On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

Mercy and Wrath

Mercy and Wrath And will is just that possibility of resistance to evil—whether through attacking it, or fleeing from it—and of doing good—through giving or denial. If phenomena in the self and the horizons are ‘‘with truth,’’ the presence of evil in mankind and the world is divergence along the above-mentioned axis from fullness to nothingness as impossibility. All phenomena ‘‘with truth’’ deny the primary nature of evil, although a person cannot either avoid it or surpass it until he is in his entirety returned to nonduality. Thus, since evil is not primary, neither is it predictable. Not one of its forms takes on a final and enduring expression . It is only through evil that orientation toward the Origin demands and stimulates the openness of the self with which the transition away from phenomena as revelation of the hidden and toward the hidden itself is disclosed as freedom. But, disclosure is not and cannot be complete, for no outwardness is possible without inwardness. Overcoming that duality is not possible without violence. Regardless of the extent of that violence, the duality of outwardness and inwardness cannot be overcome. The will always has an object. Out of the human inner being it is directed toward the object of the outer world, or the object that comes into being through the division of the very self. In that process sameness is always present in the source of the will and difference in its object. The essence includes in itself every possibility in its undivided 38 / On Love aspect. The possibility of being revealed imposes duality on it. And that is its desire. In the root of that desire is the will. Its strength is revealed as love. Out of it springs the trinity of essence, love, and revelation . But revelation is possible only in duality. Where there is love, there is also duality, and the other way around—duality is only the possibility of revealing oneness, so its overcoming is the love that is present in each participant of that duality. There is no phenomenon that is without its ‘‘spouse.’’ It is in that division and the longing of one for the other that mercy and love are ‘‘situated’’: ‘‘And of His signs is that He created for you, of yourselves , spouses, that you might repose in them, and He has set between you and love and mercy. Surely in that are signs for people who consider.’’5 ‘‘Of yourselves’’ means that part of the original whole is distanced from it, or that the ‘‘spouse’’ is that alienated part. The longing of the self to achieve once again its original oneness is its need for its spouse. For its part, unity is return from alienation to the original homeland or wholeness. And there is no satisfaction that could be greater than that renewed unity of what was separated. Duality is in a state of constant change. And that means it is in a state of possible balance and imbalance. In the outer world that inexhaustible changing is revealed as the divergence between the heavens and the earth. Everything on earth receives everything that is in heaven. And this is a relationship of action and passivity, giving and receiving. Since man is the sum of the entire outer world, his division is between the spirit and the soul, and between the male and the female . Balancing that duality, in which complete harmony is complete humanity, depends only on oneness, or the heart as its complete revelation. The duality of spirit and soul presumes turning toward perfection in which the whole receives its missing part, which, thus, returns to its homeland. When that connectedness is denied or broken, then the part is seen as the whole, and the whole as a part. Then the self is subordinated to the lower or the soul that induces evil, and the will Will / 39 acts ‘‘downhill,’’ against the attractive power of the spirit, which is with the creative commandment. That inversion of the sequence spiritsoul into the relationship of soul to body is revealed as wrath or as the opposite of mercy, which is approached through contrary movement, through the soul, ‘‘which reproaches’’ and thus attains Peace and Mercy. Teaching and directing the will in an act that is revealed by truth itself are not possible in relation to evil, since it is not primary and the self does not find rest...