Seeds of thought, planted and built into people's consciousness, come to life in time and begin to work and take effect, whether for good or for ill. They unfold and stir up a veritable stream, a current, which then sweeps most people along. Very few can see beyond this current: those who arrive at insight. And of these, only a few are able to influence the course of things, whether it is a matter of their own lives or of the course of the world, which after all carries more weight than the personal life of any single person.
The world is infinitely complex and immeasurably surpasses man's capacities, and yet an organic interplay shows itself between man and the world. In most cases the world, and the current it generates, is so strong an influence that there is almost no defending against it. You think you are free, that you are moving forward by your own personal decisions, but you are only following a course laid down for you. You can see only as much as you are made to see, as much as you are allowed to see.
Knowledge is not only information but also a matter of how the world is seen, and knowledge, as opposed to doubt, is certainty. What are the fixed points of the world? For instance, existence; for instance, the existence of the Exalted One; or the power of love, the possibility of becoming perfect and, above all, overcoming transience. This is one of those common goals that every mystical school swears by and unites around. And in the hope of overcoming transience, the ideal of becoming perfect hovers before us – recoiling from relativity…
We may regard progress, development, as one of the characteristics of life, but only as a characteristic of limited life, for existence as an ontological category inherently and of necessity carries perfection within itself.
Yet man can set out only from where he now stands. For the human being is brimming not only with illusions but with possibilities too. But when we say that man is all possibility, this also means that he has as yet achieved almost nothing. Only hopes for the future keep him alive, and yet this is encouraging, for an empty chalice is easily filled with sweet nectar, while it is exceedingly hard to add anything to a jug full of illusions. Three roads lead to hell: lust, anger and greed, but three roads must also lead to heaven: noble action, knowledge and devotion. When you are down, only then do you truly know which road takes you upward. What matters is the synthesis, the rising above…
The absence of the individual self and of all the selfish consciousness that belongs to it, man's liberation from the instruments, when he no longer has any individual aim or will, because he is immersed in the will of God… – this is the hovering of perfection, when man sinks not into nothing but into everything, into the infinite Godhead, into the All of all… (Sama, Sufi philosopher, one of the spiritual forerunners of Shams-i Tabrizi)
If you feel you have already attained everything – that materially and spiritually you have everything, then where do you go from here? What do you carry in your bundle, a morsel of bread or stones? Better if your satchel is empty, for it is easy to gather treasures into it.
And yet everyone sets out from where he now stands, and before man there lies a multitude of unrealised possibilities. We cannot even imagine what horizons await us, for the grasp of the intellect cannot encompass infinite horizons. If at a single stroke you could survey all the possibilities that lie before you, it would be a burden rather than a relief. That is why there is no need to understand everything at the very beginning. Take the nectar drop by drop. What is a drop on the spiritual plane is an endless ocean on our level. What over there lasts only the blink of an eye embraces a multitude of world ages here. What is natural over there is to us an unbelievable miracle.