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The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: 'Make your bellies hungry, abandon greed; strip your bodies bare, shorten your hopes; make your livers thirsty, forsake the world, so that perhaps you may see God with your hearts.' And he, peace be upon him, also said in answer to Gabriel's question about ihsan (spiritual excellence): 'Worship God as though you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He indeed sees you.' And He sent revelation to David, peace be upon him: 'O David, do you know what My gnosis is?' He said, 'No.' He said, 'The life of the heart is in contemplating Me.' What this group means by the term contemplation (mushahada) is the vision of the heart, whereby one sees God the Exalted with the heart, in solitude and in company. And Abu al-Abbas Ata, may God have mercy on him, says regarding the word of God, Mighty and Glorious: 'Those who say Our Lord is God (Quran 41:30), by striving (mujahada), then stood firm upon the carpet of contemplation.' The reality of contemplation is of two kinds: one from the soundness of certainty (yaqin) and the other from the overpowering of love; for when the lover reaches such a degree in the station of love that his entire being becomes wholly the discourse of the Beloved, he sees none but Him; as Muhammad ibn Wasi', may God have mercy on him, says: 'I never saw anything without seeing God in it' — that is, through the soundness of certainty. 'I never saw anything without seeing God the Exalted in it.' Shibli, may God have mercy on him, says: 'I never saw anything except God' — that is, through the overpowering surges of love and the boiling over of contemplation. So one sees the act, and in seeing the act he sees the Agent with the eye of the inner secret (sirr) and sees the act with the eye of the head (the physical eye); and another is snatched away by love from all, so that he sees only the Agent. Thus the path of the former is one of inference (istidlal), and that of the latter is one of divine attraction (jadhba). The meaning is that one is a reasoner (mustadill), so that the establishment of the proofs of the realities becomes manifest to him, and the other is enraptured and carried off; that is, proofs and realities become a veil for him. 'Because whoever knows a thing fears nothing other than it, and whoever loves a thing looks at nothing other than it, so they abandoned contention with God and objection to Him in His decrees and His acts.' He who knows finds no rest with another, and he who loves sees no other. So he does not quarrel over the act, so as not to be a disputant, and does not object to the deed, so as not to be a meddler. And God the Exalted informed us about the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, and about his Ascension (Mi'raj), and said: 'The eye did not swerve, nor did it transgress' (Quran 53:17) — out of the intensity of longing for God, he did not open his eye to anything, until he saw with his heart what he ought to see. Whenever the lover closes his eye to existent things, he inevitably sees the Bringer-into-being with his heart; according to His word, the Exalted: 'Certainly he saw of the greatest signs of his Lord' (Quran 53:18); and His word, the Exalted: 'Tell the believers to lower their gaze' (Quran 24:30) — that is, the eyes of the physical sight from lusts, and the eyes of the hearts from created things. So whoever, through striving, puts to sleep the eye of the head from lusts, inevitably sees God with the eye of the inner secret. 'Whoever is more sincere in striving is more truthful in contemplation.' So inner contemplation is joined to outward striving. And Sahl ibn Abdullah, may God have mercy on him, says: 'Whoever averts his gaze from God for the blink of an eye is not guided for the whole length of his life.' Whoever turns the sight of his inner vision away from God for a single blink of an eye will never find the way; because the fruit of turning toward another is being consigned to that other, and whoever is consigned to another perishes. So the life of the people of contemplation is that which is spent in contemplation, and what is spent in absence from God they do not count as life, for that is in truth death for them. As Abu Yazid, may God have mercy on him, was asked: 'How old are you?' He said, 'Four years.' They said, 'How can that be?' He said, 'For seventy years I have been in the veil of the world, but for four years I have been seeing Him, and I do not count the days of the veil as part of my life.' Shibli, may God have mercy on him, said: 'O God, hide Paradise and Hell within the hidden recesses of Your Unseen, so that You may be worshipped without intermediary.' O Lord, hide Paradise and Hell within the concealments of Your Unseen, and erase their memory from the hearts of creatures, and blot them out and cause them to be forgotten, so that they may not worship You for their sake. Since the natural self has a share in Paradise, today the heedless one, by the ruling of certainty, worships for its sake; since the heart of the heedless one has no share of love, he is inevitably veiled from contemplation. And Mustafa, may God bless him and grant him peace, informed Aisha about the night of the Ascension: 'I did not see God.' And Ibn Abbas, may God be pleased with them both, relates: 'The Messenger, peace be upon him, told me: I did see God.' People remained perplexed at this disagreement, but he removed from their midst what was best. But when he said 'I saw Him,' it was an expression referring to the eye of the inner secret, and when he said 'I did not see,' it was a statement referring to the eye of the head. One of these two were of the people of the inner (batin), and the other of the people of the outer (zahir). He spoke to each according to the measure of his state. So when the inner secret sees, what harm is there if the eye is not the intermediary? And Junayd, may God have mercy on him, said: 'If God were to say to me, See Me, I would say, I will not look; for in love the eye is an other and a stranger, and the jealousy of otherness keeps me from the vision; for in this world I was seeing Him without the intermediary of the eye.' 'Truly I envy my own eye when it gazes upon you, / so I lower my gaze when I look at you.' One even withholds the Beloved from the eye, for the eye is a stranger. That elder was asked: 'Do you wish to see God?' He said, 'No.' They said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because Moses asked and did not see, and Muhammad did not ask and did see.' So our own wishing is our greatest veil from the vision of God, the Exalted; because the existence of will in love is opposition, and opposition is a veil; and when will is spent in this world, contemplation is attained; and when contemplation becomes firmly established, this world becomes like the hereafter, and the hereafter like this world. Abu Yazid, may God have mercy on him, says: 'God has servants such that, were they veiled from God in this world and the hereafter, they would apostatize.' God the Exalted has servants who, if in this world or the hereafter they were veiled from Him for the blink of an eye, would apostatize; that is, He continually nourishes them with the perpetuity of contemplation and keeps them alive with the life of love; and inevitably, when the one who unveils (mukashif) becomes veiled, he is cast out. Dhu al-Nun, may God have mercy on him, says: One day I was passing through Egypt. I saw children throwing stones at a young man. I said, 'What do you want from him?' They said, 'He is mad.' I said, 'What sign of madness appears in him?' They said, 'He says: I see God.' I said, 'O young man, do you say this yourself, or is it said of you?' He said, 'No, I say it myself; for if for a single moment I do not see God and am veiled, I have no obedience toward Him.' But here a certain group of the people of this affair have fallen into an error: they suppose that the vision of hearts and contemplation is by way of a form which the imagination affirms in the heart during the state of remembrance (dhikr) or reflection (fikr); but this is pure anthropomorphism (tashbih) and manifest error; because God the Exalted has no measure that the imagination in the heart could grasp, nor can the intellect become informed of His modality. Whatever is imagined is of the genus of imagination, and whatever is intellected is of the genus of intellect, and He, exalted and sanctified, is not of the same genus as any genera; and subtle things and gross things are all of one genus with each other in the place of their mutual opposition; because in the verification of Divine Unity (tawhid) an opposite is a genus in relation to the Eternal; for opposites are originated in time, and originated things are of one genus. Exalted is God above that and above what the wrongdoers say. So contemplation in this world is like the vision (ru'ya) in the hereafter. Since, by the agreement and consensus of all the Companions, the vision is real in the hereafter, contemplation is likewise real in this world. So there is no difference between an informant who reports about the vision in the hereafter and an informant who reports about contemplation in this world. And whoever reports about these two meanings reports by way of permissibility (jawaz), not by way of claim (da'wa); that is, he says that vision and contemplation are possible, and does not say that I possess the vision; because contemplation is an attribute of the inner secret (sirr), and reporting is an expression of the tongue, and when the tongue has news from the secret so that it may express it, this is no longer contemplation but a claim; because a thing whose reality finds no stability in the intellects — how can the tongue express it? Except in the sense of permissibility. 'Because contemplation is the failing of the tongue at the presence of the heart.' So silence has a higher degree than speech; because silence is the sign of contemplation, and speech is the mark of testimony (shahada).