On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

Indefinability

Indefinability There is no thought that does not tend toward the question of love. Although this is the case from the beginning to the end of existence, it is worth testifying that love remains indefinable by thought. The fullness of love is the same as emptiness of thought. To love is the same as to be mad. This is the case because comparison, measurement , and calculation—the essential attributes of reason—lose both their importance and their meaning in love. In all the descriptions and accounts of love, there is no definition that would make its essence known to reason. Whatever the factors defining love, they do not contribute to knowledge of it. It remains simultaneously in itself and in the self that feels it. And it is not exhaustible in any single one of its experiences. Thirst for it cannot be slaked even by love itself, but without being intoxicated by it, a person cannot be disclosed in his or her most beautiful uprightness, nor see in any one of the countless multitude of levels through which he or she passes from that perfection to ultimate formlessness. All discourse about love is the attribution of power to reason. It is so because love cannot be separated from being. Even so the indefinability of love is the way in which it eludes all power outside itself: You should know that things can be divided into two sorts. One sort can be defined, and the other cannot be defined. Those who 8 / On Love know and speak about love agree that it is one of the things that cannot be defined. A person recognizes it when it abides within himself and when it is his own attribute. He does not know what it is, but he does not deny its existence.1 Thought stimulates Reality in its totality and divergence. It is what raises a person above the level of an animal. Thought can be abandoned to itself, but cannot deny itself. Together with it is also the will, which directs it toward objects and holds it to them, but thought will sooner or later elude the will. Thus, thought moves constantly between closeness and distance, similarity and difference, gathering and scattering, unifying and sundering, letting go and encompassing. Thought is enduring in the variability of its direction. It is sometimes here and sometimes there, but never at rest. Thus, it reflects Reality in its constant approaching and retreating, so demonstrating that Reality cannot be encompassed by thought. But, thought recognizes phenomena in their relation to one another. This comparison is what enables it to vary and determine the Flow and the rhythm in which things exist—originate, endure, and disappear—in space and time. It is possible to add to this existence of theirs descriptions in which individual phenomena are ‘‘captured’’ in an image of the law of their existence . It is through such laws that phenomena as such acquire an image in knowledge. A person then becomes a ‘‘separate’’ observer who knows what phenomena are and how they should be. In knowledge, which is based on measuring and establishing models of phenomena, human presence is presented as exclusion from phenomena themselves. A person is reduced to immaterial observation . But, as soon as he is included, as soon as he achieves a relationship with himself, the world and God, his separateness is impossible. As soon as will, love, and knowledge are seen with their beginning or end in thought, thought becomes insufficient for their experience and revelation. And perhaps thought is entirely incapable of this undertaking . However, a person lives in the impossibility of a final answer. The power of speech, which nothing can exhaust, makes him what he The Impossibility of Definition / 9 is—a form that is open toward infinity, and, thus, also indefinable in terms of anything other than infinity. Where there is life, there is also will. But, there is no will without love of the phenomena toward which the self is directed as toward its inner or outer center. And wherever there is love, there must also be knowledge and they—that love and that knowledge—are inseparable. The first without the second leads a human being to madness, while the second without the first takes away a person’s freedom and openness toward infinity. But when will, love...