“As long as one maintains relationship with God faithfully and from the heart, one begins to feel in the depths of the heart the spiritual pleasure that we can also call ‘imbibing,’ but an ‘imbibing’ without need for a cup or cup-bearer. This pleasure makes the travelers on the way to God intoxicated, according to their rank. As they feel the pleasure, they grow thirstier and desire more and more pleasure, with the result that thirst and satiation follow one upon another in the spirit. They express this state as Gedai did, who says:

O cup-bearer, in the fire of love,

I have burnt away, so give me some water!

This comes to the point where the travelers on the way to the Truth, their desire and yearning for Him ever growing, feel pleasure embedded in longing and satisfaction embedded in hunger. They burn with passion for the door that is ajar to be opened completely. The interruption of these favors is impressed on them like a fast, while the resumption of the favors is like a feast, and they murmur in expectation as Muhammed Lutfi Effendi does:

Offer the wine of union: it is time to break fast;

Improve this ruin: it is time to display favors.

Another approach to thirst is to see it as such a longing and passion for the Truly Beloved and Desired One that the initiate aches intensely for satisfaction saying, ‘My liver has become roasted: will there not come help in answer to my sighs?’; the heart of the initiate overflows with love, burns away in flames, and his/her eyes scan the horizon in expectation of Their Lord Who offers them pure drink (76:21). However, so long as a loving initiate remains imprisoned in the lampshade of corporeality, the Truly Beloved One does not manifest Himself to him/her in His perfection. This is why the thirst of the yearning lover who still lingers between corporeality and spirituality increases more and more to the point of being consumed in the flames. The following couplets by Sa'di al-Shirazi are truly beautiful in expressing such a degree of spiritual pleasure and thirst:

You show Your Face, then avoid showing Yourself,

Increasing thereby both demand for You and our heat.

Whenever I see the Beloved Who has seduced me into His love,

I am confused how to act, and bewildered on the straight path.

First He burns me in flames, then extinguishes with sprinkles of water,

This is why you sometimes see me in flames,

And sometimes drowned in water.”¹⁾

“Travelers dedicated to reaching the goal to such degree always feel the gifts or radiations of individuality coming from their turning to God, from their love of Him, and from their visions during the journey. They also feel the pleasure of seeking only He Who is the One and concentrating all their love on Him alone. Being freed from wasting their faculties of loving, feeling, and seeking, they sip the sweet water of unity in multiplicity. They find themselves turning to Him with a great zeal and thirst, and in waves of annihilation of their love, and in privacy with Him that is freed from all others than Him when they reach the peak of the vision of Him.”²⁾

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