The intoxication of Divine Love

Mevlana Rumi, a name among the ranks of the "Ashiqeen" Lovers in His Way says in his magnus opus, the Mathnavi:

A true Lover is proved such by his pain of heart; No sickness is there like sickness of heart. The Lover’s ailment is different from all ailments; Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries. A Lover may hanker after this love or that love, but at the last he is drawn to the King of Love. However much we describe and explain love, when we fall in love we are ashamed of our words. Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but Love unexplained is clearer. When pen hasted to write, on reaching the subject of love it split in twain. When the discourse touched on the matter of love, pen was broken and paper was torn….Naught but Love itself can explain love and lovers.

The creed of Love is a Way unto itself, by itself. It cannot be compared to any other path. It has its own religion, its own worship and its own code of conduct. And to round it up we could say that its religion is sacrifice of self for the sake of the Beloved, its worship is the unceasing contemplation of the Beloved, and its code of conduct is to seek only the pleasure of the Beloved.

In this creed of Love, the seeker of God is the ashiq or the lover, God is the Beloved, Divine Love is the wine poured into the cup of the seeker’s heart, the seeker’s distance from the One he desires is firaq or separation and finally the union is wisal.

Sufi poetry is replete with allusions to the Beauty of the Beloved and His/Her indifference to the agony of the Lover’s state. Symbols such as the mole on the face of the Beloved, the curl of hair, the glance, the veil all refer to different aspects of the Divine Being. The fair face is the Being of God, the mole on the face is the point of His Unity, the curl of hair is the "makr" or deceit of the Beloved, the glance is His/Her attention, and the veil signifies the other behind which the Beloved remains hidden.

Hafiz, the great Sufi poet of Shiraz, says: Piety and moral goodness have naught to do with ecstasy; stain your prayer rug with wine.

Here we get a taste of the Love Fever experienced by the Lovers. Piety and moral goodness are not being rejected by Hafiz, but what he is trying to say is that if we want to attain the state of ecstasy and be alive in Divine Joy, external morality is an insufficient vehicle. What can deliver us to that state of undying happiness is only the devotion which has been fired by an intense longing and Love.

The love tales of folklore have come down to us as the well-guarded secrets of Love Discourse. From the land of Arabia we know of the famous love-pair Layla-Majnun.
The Indo-subcontinent has a rich heritage of such allegorical, mystical love stories. To name a few among them we have, Sassi Punhu, Sohni Mahiwal, Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiba and so on. The land of Punjab has been very fecund in producing legendary figures in the area of mystical love poetry. Sultan Bahu, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah, Shah Hussain are a few illustrious names that have lit the Path of Love in this part of the world.

Love is the wine-bearer that fills the hearts of the lovers to the brim. Lovers drink whatever is poured for them and grow drunk without understanding why. The lover of Layla was actually called Qays, but he got the title of Majnun after he lost himself in Layla’s love. Majnun literally means mad. If we define madness as the act of flinging oneself into the fire of love, to be consumed and immolated like the moth, then yes Qays was Majnun and so are all the other martyrs in the Way of Love. Majnun in his love for Layla became an exile from the land of happiness. Good and evil, right and wrong had no meaning anymore; he was simply in Love. His only profession was: Love is all I have, all I am, and all I ever want to be. He said once, "One name is better than two. If you know the reality of Love, you would know that when you scratch a lover, underneath you find his Beloved."

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Bulleh Shah [1680 AD – 1752 AD] was a great sufi mystic-poet born in Uch Gilaniyan, a settlement in present day Bahawalpur district of Punjab, Pakistan. When he attained to youth, he was already in the grip of an intense longing and uncontrollable restlessness for union with the Divine Beloved. He met his destined spiritual guide, Shah Inayat Qadiri of Lahore, and grew in the stations of Love. But what brought the wildly surging waves of the river of desire to rest in the serene ocean of union, was the final annihilation that came to him through separation from his Pir. This is also reminiscent of what passed between Mevlana and Shams Tabriz. As the most excellent verses that Mevlana composed came from the tongue of one maddened by Love, dictated by a heart seared by separation in Love, so is the best of Bulleh Shah’s poetry an outpouring of his love-ravaged heart.

Bulleh Shah sings of his agony in separation from his Pir:

I befriended one who is unfeeling
My eyes shed endless tears in love.

He left, abandoning me
Planting the spear of separation in the soil of my heart.

From my body He plucked away my soul
He who thinks Love is a trade did so to me.

How shall I rely on one so cruel?
Not an atom of fear in his heart.

This is for him a recreation like that of one laughing at the falling bird.
He laughs and claps at my devastation.

O’ I befriended one who is unfeeling!

He said he would return but never came
He forgot all the promises of returning.

In my innocence I locked my gaze with his
But what did I know I was befriending the one who would loot me.


But through all the suffering and pain that the seeker is put through in separation, all the while his/her spiritual understanding is being sharpened more and more. Human love is only a portal to Divine Love, and through annihilation of the seeker in the Guide-Beloved, he/she is transmuted into the diamond that can be finally presented to the greatest Gem-Assessor.

The most heart-rending of Bulleh Shah’s poems is the one he sang before his Pir to win his favour after his offence:

Your Love has made me dance with bells around my ankles.

Within me your Love has come to abide;
I have drunk a cup full of poison willingly myself.
O’ my healer come before the blinking of my eye or I am finished.

Your Love has made me dance with bells around my ankles.

The sun has set but its redness still colours the sky.
If you show your face once more I shall sacrifice myself for you.
It was a great error that I stayed behind and did not accompany you.

Your Love has made me dance with bells around my ankles.

O’ my mother, don’t prevent me from this love-annihilation
Who can ever call back the boats sailing in fast flowing streams.
It is but the lack of my own intelligence that I chose to go along with one who is so severe.

The peacocks sing in the pain of this Love
I see only the Beloved as I face the Qibla or Kaaba.
After wounding me with the arrow of Love he has not even enquired after my condition.

O’ Bulleh! The Beloved brought me to Shah Inayat’s threshold
He is the one who put on these red and green robes of poverty over me.
As soon as I have struck the ground with my heel to dance
That very moment reconciliation with my lost Beloved have I found.

Your Love has made me dance with bells around my ankles.

There was an occasion in Bulleh Shah’s early life before he met his guide, when we witness the Divine Himself becoming the tongue of Love to guide the young seeker.
Once Bulleh Shah was occupied in Divine remembrance, rosary in hand, rolling the beads, sitting atop the roof of his house. Suddenly a young milk-maid, aglow with beauty at its height, emerging from the rustic environs was seen approaching the side of his house. Soon Bulleh Shah’s attention was caught by a voice that broke the silence of his contemplation. This was the voice of the milk-maid’s lover who was hiding beside a wall of Bulleh Shah’s house, awaiting the arrival of his fair beloved. The lover asked her how she knew where he was hiding. The young maiden replied, "The presence of the Beloved is felt by the heart. Eyes are mere instruments for beholding the outer form."
The conversation between the two lovers became signs for Bulleh Shah on the map of Divine search. Next, the lover asked the maiden to let him drink some milk. She asked, "How much milk would you like?" To this he retorted, "You profess to be a lover and then you measure how much to give in love!" This sentence threw Bulleh Shah into ecstasy and flinging his rosary aside, he ran out repeating the sentence over and over again.

Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, another great mystic-poet, has said, "Whoever says the cure for a lover is other than union, consider him ignorant rather than wise for he is unaware of the heart’s ailment."

Murshid Inayat Khan says, "Peace will not come to a lover’s heart so long as he will not become love itself."

This is the crux of the whole matter. True love is not self-satisfaction or sensual gratification. True love is a fire that obliterates all but the image of the Beloved. God is Love and Man is the product of His Longing, His Ishq. It is Love that has given us being. So when flint is struck against flint there is a spark. When Ishq meets Ishq how can there not be a total consummation? It is the annihilation of Love that makes the Lover and Beloved one. Therefore the ultimate crescendo in the saga of love is the discovery of Love, Lover and Beloved as One.

Murshid Inayat Khan beautifully depicts this when he says, "I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of Love, "Disclose to me, I pray thee O’Love, thy secret." She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear, "My dear one, thou thyself art Love, art Lover, and thyself art the Beloved who thou hast adored."

Bahauddin Valad, Sultan al Ulema, the father of Mevlana Rumi, says, "Someone asked me what is the knowing I speak of and how does the love I mention feel. I said if you don’t know, what can I say? And if you do know, what can I say? The taste of knowing love has no explanation, and no account of it will ever give anyone that taste."

The great poet of the East, Allama Iqbal said, "Man has been created for the pain of longing; Or else the Cherubim were sufficient for obedience."

Union is considered the last stage of Love’s journey, but at the same time, some mystics have preferred their longing in separation and burning in desire over union or wisaal. This is so because the flame of Love burns most ferociously in separation, once union is attained, that flame is doused in the ocean of Love’s union.

So one such lover of separation has said, "It is good that You are not prepared to grant union; For what will then remain in my poor heart if this longing for You also departs."

May Allah grant us increase in our longing for Him, and may we win the extinction of our selves in the great Flame of His Love. Amen.





By Naila Amat-un-Nur

July 2007