The mill becomes exceedingly tedious, and if certain fears and dangers arise there, the children who have completed their watch abandon that station (maqām) and never wish to return. Such is the case with my children as well.
As for those other shaykhs, they do not have more than one child to manage the affairs of the mill. That child performs his duties continuously, without ever neglecting them. Each of their single children is stronger than all of my children combined. Therefore, my children are always seeking help from their single children and their mills. That is, the nine nafs (nafs, the lower selves), who are the children of the Universal Soul (Nafs-i Kullī), influence the coming-into-being of forms (Jibrāʾīl, 146).
I asked the shaykh: You claim that you cannot move, so how did you come here? He replied: O pure-hearted one! The sun constantly revolves in its orbit. Whether a blind person sees this or not, the situation is the same—the sun continues to revolve. The blind person’s state is not sufficient to perceive this, nor can he sense it. His inability to see or comprehend this cannot be proof that the sun does not exist or that it stands still. When this defect of intellect (ʿaql, pl. ʿuqūl) is removed from the blind person, he will have no right to say to the sun, ‘Why were you not in the world before, why did you not continue to revolve?’ For the sun’s movement has always been established and known. It is not the sun that changes, but the state of the blind person. We, too, are always in this purity. Your not having seen us cannot be proof of our absence, our change, or our migration from one place to another. The change is only in you. – What is understood from all these statements is this: His spiritual effusions and benefits, his virtues, that is, his spiritual essences, become a source of effusion and inspiration for those who are receptive. These essences can reach anyone who is capable and prepared to receive them, without any stinginess or envy. Not having attained this does not indicate that the effusion has ceased; rather, it points to the fact that the person in question is not receptive to receiving from that person, and that he has turned not to the world of the spirit (rūḥ), but to the material world.
I asked: Do you glorify Allah? Never! For, being absorbed in direct witnessing (mushāhada), he is beyond...