Yazma cildi 12 · Sayfa 307

وحب إلهي وهو حب الله للعبد وحب العبد ربه كما قال: ﴿يحبهم ويحبونه﴾ [المائدة: ٥٤] . ونهايته من الطرفين: أن يشاهد العبد كونه مظهرا للحق، وهو لذلك الحق الظاهر كالروح للجسم (الذي هو) باطنه، وغيب فيه لا يدرك أبدا، ولا يشهده إلا محب. وأن يكون الحق مظهرا للعبد: فيتصف بما يتصف به العبد من الحدود والمقادير والأعراض، ويشاهد هٰذا العبد؛ وحينئذ يكون محبوبا للحق. وإذا كان الأمر كما قلناه، فلا حد للحب -يعرف به- ذاتي. ولكن يحد بالحدود الرسمية واللفظية لا غير. فمن حد الحب ما عرفه، ومن لم يذقه شربا ما عرفه، ومن قال: "رويت منه" ما عرفه. فالحب شرب بلا ري. قال بعض المحجوبين: "شربت شربة فلم أظمأ بعدها أبدا. فقال أبو يزيد: الرجل من تحسى البحار، ولسانه خارج على صدره من العطش". وهذا هو الذي أشرنا إليه.

واعلم أنه قد يكون الحب طبيعيا والمحبوب ليس من عالم الطبيعة، ولا يكون الحب طبيعيا إلا إذا كان المحب من عالم الطبيعة، لا بد من ذٰلك. وذلك أن الحب الطبيعي سببه نظرة أو سماع، فيحدث في خيال الناظر مما رآه إن كان المحبوب ممن يدرك بالبصر، وفي خيال السامع مما سمع، فحمله في نشأته فصوره في خياله بالقوة المصورة.

There is divine love: God’s love for the servant and the servant’s love for his Lord, as He said, “He loves them, and they love Him” [al-Maʾida 5:54]. Its culmination from the two sides is that the servant witnesses his being a locus of the Real’s manifestation. He is to that manifest Real as the spirit is to the body, (whose) inward aspect he is, hidden within it, never perceived, and witnessed only by a lover. And the Real becomes a locus of the servant’s manifestation, taking on the bounds, measures, and accidents that characterize the servant. He [the Real] witnesses this servant, who then becomes beloved of the Real. If the affair is as we have said, love has no essential definition through which it is known. It is defined only through descriptive and verbal definitions. Whoever defines love has not known it; whoever has not tasted it in drinking has not known it; and whoever says, “My thirst for it is quenched,” has not known it. Love is drinking without satiety. One of the veiled said, “I drank a draught, after which I never thirsted.” Abu Yazid said, “The man is one who sips the seas while his tongue hangs out upon his breast from thirst.” This is what we have alluded to.

Know that love may be natural while the beloved is not of the world of nature. Love can be natural only if the lover belongs to the world of nature; this is necessary. Natural love is caused by a look or by hearing. In the beholder’s imagination something arises from what he saw, if the beloved is among what sight perceives; or in the hearer’s imagination from what he heard. He carries it within his constitution and gives it form in his imagination through the form-giving faculty.