The Third Flash

Thus man must free himself from this mistake, sever his attachment to those transient beloveds, leave them before they leave him, and say: “Since those countless beloveds are transient, since they turn away from me and leave me, I leave them before they leave me by uttering:

يَا بَاقِى أَنْتَ الْبَاقِىO Everlasting One, You are the Everlasting.

I know and believe that only You are eternal, and that creatures can attain permanence only through You. Therefore, they may be loved only for the sake of Your love. Otherwise, they are not worthy of the heart’s affection.”

In this state, the heart gives up its countless beloveds. It sees the stamp of transience upon their beauty and severs its attachment to them. If it does not sever this attachment, it suffers wounds and torments as numerous as its beloveds.

The second utterance of:

يَا بَاقِى أَنْتَ الْبَاقِىO Everlasting One, You are the Everlasting.

serves as both a salve and a remedy for those countless wounds and torments. In other words, this second utterance proclaims: “O Eternal One! Since You are eternal, that is sufficient. You suffice in place of all things. Since You exist, all things exist.”

Indeed, the beauties, bounties, and perfections that are the reasons for loving creatures are all signs and faint, luminous shadows, veiled many times over, of the beauty, bounty, and perfection of the True Eternal One; indeed, they are shadows of the shadows of the manifestations of His Beautiful Names.

The Second Point

The human being possesses a nature in which there dwells a burning love for eternity. He even uses his power of imagination to imagine a kind of permanence in everything dear to him, so that he may give his love to it. Yet whenever he thinks of its transience or is confronted with it, a deep sorrow overwhelms him from the depths of his heart. All cries of grief that arise from separation are expressions of the weeping caused by the love of eternity. Without the imagined permanence of the beloved, man could not love.

One may even say that the intense longing for immortality, arising from that burning love of eternity and serving as a universal, innate supplication, is a reason for the existence of the eternal realm and everlasting Paradise. In other words, the Bāqī-i Dhul-JalālAllah, Whose existence is everlasting and Whose majesty and exaltedness are boundless. has answered that burning, unshakable, and innate longing, that effective, powerful, and universal supplication, and has created an eternal world for transient human beings.

Is it at all possible that the Munificent and Merciful Creator should answer the insignificant wish of a tiny stomach, and its natural supplication for continued existence, by creating countless delicious foods, yet fail to answer the immense innate need of all mankind and its burning desire, its powerful, universal, constant, well-founded, truthful, verbal and non-verbal supplication for eternity? Never! It is impossible that such a supplication should not be answered. Moreover, failing to answer it would in no way accord with His wisdom, justice, mercy, or power.