The resemblance of the bad judgement of this base vizier in corrupting the king’s generosity to the vizier of Pharaoh, namely, Hamaan, in corrupting the readiness of Pharaoh to receive.

(1240) - How many a time did Pharaoh soften and become submissive when he was hearing that Word from Moses !

(1241) - That Word that from the sweetness of that incomparable Word the rock would have yielded milk.

(1242) - Whenever he took counsel with Hamaan, who was his vizier and whose nature it was to hate,

(1243) - Then he would say, “Until now you have been the Khedive: will you become, through deception, the slave to a wearer of rags ?”

(1244) - Those words would come like a stone shot by a catapult and strike upon his glass house.

(1245) - All that the Kalím of sweet address built up in a hundred days he would destroy in one moment.

(1246) - Your intellect is the vizier and is overcome by sensuality: in your being it is a brigand on the Way to God.

(1247) - A godly monitor give you good advice, it will artfully put those words aside,

(1248) - Saying, “These are not well-founded: take heed, don’t be carried away; they are not so much: come to yourself, don’t be crazed.”

(1249) - Alas for the king whose vizier is this: the place of them both is vengeful Hell.

(1250) - Happy is the king whose helper in affairs is a vizier like Asaf.

(1251) - When the just king is associated with him, his name is light upon light.

(1252) - A king like Solomon and a vizier like Asaf are light upon light and ambergris upon mixed perfumes (‘abir).

(1253) - The king Pharaoh and his vizier like Hamaan, ill-fortune is inevitable for both.

(1256) - The king is as the spirit, and the vizier as the intellect: the corrupt intellect brings the spirit into movement.

(1257) - When the angelical intellect became a Harut, it became the teacher in magic to two hundred devils.

(1258) - Do not take the particular intellect as your vizier: make the Universal Intellect your vizier, O king.

(1259) - Do not make sensuality your vizier, else your pure spirit will cease from prayer.

(1260) - For this sensuality is full of greed and sees the immediate present, the Intellect takes thought for the Day of Judgement.

(1261) - The two eyes of the Intellect are on the end of things: it endures the pain of the thorn for the sake of that Rose.

How the Demon sat on the place of Solomon, and imitated his actions; and concerning the manifest difference between the two Solomons, and how the Demon called himself Solomon son of David.

(1263) - Even if you have intellect, associate and consult with another intellect, O father.

(1264) - With two intellects you will be delivered from many afflictions: you will plant your foot on the summit of the heavens.

(1265) - If the Demon called himself Solomon and won the kingdom and made the empire subject,

(1266) - He had seen the form of Solomon’s action; within the form the spirit of the demon was appearing.

(1267) - The people said, “This Solomon is without excellence: there are differences between Solomon and Solomon.”

(1268) - He is like wakefulness; this one is like sleep; as between that Hasan and this Hasan.

(1277) - If he has been deposed and reduced to poverty.

(1278) - If you have carried off the signet ring, you are a Hell frozen like piercing cold.

(1282) - I would have given a very soul-quickening exposition of this.

(1283) - Still, be content and accept this amount, that I may explain this at another time.

(1284) - He, having called himself by the name of the prophet Solomon, makes it a mask to deceive every boy.

(1285) - Pass on from the form and rise beyond the name: flee from title and from name into reality.

(1286) - Inquire, then, about his degree and his actions: in the midst of his degree and actions seek him.

(1388) - When you say, “I am ignorant; give instruction,” such fair-dealing is better than reputation.

(1389) - Learn from your father, O clear-browed man: he said heretofore, “O our Lord” and “We have done wrong.”

(1390) - He made no excuse, nor did he invent falsehood nor lift up the banner of deceit and evasion.

(1402) - He that is blessed and familiar knows that : intelligence is of Iblis, while love is of Adam.

(1403) - Intelligence is swimming in the seas: he is not saved: he is drowned at the end of the business.

(1404) - Leave off swimming, let pride and enmity go: this is not a Oxus or a (little) river, it is an ocean;

(1406) - Love is as a ship for the elect: seldom is calamity; for the most part it is deliverance.

(1407) - Sell intelligence and buy bewilderment: intelligence is opinion, while bewilderment is vision (Deedar).

(1408) - Sacrifice your understanding in the presence of Mustafa (Noor) say, “hasbiya ‘llah for God suffices me.”

(1409) - Do not draw back your head from the ship, like Canaan, whom his intelligent soul deluded,

(1410) - Saying (Canaan), “I will go up to the top of the lofty mountain: why must I bear gratitude to Noah ?”

(1414) - Would that he (one like Kan’án) had not learned to swim, so that he might have fixed his hope on Noah and the ark !

(1415) - Would that, like a child, he had been ignorant of devices, so that, like children, he might have clung to his mother,

(1416) - Or that he had not been filled with traditional knowledge, had carried away from a saint the knowledge divinely revealed to the heart !

(1419) - Make yourself foolish and follow behind: only by means of this foolishness will you gain deliverance (Azaadi).

(1420) - On this account, O father, the Sultan of mankind has said, “Most of the people of Paradise are the foolish.”

(1421) - Since, intelligence is the exciter of pride and vanity in you, become a fool in order that your heart may remain sound.

(1422) - Not the fool that is bent double (abases himself ) in buffoonery, the fool that is distraught and bewildered in Him.

(1424) - Sacrifice your intellect in love for the Friend: anyhow, intellects are from the quarter where He is.

(1425) - The intelligent have sent their intellects to that quarter: the dolt has remained in this quarter where the Beloved is not.

(1426) - If, from bewilderment, this intellect of yours goes out of this head, every head of your hair will become head and intellect.

(1427) - In that quarter the trouble of thinking is not on the brain, for the brain and intellect produce fields and orchards.

(1428) - If you turn towards the field, you will hear from the field a subtle discourse; you come to the orchard, your palm- tree will become fresh and flourishing.

In exposition of the following Hadíth of Mustafa, on whom be peace: “Truly, the most High God created the angels and set reason in them, and He created the beasts and set lust in them, and He created the sons of Adam and set in them reason and lust; and he whose reason prevails over his lust is higher than the angels, and he whose lust prevails over his reason is lower than the beasts.”

(1497) - It is related in the Hadíth that the majestic God created the creatures of the world three kinds.

(1498) - One class entirely reason and knowledge and munificence; that is the angel: he knows nothing but prostration in worship.

(1499) - In his original nature is no concupiscence and sensuality: he is absolute light, living through love of God.

(1500) - Another class is devoid of knowledge, like the animal in fatness from fodder.

(1501) - It sees nothing but stable and fodder: it is heedless of misery and glory.

(1502) - The third is Adam’s descendant and Man: half of him is of the angel and half of him is ass.

(1503) - The ass-half, indeed, inclines to that which is low; the other half inclines to that which is rational.

(1504) - Those two classes are at rest from war and combat, while this Man is in torment with two adversaries.

(1505) - And, moreover, this Human, through probation, has been divided: they are of human shape, but they have become three communities.

(1506) - One party has become submerged absolutely and, like Jesus, have attained unto the angel.

(1507) - The form Adam, but the reality is Gabriel: he has been delivered from anger and sensual passion and disputation.

(1508) - He has been delivered from discipline and asceticism and self-mortification: you would say he was not even born of a child of Adam.

(1509) - The second sort have attained unto asses: they have become pure anger and absolute lust.

(1510) - The qualities of Gabriel were in them and departed: that house was narrow, and those qualities grand.

(1511) - The person who is deprived of spirit becomes dead: when his spirit is deprived of those, he becomes an ass,

(1531) - There remains another sort in warfare: half animal, half alive and endowed with good guidance.

(1532) - Day and night in strife and mutual struggle, his last battles with his first.

The battle of the reason against the flesh is like the contention of Majnun with his she camel: Majnun’s inclination is towards the noble woman, while the she camel’s inclination is back towards her foal, as Majnun said: “My she-camel’s love is behind me, while my love is in front of me; and verily I and she are discordant.”

(1533) - Assuredly they are like Majnun and his she-camel: that one is pulling forward and this one backward in enmity.

(1534) - Majnun’s desire is speeding to the presence of that Layla; the she camel’s desire is running back after her foal.

(1535) - If Majnun forgot himself for one moment, the she-camel would turn and go back.

(1537) - That which is regardful was reason: passion for Layla carried reason away.

(1538) - But the she-camel was very regardful and alert: whenever she saw her toggle slack.

(1539) - She would at once perceive that he had become heedless and dazed, and would turn her face back to the foal without delay.

(1540) - When he came to himself again, he would see on the spot that she had gone back many leagues.

(1541) - In these conditions Majnun remained going to and fro for years on a three days’ journey.

(1542) - He said, “O camel, since we both are lovers, therefore we two contraries are unsuitable fellow-travellers.

(1544) - These two fellow-travellers are brigands waylaying each other: lost is the spirit that does not dismount from the body.

(1545) - The spirit, because of separation from the highest Heaven, is in a want; the body, on account of passion for the thorn-shrub, is like a she-camel.

(1546) - The spirit unfolds its wings upwards; the body has stuck its claws in the earth.

(1547) - "So long as (camel) you art with me, O you who art mortally enamoured of your home, then my spirit will remain far from Layla.

(1548) - From experiences of this kind my life-time, for many years, has gone, like the people of Moses in the desert.

(1549) - This journey to union was a matter of two steps: because of your noose I have remained sixty years on the way.

(1550) - The way is near, but I have tarried very late: I have become sick of this riding, sick, sick.”

(1551) - He threw himself headlong from the camel. He said, “I am consumed with grief: how long, how long ?”

(1552) - The wide desert became narrow for him: he flung himself on the stony place.

(1553) - He flung himself down so violently that the body of that courageous man was cracked.

(1554) - When he flung himself to the ground thus, at that moment also by destiny his leg broke.

(1555) - He tied up his leg and said, “I will become a ball, I will go rolling along in the curve of His bat.”

(1556) - For this cause the sweet mouthed Sage utters a curse on the rider who does not dismount from the body.

(1557) - How should love for the Lord be inferior to love for Layla? To become a ball for His sake is more worthy.

(1558) - Become a ball, turn on the side which is sincerity, rolling, rolling in the curve of the bat of Love,

(1559) - For henceforth this journey is the pull of God, while that journey on the she-camel is our progression.

(1560) - Such is the extraordinary mode of progression which transcends the utmost exertion of the Jinn and mankind.

(1561) - Such is the pull - not every common pull - to which Ahmad awarded the pre-eminence. And farewell !

Ya Ali Madad