only through his soul’s desire. By desire here I mean will: were it not for its ruling over him in this, he would not follow the truth.
The ruling concerning one who follows other than the truth is the same. By truth here I mean what the Lawgiver commands to be followed; other than the truth is what the Revealed Law forbids following. In the affair itself everything is true, yet the Lawgiver commands and prohibits. We do not doubt that backbiting is true, but the Revealed Law forbids us from it. We have said:
By desire’s right, desire is the cause of desire / Were desire not within the heart, desire would not be worshipped.
Through desire, desire is avoided, and through desire, desire is worshipped. Yet the Lawgiver has made the name desire specific to what he blames when it occurs from the servant. Keeping to the Revealed Law is preferable. This is why we have explained that by desire we intend will, nothing else. The affair requires that nothing rule a thing except itself concerning what issues from it, rather than what is judged concerning it from outside.
Yet that judgment from outside rules it only according to what its own essence imparts toward the judgment’s taking effect within it. Every movement and stillness within the world is therefore movement of a self and stillness of a self. When the servant attains this Presence through taste, his sign is that another does not affect him through what he neither wills
