‘O Lord’ , painted by Mahmoud Farshchian in 2002

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And…One more sharing for the day from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, an excerpt from Mohyiddīn Ibn Arabī’s book, ‘The Seven Days of the Heart’ (Awrad al-usbu), here in its Anqa Press 2011 edition. English translation from the original Arabic by Stephen Hirtenstein & Pablo Beneito. The two quotes are from the introduction, pages 5 and 6.

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‘In respect of His attributing to Himself closeness in listening and responding, this is analogous to His describing Himself as being ‘closer’ to man ‘than his jugular vein’. (8)Here He compares His closeness to His servant with the closeness of man to his own self. When man asks himself to do something and then does it, there is no time-gap between the asking and the response, which is simply listening. The moment of asking actually is the very moment of responding. So the closeness of God in responding to His servant is [identical to] the closeness of the servant in responding to his own self. Then [we can say that] what he asks of his self in any state is akin to what he asks of his Lord as a specific need.‘ (8) Qu’ran 50:16

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‘Since [prayer] is a secret intimate converse, it is thus an invocation or remembrance (dhikr). And whoever remembers God finds himself sitting with God and God sits with him, according to the Divine tradition: ‘I sit with whosoever remembers Me.’ Whoever finds himself sitting with the One he remembers, and is capable of inner vision, sees his ‘sitting-companion’. This is witnessing (mushahada) and vision (ru’ya). If he does not have this inner capacity, he will not see Him. It is from this actuality or absence of vision in the prayer, that the one who prays will know his own spiritual degree.’

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