“No person knows where my beloved dwells: This much only is known, that the sound of the bell approaches.”
The mode of hearing it is after this manner: the devotees direct the hearing and understanding to the brain, and whether in the gloom of night, in the house, or in the desert, hear this voice, which they esteem as their _Zikker_, or “address to God.” Azizi[304] thus expresses himself:
“I recognise that playful sportiveness, And well know that amount of blandishment: The sound of footsteps comes to my ear at night; It was thyself; I recognise the hallowed voice!”
Then having opened the eyes and looking between the eyebrows, a form appears. Some of those who walk in the path of religious poverty among the followers of Mohammed (on whom be benedictions!) assert that the expression _Kab Kausain_, “I was near two bows’ length,” alludes to this vision. Finally, if they prefer it, having closed the eyes for some time, they reflect on the form which appeared to them on looking between the eyebrows; after which they meditate on the heart; or without contemplating the form, they commence by looking into the heart; and closing both eyes and ears, give themselves up entirely to meditation on the heart, abandoning the external for the internal: whoever can thus contemplate obtains all that he wants; but
“The anguish of my friend strikes at the portal of the heart; Command them, O, Sháni! to purify the dwelling of the heart.”
Finally the searcher after the Being who is without equal or form, without color or pattern, whom they know and comprehend in the Parsi under the name of “_Izad_,” in Arabic by the blessed name of “_Allah_,” and in Hindi as “_Para Brahma Náráyaran a_,”[305] contemplates him without the intervention of Arabic, Persian, Hindi, or any other language, keeping the heart in his presence, until he, being rescued from the shadows of doubt, is identified with God. The venerable _Maulaví Jami_ says on this head:
“Thou art but an atom, He, the great whole; but if for a few days Thou meditate with care on the whole, thou becomest one with it.”
They hold that reunion with the first principle, which the Sufees interpret by evanescence and permanence, means not, according to the distinguished Ishrakian[306] or Platonists of Persia, that the beings of accident or creation are blended with him whose existence is necessary, or that created beings cease to exist; but that when the sun of the first cause manifests himself, then apparently all created beings, like the stars in the sun’s light, are absorbed in his divine effulgence; and if the searcher after God should continue in this state, he will comprehend how they become shrouded through the sun’s overpowering splendor, or like the ecstatic Sufees he will regard them as annihilated: but the number of Sufís who attain to this state is exceedingly small, and the individuals themselves are but little known to fame. This volume would not be sufficient to enumerate the amount of those lights (precepts) which direct the pilgrim on his course, but the venerable _Azur Kaiván_ has treated at large on this head in the _Jám-i-Kai Khusró_.