When We decreed death for him.... Death is of two sorts: outward death and inward death. Outward death is obvious to everyone. Friend and enemy follow the road that leads to it, the common people and the elect are the same in it. Every soul shall taste death [3:185]. Inward death is that a man dies in himself from himself without himself and comes to life from the Real in the Real with the Real. It is the same as that chevalier said: “Die, O friend, before your death, if you want to live- long ago, by such a death, Idris went up to paradise.” [DS 52] True life is that given by the opening of faith, not what is put in place by the animal spirit. Abu'l- Ḥasan Kharaqānī said, “It is twenty years since they brought my shroud from heaven. What is strange is that He keeps me with the people in the form of the living, but He has wrapped me in a shroud in His own Presence.” Don't think of that talk, put on the shroud, then clap your hands like a man. Say, “Either You or me in the city”- A realm with two heads is in turmoil. O chevalier! One drop of sperm that comes out from inside a man establishes his pollution, but this outward pollution is made pure with water. What is difficult is that if one iota of the sperm of self-seing takes up residence inside you, a pollutedness will come that cannot be eliminated with all the world's oceans. Quit being the companion of self-nurturing habit-worshipers! Kiss the dust beneath the feet of those who have disowned self! [DS 972] At this threshold, self-seeing has no reason, self-painting no worth. There is no reason whatsoever to take anything other than incapacity, need, poverty, and want. The sons of Jacob went to Joseph and took poverty and want, saying, “We came with scant goods” [12:88]. Hence Joseph lifted the mask from beauty and came forward with the tongue of generosity: “No reproof is upon you today” [12:92]. You do the same thing, O man with ruined life, indigent of the times! At the moment of dawn, when He lets down the carpet of descent and opens up the arms of generosity, go again to His door like the indigent and the incapable.
