I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia

it was being written in the East that ‘Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality’.

Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories.

It is the goldsmith who can assay the gold.

The Book of Wisdom. Simab said: ‘I shall sell the Book of Wisdom for a hundred gold pieces, and some people will say that it is cheap.’ Yunus Marmar said to him: ‘And I shall...

They will become Godly when they will have God in their hearts.

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaPoverty: The result of marriage.

TeachingOne hour’s teaching is better than a whole night of prayer.

Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because… they appeal to your greed.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.

If you are ‘humble’, it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.

If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth…

Everyone does not know the secrets of TruthThe States of Truth are not evidential.

One lie will keep out forty truths.

But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light.

There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of...

Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge.

You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.

The tongue is the best masseur of furrowed brows.

Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.

Many things which are called ‘secrets’ are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.

Laziness – The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

None meets harm who knows his capacity.

As the Eastern saying, by the sage Hilali, has it, ‘one person who understands is worth a hundred who merely obey a custom.

Mystics are no humans but a species different; they are always young and never do they die.

Hak cih na tolıdur kimseler Hakk’ı bilmez / Anı sen senden iste o senden ayru olmaz.

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.

Saying of the ProphetFoodNobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.

Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.

Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: ‘Greed is the mother of incapacity’.

Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible.

When Fortune knocks, open the door,’ they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?

The means through which people may perceive Truth have forms; Truth has no form.

Learning without action is like wax without honey.(Anwar-i-Suhaili)

Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: ‘What did you do that?’...

Love is an involuntary gift that manifests unplanned.

Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when the unparalleled lyrical grace, philosophical brilliance, and spiritual daring of his...

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza. Worry: Something to make you unnecessarily ill.

Saying of the ProphetOppressionWhen oppression exists, even the bird dies in its nest.

Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

Words have to die if humans are to live.

Saying of the ProphetObligation to LearnThe pursuit of knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim.

But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH ‘things of the world’.

God”.

Remembering and ForgettingYou have not forgotten to remember; You have remembered to forget.But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember – and generally more practical.