Do not give it me in secret, when it can be given openly,”[[194]]
i.e., let my eye see it and my hand touch it and my palate taste it and my nose smell it: there yet remains one sense to be gratified, viz. my hearing: tell me, therefore, this is wine, that my ear may feel the same delight as my other senses. And they say that audition appertains to presence with God, because he who is absent from God is a disbeliever (munkir), and those who disbelieve are not worthy to enjoy audition. Accordingly, there are two kinds of audition: mediate and immediate. Audition of which a reciter (qárí) is the source is a faculty of absence, but audition of which the Beloved (yárí) is the source is a faculty of presence. It was on this account that a well-known spiritual director said: “I will not put any created beings, except the chosen men of God, in a place where I can hear their talk or converse with them.”
Chapter concerning their different grades in the reality of Audition.
You must know that each Ṣúfí has a particular grade in audition and that the feelings which he gains therefrom are proportionate to his grade. Thus, whatever is heard by penitents augments their contrition and remorse; whatever is heard by longing lovers increases their longing for vision; whatever is heard by those who have certain faith confirms their certainty; whatever is heard by novices verifies their elucidation (of matters which perplex them); whatever is heard by lovers impels them to cut off all worldly connexions; and whatever is heard by the spiritually poor forms a foundation for hopelessness. Audition is like the sun, which shines on all things but affects them differently according to their degree: it burns or illumines or dissolves or nurtures. All the classes that I have mentioned are included in the three following grades: beginners (mubtadiyán), middlemen (mutawassiṭán), and adepts (kámilán). I will now insert a section treating of the state of each of these three grades in regard to audition, that you may understand this matter more easily.
Section.
Audition is an influence (wárid) proceeding from God, and inasmuch as this body is moulded of folly and diversion the temperament of the beginner is nowise capable of (enduring) the word of God, but is overpoweringly impressed by the descent of that spiritual reality, so that some lose their senses in audition and some die, and there is no one whose temperament retains its equilibrium. It is well known that in the hospitals of Rúm they have invented a wonderful thing which they call angalyún;[[195]] the Greeks call anything that is very marvellous by this name, e.g. the Gospel and the books (waḍ`) of Mání (Manes). The word signifies “promulgation of a decree” (iẕhár-i ḥukm). This angalyún resembles a stringed musical instrument (rúdí az rúdha). The sick are brought to it two days in the week and are forced to listen, while it is being played on, for a length of time proportionate to the malady from which they suffer; then they are taken away. If it is desired to kill anyone, he is kept there for a longer period, until he dies. Everyone’s term of life is really written (in the tablets of destiny), but death is caused indirectly by various circumstances. Physicians and others may listen continually to the angalyún without being affected in any way, because it is consonant with their temperaments. I have seen in India a worm which appeared in a deadly poison and lived by it, because that poison was its whole being. In a town of Turkistán, on the frontiers of Islam, I saw a burning mountain, from the rocks of which sal-ammoniac fumes (nawshádur) were boiling forth;[[196]] and in the midst of that fire was a mouse, which died when it came out of the glowing heat. My object in citing these examples is to show that all the agitation of beginners, when the Divine influence descends upon them, is due to the fact that their bodies are opposed to it; but when it becomes continual the beginner receives it quietly. At first the Apostle could not bear the vision of Gabriel, but in the end he used to be distressed if Gabriel ever failed to come, even for a brief space. Similarly, the stories which I have related above show that beginners are agitated and that adepts are tranquil in audition. Junayd had a disciple who was wont to be greatly agitated in audition, so that the other dervishes were distracted. They complained to Junayd, and he told the disciple that he would not associate with him if he displayed such agitation in future. “I watched that dervish,” says Abú Muḥammad Jurayrí, “during audition: he kept his lips shut and was silent until every pore in his body opened; then he lost consciousness, and remained in that state for a whole day. I know not whether his audition or his reverence for his spiritual director was more perfect.” It is related that a man cried out during audition. His spiritual director bade him be quiet. He laid his head on his knee, and when they looked he was dead. I heard Shaykh Abú Muslim Fáris b. Ghálib al-Fárisí say that some one laid his hand on the head of a dervish who was agitated during audition and told him to sit down: he sat down and died on the spot. Raqqí[[197]] relates that Darráj[[198]] said: “While Ibn al-Qúṭí[[199]] and I were walking on the bank of the Tigris between Baṣra and Ubulla, we came to a pavilion and saw a handsome man seated on the roof, and beside him a girl who was singing this verse:—
‘My love was bestowed on thee in the way of God;
Thou changest every day: it would beseem thee better not to do this.’
A young man with a jug and a patched frock was standing beneath the pavilion. He exclaimed: ‘O damsel, for God’s sake chant that verse again, for I have only a moment to live; let me hear it and die!’ The girl repeated her song, whereupon the youth uttered a cry and gave up his soul. The owner of the girl said to her, ‘Thou art free,’ and came down from the roof and busied himself with preparations for the young man’s funeral. When he was buried all the people of Baṣra said prayers over him. Then the girl’s master rose and said: ‘O people of Baṣra, I, who am so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, have devoted all my wealth to pious works and have set free my slaves.’ With these words he departed, and no one ever learned what became of him.” The moral of this tale is that the novice should be transported by audition to such an extent that his audition shall deliver the wicked from their wickedness. But in the present age some persons attend meetings where the wicked listen to music, yet they say, “We are listening to God;” and the wicked join with them in this audition and are encouraged in their wickedness, so that both parties are destroyed. Junayd was asked: “May we go to a church for the purpose of admonishing ourselves and beholding the indignity of their unbelief and giving thanks for the gift of Islam?” He replied: “If you can go to a church and bring some of the worshippers back with you to the Court of God, then go, but not otherwise.” When an anchorite goes into a tavern, the tavern becomes his cell, and when a haunter of taverns goes into a cell, that cell becomes his tavern. An eminent Shaykh relates that when he was walking in Baghdád with a dervish, he heard a singer chanting—
“If it be true, it is the best of all objects of desire,