“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”.
4. The fourth cause is a sort of secret affinity between two souls, meeting and attracting each other. It is what is called “love at first sight”. This is what the prophet meant when he said “The souls had their rendezvous: Those who liked each other, then love here; those who remained strangers then do not join here”. If a believer goes to a meeting where there are a hundred manafiks (hypocrites) and one momin (faithful) he will take his seat by the side of the momin. It seems that likes are attracted by their likes. Malik bin Dinar says: Just as birds of the same feather fly together two persons having a quality common to both will join.[59]
Let us now apply these causes and find out who may be the true object of love. First, man who is directly conscious of his own self in whom the love for continuity of the self is innate, if he deeply thinks on the nature of his existence will find that he does not exist of his own self, nor are the means of the continuity of his self in his power. There is a being, self-existent, and living who created and sustains him. The Quran says: “There surely came over man a period of time when he was not a thing that could be spoken of. Surely we have created man from a small life germ uniting. We mean to try him, so we have made him hearing, seeing. Surely we have shown him the way, he may be thankful or unthankful.”[60] This contemplation will bear the fruit or love for God. For how could it be otherwise when man loves his own self which is dependent on Him, unless he be given up to the gratification of his passions and thereby forgetting his true self and his sustainer.
Secondly, if he thinks over the aim and scope of beneficence, he will find that no creature can show any purely disinterested favour to another because his motive will be either 1. praise or self-gratification for his generosity, or 2. hope of reward in the next world or divine pleasure.[61] Paradoxical though it sounds, deep insight into human nature leads us, inevitably to the conclusion that man cannot be called “benefactor”, in as much as his action is prompted by the idea of gain and barter. A true benefactor is one who in bestowing his favours has not the least idea of any sort of gain. Purely disinterested beneficence is the quality of the All-merciful Providence and hence He is the true object of love.
Thirdly, the appreciation of inward beauty, that is to say the contemplation of any attractive quality or qualities of the beloved causes a stronger and more durable love than the passionate love of the flesh. However such a beloved will still be found lacking in beauty from the standpoint of perfection because the three genders are creatures and therefore cannot be called perfect. God alone is perfect beauty—holy, independent, omnipotent, all-majesty, all-beneficent, all-merciful. With all this knowledge of His attributes we still do not know Him as He is. The prophet says: “My praise of Thee cannot be comprehensive, Thou art such as wouldst praise Thyself”.[62] Are not these attributes sufficient to evoke love for him? But beatitude is denied to the inwardly blind. They do not understand the attitude of the lovers of God towards Him. Jesus once passed by some ascetics who were reduced in body. “Why are you thus”? he said to them. And they replied “Fear of hell and hope of heaven have reduced us to this condition”. “What a pity”, rejoined Jesus, “your fear and hope is limited to creatures”. Then he went onward and saw some more devotees, and put the same question. “We are devoted to God and revere him for his love”, they replied with downcast eyes. “Ye are the saints” exclaimed Jesus, “you will have my company”.[63]
Fourthly, the affinity between two souls meeting and loving each other is a mystery, but more mysterious is the affinity between God and his loving devotee. It cannot and must not be described before the uninitiated. Suffice it to say that the souls possessing the higher qualities of beneficence, sympathy, mercy, etc. have that affinity hinted at in the following saying of the prophet: “Imitate divine attributes”. For man has been created in the image of God, nay he is, in a way, akin to Him, says the Quran. “And when the Lord said to the angels: Surely I am going to create a mortal from dust, so when I have made him complete, and breathed into him of My Ruh (soul), fall down making obeisance to him”.[64] It is this affinity which is pointed out in the following tradition: God said to Moses “I was sick and thou didst not visit Me”. Moses replied “O God, thou art Lord of heaven and earth: how couldst thou be sick?” God said “A certain servant of mine was sick: hadst thou visited him, thou wouldst have visited me”. Therefore our prophet Mahommed has said: “Says God: My servant seeks to be near me that I may make him my friend, and when I have made him my friend, I become his ear, his eye, his tongue.”[65] It must, however, be remembered that mystical affinity vaguely conceived leads to extremes. Some have fallen into abject anthropomorphism; others have gone so far as to believe in the airy nothings of pantheism. These are all vagaries of the imagination, whether they take the form of “Ibn Allah”, (Son of God) or “Anal Haq” (I am God).[66] They are to a great extent responsible for the evils of superstition and scepticism.
These four causes when properly understood, demonstrate that the true object of our love is God and therefore it has been enjoined: “Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind”.[67]
Man’s highest happiness
The constitution of man possesses a number of powers and propensities, each of which has its own distinctive kind of enjoyment suited to it by nature. The appetite of hunger seeks food which preserves our body and the attainment of which is the delight of it, and so with every passion and propensity when their particular objects are attained. Similarly the moral faculty—call it inward sight, light of faith or reason—any name will do provided the object signified by it is rightly understood—delights in the attainment of its desideratum. I shall call it here the faculty of reason (not that wrangling reason of the Scholastics and the dialecticians)—that distinctive quality which makes him lord of creation. This faculty delights in the possession of all possible knowledge. Even an expert in chess boastfully delights in the knowledge of the game however insignificant it may be. And the higher the subject matter of our knowledge the greater our delight in it. For instance we would take more pleasure in knowing the secrets of a king than the secrets of a vizier. Now delights are either (a) external, derived from the five senses, or (b) internal, such as love of superiority and power, love of the knowledge, etc. enjoyed by the mind. And the more the mind is noble the more there will be a desire for the second kind of delights. The simple will delight in dainty dishes, but a great mind leaving them aside will endanger his life and his honour and reputation from the jaws of death. Even sensuous delights present an amusing example of preference. An expert in chess while absorbed in playing will not come to his meals though hungry and repeatedly summoned, because the pleasure of check-mating his adversary is greater to him than the object of his appetite. Thus we see that inward delights and they are chiefly love of knowledge and superiority are preferred by noble minds. If then a man believes in a perfect being, will not the pleasure of His contemplation be preferred by him and will it not absorb his whole self? Surely the delights of the righteous are indescribable, for they are even in this life, in a paradise which no eye has seen and no ear has heard.