21:34-35 We have not assigned everlastingness to any mortal before thee. If thou diest, will they be everlasting? Every soul shall taste death.
When a speck of truthfulness appears in someone’s heart, the reality of passion for death will show its head from his spirit, for the promise of encounter is there. What sort of spirit would forget the promise of encounter? What sort of heart would seek from someplace else the repose that comes only from contemplating the Real? “The person of faith has no ease without encountering his Lord.”
No good fortune is more precious than death. Those who have the religion place the crown of magnificence and generosity on their heads at the gate of death. Those who reap the fruit of the Shariah will find the sigil of good fortune at the door of death. Death is the sanctuary of “There is no god but God.” Death is the doorstep of the kingdom of the resurrection and the passageway to the visitors of the Real. Death is the center of the exaltation of the recognizers, the place anticipated by the spirits of the proximate. Death is the vanguard of solicitude and the prelude to endless kind favor. In the two worlds, no one has the ease that the tawḥīd-voicer has in the grave with the One. He took along with him into the dust the banner of the submission and the kettledrum of faith in the resurrection. At the resurrection, he will come out of the dust with the banner of the submission and the kettledrum of faith, just as kings enter into their own city.
Dāwūd Ṭāʾī was one of the great jurists in outward knowledge. His truthfulness was such that on the night he left this world a call came from the middle of heaven: “O folk of the earth! Surely Dāwūd Ṭāʾī has stepped forth to his Lord, and He approves of him.” One of his disciples said that he saw Dāwūd in the throes of death in a ruined house, intense heat, fallen flat on the earth with his head on a piece of brick, reciting the Qur’an. He said to him, “O Dāwūd, what if you were to go out into the open air?”
What would happen if you were kind to yourself for an hour and go out into the open air, so this heat would have less effect on you? Dāwūd said, “My friend, I want to do that, but I am ashamed before my Lord—that I should move my feet in that in which my soul is at ease. This soul of mine has never had the upper hand over me, and in this state, it is even more appropriate that it not have it.” It was in this state, lying in the dust, that he emptied his frame.
Junayd said, “Whoever lives through his Lord will be transferred from the life of his nature to the life of the root, and that is life in reality. God says, ‘We shall surely give him to live a goodly life’ [16:97].”
21:37 Man was created of haste. I shall show you My signs, so seek not to hasten Me.
The man was created of haste. Haste is one thing, hurry is something else. Haste is unapproved and blamed, and a prohibition has come concerning it: “so seek not to hasten Me.” Hurry is approved and praised, and a command has come in it: “Hurry!” [3:133]. Haste is to go forth to a work before its moment, and hurry is to rush to a work that is commanded at the beginning of its moment. Haste is the result of Satan’s disquieting, and hurry is a requisite of success-giving and reverence for the command. From haste come regret and the heart’s turmoil and from hurry the joining of spirit and heart with tranquility: He it is Who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the faithful [48:4].
God sends down repose on the hearts of the faithful so that they will recognize Him without having found Him and love Him without having seen Him. They turn away from their own work to His work, they come from remembering themselves to remembering Him, and they go from love for themselves to love for Him. All rememberings save remembering Him are negligence, all objects of desire save His object of desire are diversions, and all loves save love for Him are idle talk.
