Tim’s Reviews > The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi > Status Update

Oh heart, sleep from thought, for thought is the heart's snare. Go not to God except disengaged from all things, for that is not seemly.

God will create from every invisible thought a visible form worthy of that thought, and He will link that form to the thinker. "If the thought is noble, it will enoble you, but if it is base, it will act toward you with baseness".

Know that every sensual desire is like wine and hashish - it veils the intelligence and stupefies rationality. Wine is not the only intoxicant of intelligence: whatever is sensual shuts the eyes and ears. Iblis [Satan] was far from being a wine-drinker - pride and denial made him drunk.

All multiplicity is the manifestation of Unity...If man does see things as other than God, that is because he is not able to see them as they truly are. .. "Otherness" is a veil over our eyes woven by our own imagination. Neither we ourselves nor the things we perceive outside of ourselves are truly other than God.

The World of Imagination has a number of dimensions. In the lowest levels of this world, the individual human faculty of imagination determines the form in which images present themselves to the consciousness...But in its higher levels, the World of Imagination is independent of individual man.

All things participate in God's love, the motivating force of creation, so all things are lovers. In other words, each existent is infused with need and desire for other existents and is constantly striving to gain union with them. These individual lovers are the source of all movement and activity.

As to whether or not we may say that "God is Love", the answer is yes and no. God is certainly Love, but this Attribute does not exhaust His Reality. Mercy, Knowledge, Life, Power, Will...He possesses All...As the "Coincidence of Opposites", He possesses all His Attributes absolutely, yet in His Essence He is beyond them all.

On the one hand, the Shahadah signifies that "Nothing truly exists but God". All that appears as "other than He" is nonexistent in itself, whether it lies outside in the world or inside in our selves. But all forms are manifestations of meaning, all foam derives from the Sea. So on the other hand the Shahadah also means that "Everything that exists is God".

The Prophet said that women totally dominate men of intellect and Possessors of Hearts, but ignorant ment dominate women, for they are shackled by the ferocity of animals...She is the radiance of God, she is not your beloved. She is the Creator - you could say that she is not created.

In the Muslim consciousness, faith is connected primarily with knowledge and only secondarily with the will and the emotions.