He created you from one soul and then made from it its mate. He created heaven and earth and day and night to show the creatures the attribute of His power. They come to know that He is perfectly powerful, an artisan without contrivance, and they take His artisanry as evidence of His unity. He created Adam and the Adamites to make them the treasury of the secrets of Eternity and the target of the gentle favors of generosity. “I was a hidden treasure, so I loved to be recognized.” “I had an incomparable Essence and attributes, so there had to be recognizer. I had infinite majesty and beauty, so there had to be a lover. I was an ocean of mercy and forgiveness beating its waves, so there had to be an object of mercy.” The other created things had nothing to do with love, for they never saw in themselves a high aspiration. The one with high aspiration is you. The angels have straight and orderly work because there was no talk of love with them. The treasures and intimations put into the Adamic makeup were not placed in them. The ups and downs of the Adamites, their bewilderment and confounded- ness, contraction and expansion, sorrow and joy, absence and presence, togetherness and disper- sion; the drafts mixed with poison in their hands, the swords hanging over their necks-they have all these because a whiff of love's rose reached their nostrils. Passion for You turned me into a tavern-goer like this- otherwise I was safe and orderly. Abū Yazīd BasṬāmī said, “Once I was craving the wine of passion in the seclusion of 'I am the sitting companion of those who remember Me.' I was bold, and I carried a heavy load of trials for my boldness. I had tasted many drops of tribulation. I said, 'O God, Your stream is flowing-how long will I be thirsty? What sort of thirst is this that I see one cup after another? “Who has ever had a state rarer than this? I'm thirsty and clear water is flowing before me. “'Exalted of the two worlds! How often will you become hidden, how often apparent? The heart is bewildered, the spirit distracted. How long this curtaining and self-disclosing? When at last will there be the everlasting self-disclosure? O God, how long will You call and drive away? I have melted in wanting the day in which You stay.
