When his Lord said to him, “Submit,” he said, “I submit to the Lord of the Worlds.” When the Bosom Friend began to travel, the command came from the Exalted Presence, “O Abra- ham, anyone who wants Me must belong to Me totally. As long as a sliver of mortal desires and soulish resistance remains with you, you will not pass from the suffering of striving to the ease of the pull. 'The ransomed slave stays a slave so long as a dirham is owed.'” If you want Me, you must want what I desire. You must leave aside yourself totally. The Bosom Friend said, “O Lord, Abraham no longer has any self-governance, any free choice. Now I have come on the feet of poverty, in the state of brokenness, to see what You command. I submit. I have overthrown myself and entrusted my work to You. I have come back to You entirely.” The command came, “O Abraham, that is a very great claim. Every claim must have a mean- ing, and everything rightfully due a reality. Now watch out for the testing!” He was tested by other than himself, by part of himself, and by his whole self. The test by oth- ers was that he had plentiful possessions. They say he had 70,000 sheep in seven thousand herds. Each herd had a dog with a gold collar around its neck. He was commanded to detach his heart from all of it and to toss it away in the path of God. The Bosom Friend tossed it all away and left nothing for himself. In the traditions it has come that the angels said, “Lord God, ever since this call was given out in the World of the Dominion, 'And God took Abraham as a bosom friend' [4:125], our spirits have been in a whirlpool and our gall-bladders have been melting because of this special favor. How is the Bosom Friend worthy of this generosity?” The call came, “Gabriel, open up your peacock-feathers and go from the top of the Lote Tree to the summit of that mountain and test the Bosom Friend.” With the divine determination and facilitation Gabriel came down in the form of a child of Adam. He stood beside that mountain and shouted, “O Holy One!” The Bosom Friend fainted from the pleasure of hearing that.
