A fountain from which drink the servants of God, making it gush forth with a gushing. This is a spring that flows forth from the region of paradise, and it flows forth at the paradise- dwellers' command. They will make it flow as they want wherever they want, up or down, over the palaces and chambers, over the rugs and carpets, flowing on the silk and brocade [18:31], over- flowing, traveling, and inanimate. No cloth will become wet from it, nor will it pass over anything opaque. Eyes will be open while shut. Camphor will be in the ginger, ginger in the camphor, the latter released from its cold, the former far from its heat, each one kept in equilibrium. It will not be the artifact of creatures, nor will they be kept back from it: a wine without opacity, a drinker without intoxication, a cup-bearer who sees-the wine of intimacy in the cup of holiness in the session of finding on the carpet of witnessing from the hand of the Friend in face-to-face vision itself, without any trouble in the midst. O chevalier, wine is that wine, poured by the hand of the Unseen into the cup of the heart and drunk by the eye of the spirit. The people became drunk with the passing of the cup but I became drunk with the one who passed it. “The wine made a group drunk, but for me it was seeing the cupbearer. Hence they were annihi- lated in that drunkenness, and I subsisted in this drunkenness.” A great man was shown in a dream that Maʿrūf Karkhī was circumambulating the Throne and the Exalted Lord was saying to the angels, “Do you recognize him?” They said they did not. He said, “That is Maʿrūf Karkhī, drunk from Our love. He will not become sober until his eyes fall on Me.” When friendship makes someone drunk, the world is debased before his aspiration. In his friendship nonbeing is made being, and he is made drunk with the wine of union. Wines are two: one is today, the other tomorrow. Today's is the wine of intimacy, tomorrow's the wine of the cup. Today the wine flows from the source of gentleness, tomorrow the pure wine will come from the hand of the All-Merciful:
