Spiritual Love

Brother, let me explain to you what love and being a lover mean, so you don't imagine this is some joke or idle play. Self-interested people call love an obsession, a disease that only a Hippocrates or a Galen could cure. They told the truth: it is a sickness, but only the kind of love that marries the groom of lust to its bride. If an ignorant man calls that sickness 'love,' well, a king's crown and a rooster's comb share the same name too. Even if its root desire is unclear, there's no fault in that: the sun's disk can look like the pale color of sandarac resin. And if someone counts it among the kinds of love, it isn't far off, just as Rostam, Giv, and Tus all count as champions. Spiritual love is pure, untouched by any stain; the love of lust is nothing but a stock of embraces and kisses. Know that lustful love is something you are built to hide, while spiritual love beats its drums on the roof of heaven. In truth, love is nothing but the longing to be united: the lucky stars draw toward fortune, the ill-omened toward ruin. In the end the lover takes on the very nature of the beloved, for this path is the soul's journey, not amusement and play. It is the union of the mind with what it grasps; anyone who follows Porphyry's way of reasoning knows this is true. The shape of the beloved's character is the lovers' science, just as astronomy was the craft of Ptolemy. In their reasoning toward union they make their own assumptions, assumptions not found in the geometry of Theodosius. A single drop from the stream of love against a hundred seas of reason is one foot soldier of Rostam against three hundred of Ashkabus's cavalry. If you want spiritual love, learn it from the Quran; you won't find its account in lessons and lectures. No, I misspoke: the aim of every love is love itself, or else the work of faith and law would be mere child's play and folly. Do you know why paradise and the palaces of houris were promised? So that a man would love God in hardship and in ease. When would the pious give up their desires for God's sake if they knew the people of paradise are just hens and roosters? If there's no comfort and bounty, what's the difference between a ruin and paradise? If there's no joy and feasting, what's the difference between Herat and Tus? A child only wants his father for the sake of raisins; a wise man understands well the language of a flatterer. Love seeks nothing in all that exists except God: so let your beloved be Indian, Greek, or Russian, it makes no difference. Without love there's no difference from a green prayer-bead, even if someone carves a hundred-bead rosary out of ebony. If love did not yield conclusions in the reasoning of the mind, the logician would have no debate about premises and converses. The ego is cowardly; do not give it room in your aims. Nothing suits a woman's face less than the color of a scowl. Tell apart the pleasure of the soul from the pleasure of the mind: though they are far apart, count one as fine flour, the other as bran. Whoever sees in the beloved anything other than the beloved is like someone who sees in a fish nothing but its scales. Being warmed by fire is not the same as becoming fire; if you can tell the difference, the kiss is yours by your discernment.