirror for both lover and Beloved: a mirror that shows both oneself, the Beloved, and the others (all that is other than these). 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 sown in the soil of the lover's desire, from which the rose of apology (itizār) grows, buds, and leads to union.
And if fortune is favorable, this union turns into oneness. As long as no lightning strikes, no thunderbolt falls, and no obstacle appears on the path; as long as fortune is 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 way before
Even if I 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
Tawhid (the oneness of God) is to strive for the knowledge, within oneself or the seeker, that the One who brought him into being is One, without partner in divinity. Unity (waḥda) is the attribute of the Real (al-Ḥaqq). Its nominal forms are Aḥad and Wāḥid. Waḥdāniyya is the subsistence of unity through the Wāḥid, for it can only be conceived as subsisting through the Wāḥid. Its relation (nisba) is only a relation of transcendence (tanzīh). This meaning of tawhid is like the meaning of tajrīd (abstraction) and tafrīd (making one).
Tafrīd is to strive for the realization of singleness (infirād). It is such a quality that, when attributed to the described (mawṣūf), the one so described is called fard (solitary). When named as fard, he is called munfarid or mutafarrid. Thus, tawhid is an act attributed to the muwaḥḥid, producing knowledge in the scholar's soul that Allah is One. (Futūḥāt, II, 285)
By tawhid-i ʿaqlī (rational tawhid) and tawhid-i afʿālī (tawhid of acts), i.e., Lā fāʿila il...