Original content

English translation

And that which I said, 'I seek from God Most High success (tawfiq) and aid (isti'anat),' the meaning was that the servant has no helper except God, who aids him toward good works and grants him increased success. And the reality of tawfiq is: 'the concurrence of God's confirmation with the act of the servant in righteous deeds.' The Book and the Sunnah speak to the validity of the existence of tawfiq, and the community is agreed upon it, except a group of the Mu'tazila and the Qadariyya who declare the word tawfiq empty of all meanings. And a group of the shaykhs of the path have said: 'Al-tawfiq is the power to obey at the time of employing it.' When the servant is obedient to God, from God there comes to him increased strength and power greater than what he had before.

And in sum, state after state, whatever there is of the stillness and movements of the servant, all is the act and creation of God, Exalted. So that power by which the servant obeys is called tawfiq, and this book is not the place for this question, for the aim here is something else.

And I have returned to the heart of your purpose, God willing, Mighty and Glorious. And before I begin the discourse, I will first present your question exactly, and from there connect it to the beginning of the book. And with God is success.

The form of the question: The questioner said, and he is Abu Sa'id al-Hujwiri: 'Explain to me the investigation of the way of Sufism and the nature of their stations, and explain the doctrines and sayings of it, and reveal to me their symbols and allusions, and the manner of the love of God, Mighty and Glorious, and the manner of its manifestation upon hearts, and the cause of the veiling of intellects from the essence of its reality, and the aversion of the self from its truth, and the repose of the soul with its purity, and what pertains to this of its practice.'

The one questioned said, and he is Ali ibn Uthman al-Jullabi, may God grant him success: Know that in this age of ours this knowledge has in truth become obliterated, especially in these lands where the people are wholly occupied with passion and turned away from the path of contentment (rida), and the scholars of the age and the pretenders of the time have constructed a form of this path contrary to its foundation. So they do not aspire to a thing from which the hand of the people of the age, all of them, falls short, except the elite of the Presence of the Truth; and the aim of all people of aspiration is cut off from it, and the gnosis of all people of gnosis is dismissed from its existence. The elite and the common of creation have contented themselves with its verbal expression, and the matter has fallen from verification (tahqiq) into imitation (taqlid), and verification has veiled its face from their time. The common folk have contented themselves with it and say: 'We know the Truth,' and the elite are satisfied that they find in the heart a wishing and in the self a passing notion and in the breast an inclination toward that abode; out of preoccupation they say, 'This is the longing for the vision and the burning of love.' And the pretenders through their claim have fallen short of all meanings, and the disciples have withdrawn their hand from striving, and have named their diseased conjecture 'witnessing' (mushahada).

And I, before this, composed books on this meaning, all of which were lost, and lying pretenders picked out some of the speech from that, exposed to the people, and washed away the rest and made them disappear; because the one of base nature has as capital envy and the denial of God's blessing. And another group sat but did not recite, and another group recited but did not know the meaning and contented themselves with its expression, so that they might write and memorize it and say: 'We speak the knowledge of Sufism and gnosis.' And they are in the very core of ignorance.

And all this was because this meaning is the red sulfur, and that is precious; and when they find it, it is the elixir, and a grain's weight of it turns much copper and brass into red gold. And in sum, everyone seeks the medicine that agrees with his pain and needs nothing but it, as one of the great ones says:

Everyone who has a pain in his heart / seeks something that agrees with the pain.

One whose remedy for his ailment is the most trivial of things does not need pearl and coral to be mixed for him with shalitha and the musk-medicine. And this meaning is more precious than that everyone should have a portion of it.

And before this, the ignorant of this knowledge did the same with the books of the shaykhs. When those treasuries of the secrets of God fell into their hands, they did not know their meaning; they threw them to ignorant cap-makers and gave them to reckless bookbinders, so that they made them the lining of caps and the binding of the poetry-collections of Abu Nuwas and the jesting of al-Jahiz; and inevitably, when the royal falcon perches on the wall of an old woman's house, they clip its wings and feathers.

And God, Mighty and Glorious, has brought us forth in an age whose people have named passion 'the Shari'a,' and the seeking of rank and leadership and arrogance 'glory and knowledge,' and hypocrisy toward the people 'reverent fear,' and concealing malice in the heart 'forbearance,' and disputation 'debate,' and warfare and foolishness 'might,' and hypocrisy 'asceticism,' and wishing 'aspiration,' and the raving of nature 'gnosis,' and the movements of the heart and the talk of the self 'love,' and heresy 'poverty (faqr),' and denial 'purity,' and apostasy 'annihilation (fana),' and the abandoning of the Shari'a of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, 'the path (tariqa),' and the affliction of the people of the age 'practice (mu'amala)' — until the possessors of meanings have become forsaken among them, and they have taken the upper hand, as in the first schism the People of the House of the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, were with the House of Marwan.

How well has said that king of the people of realities and proof of verification and subtleties, Abu Bakr al-Wasiti, may God have mercy on him: 'We have been afflicted with an age in which there are neither the courtesies of Islam, nor the morals of the Age of Ignorance, nor the judgments of the people of chivalry.'

And Shibli says, in agreement with this:

May God curse this world as a resting-place for a rider, / for everyone of lofty concern in it is tormented.