In the experience of the Sufis, Anal-Haq or the "I Am God" state, is the culmination of Hama Ust , which means everything is God and nothing else exists.1 Since in this approach only God without a second is contemplated, there is no room for love for God or longing for God. The soul has the intellectual conviction that it is God. But in order to experience that state in actuality, it goes through intense concentration or meditation on the thought: "I am not the body, I am not the mind; I am neither this nor that; I am God!" The soul then experiences through meditation what it has assumed itself to be. But this mode of experiencing God is not only hard, but dry.
The Path is more realistic and joyous where there is ample play of love and devotion for God, which postulates temporary and apparent separateness from God and longing to unite with Him. Such provisional and apparent separateness from God is affirmed by the soul in the two Sufi conceptions Hama az Ust , that is, everything is from God, and Hama Duust which means everything is for the Beloved God. In both these conceptions, the soul realizes that its separateness from God is only temporary and apparent, and it seeks to restore this lost unity with God by intense love which consumes all duality. The only difference between these two states is that whereas the soul in the state of Hama Duust rests content with the will of God as the Beloved; in the state of Hama az Ust , the soul longs for nothing but union with God.
Since the soul which is in bondage can be redeemed only through divine love, even Perfect Masters, who attain complete unity with God and experience Him as the only Reality, often apparently step into the domain of duality and talk the language of love, worship and service of God, in His unmanifest Being, as well as in all the numberless forms through whom He manifests Himself.
Love Divine as sung by Hindu saints like Tukaram, as taught by Christian mystics like Saint Francis of Assisi, as preached by Zoroastrian saints like Azar Kaivan, and as made immortal by Sufi poets like Hafiz, harbors no thought of the self at all. It consumes all wants and frailties which nourish the bondage and illusion of duality. Ultimately, it unites the soul with God, thus bringing to it Self-Knowledge, Abiding Happiness, Unassailable Peace, Unbounded Understanding and Unlimited Power.
Footnotes
- 1.For further clarity refer to these Sufi terms in God Speaks, p. 308.