The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys

Concerning this realm, there is many a tradition and many a verse, of broad or special relevancy, but two of these will suffice to serve as a light for men of mind and heart. The first is His statement: “O My Servant! Obey Me and I shall make thee like unto Myself. I say ‘Be,’ and it is, and thou shalt say ‘Be,’ and it shall be.” And the second: “O Son of Adam! Seek fellowship with none until thou hast found Me, and whenever thou shalt long for Me, thou shalt find Me close to thee.” Whatever high proofs and wondrous allusions are recounted herein, concern but a single Letter, a single Point. “Such hath been the way of God ... and no change canst thou find in the way of God.” 134

The love of Thee hath leveled down the fort of patience, The pain of Thee hath firmly barred the gate of hope as well. 110 In this realm, instruction is assuredly of no avail. The lover’s teacher is the Loved One’s beauty, His face their lesson and their only book. Learning of wonderment, of longing love their duty, Not on learned chapters and dull themes they look. The chain that binds them is His musky hair, The Cyclic Scheme, 111 to them, is but to Him a stair. 112 Here followeth a supplication to God, the Exalted, the Glorified: O Lord! O Thou Whose bounty granteth wishes! I stand before Thee, all save Thee forgetting.

On this plane, neither the reign of reason is sufficient nor the authority of self. Hence, one of the Prophets of God hath asked: “O my Lord, how shall we reach unto Thee?” And the answer came, “Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.” These are a people who deem the lowest place to be one with the throne of glory, and to them beauty’s bower differeth not from the field of a battle fought in the cause of the Beloved. The denizens of this plane speak no words—but they gallop their chargers. They see but the inner reality of the Beloved. To them all words of sense are meaningless, and senseless words are full of meaning. They cannot tell one limb from another, one part from another. To them the mirage is the real river; to them going away is returning.