love is an alchemical force of enlightenment; the lightning bolt which brings you back to life. Love symbolized the emotional element in religion, the rapture of the seer, the courage of the martyr, the faith of the saint, the only basis of moral perfection and spiritual knowledge.

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more
than you love me?
The beloved replied,
I have died to myself
and I live for you.
I’ve disappeared from myself
and my attributes.
I am present only for you.
I have forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you
I have become a scholar.
I have lost all my strength,

but from your power
I am able.
If I love myself
I love you.
If I love you
I love myself.
I’m drenched
in the flood
which has yet to come
I’m tied up
in the prison
which has yet to exist
Not having played
the game of chess
I’m already the checkmate
Not having tasted
a single cup of your wine
I’m already drunk
Not having entered
the battlefield
I’m already wounded and slain
I no longer
know the difference
between image and reality
Like the shadow

I am And I am not

Practically, it is self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, the giving up of all possessions--wealth, honour, will, life, and whatever else men value--for the Beloved's sake without any thought of reward. I have already referred to love as the supreme principle in Sufi ethics, and now let me give some illustrations.

"Love," says Jalaluddin, "is the remedy of our pride and self-conceit, the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish."

I was dead, I became alive, I was tears, I became laughter
The sovereignty of love appeared, and I became everlasting sovereign.

Jalaluddin Rumi proclaims :"Our copper has been transmuted by this rare alchemy,"meaning that the base alloy of self has been purified and spiritualised.

In another ode he says: "O my soul, I searched from end to end: I saw in thee naught save the Beloved; Call me not infidel, O my soul, if I say that thou thyself art He."

Divine Love in Sufism, like gnosis, is in its essence a divine gift, not anything that can be acquired. "If the whole world wished to attract love, they could not; and if they made the utmost efforts to repel it, they could not." Those who love God are those whom God loves. "I fancied that I loved Him," said Bayazid, "but on consideration, I saw that His love preceded mine."

Junaid defined love as the substitution of the qualities of the Beloved for the qualities of the lover. In other words, love signifies the passing-away of the individual self; it is an uncontrollable rapture, a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent prayer and aspiration.

In Sufism, the human form of love can be, and for the Sufi is---- the ladder to Divine Love.

Sufism decrees that by learning how to love through the love of a person, the sincere Sufi could – in principle – transform his or her love of a person into the love of Allah.

Because love is the most brutal ego annihilation, Being IN love means surrendering your ego. The word orgasm in French is called little death. Being in love with anyone is like dying to your old life and being reborn into a new dimension.

The relationship is dangerous.
It is dangerous because the more you love someone, the more and more you evaporate. And when you have come really close you are no more. It is dangerous because it is suicidal but the suicide is beautiful. Because if you survive this suicide---you will walk towards God because you would have experienced the limitations of egoic living and tasted the ecstasy of surrender.

All the love-romances and allegories of Sufi poetry--the tales of Layla and Majnun, Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaykha, Salaman and Absal, the Moth and the Candle, the Night-ingale and the Rose--are shadow-pictures of the soul's passionate longing to be reunited with God.

Death in human love is a catalyst of an alchemical crucible which can -potentially- lead to transformation.

To love so that nothing of you remains, is the way to enlightenment.You no longer exist.Non-being is the way to being, and love is the most adequate method to disappear.Just as nature abhors a vacuum, God also abhors a vacuum.

You become a vacuum, and love of God rushes in to you!

Ibn al-‘Arabi claims that Islam is peculiarly the religion of love, inasmuch as the Prophet Mohammed is called God's beloved (Habib).

To die in God is the only way to live really. Until you die, until you die voluntarily into love, you live an existence which is simply mediocre; you vegetate, you don't have any meaning. No poetry arises in your heart, no dance, no celebration; you simply grope in the darkness. You live at the minimum, you don't overflow with ecstasy.


GÜL1