Love accepteth no existence and wisheth no life:  He seeth life in death, and in shame seeketh glory.  To merit the madness of love, man must abound in sanity; to merit the bonds of the Friend, he must be full of spirit.  Blessed the neck that is caught in His noose, happy the head that falleth on the dust in the pathway of His love.  Wherefore, O friend, give up thy self that thou mayest find the Peerless One, pass by this mortal earth that thou mayest seek a home in the nest of heaven.  Be as naught, if thou wouldst kindle the fire of being and be fit for the pathway of love.

    Love seizeth not upon a living soul,
    The falcon preyeth not on a dead mouse.(16)

Love setteth a world aflame at every turn, and he wasteth every land where he carrieth his banner.  Being hath no existence in his kingdom; the wise wield no command within his realm.  The leviathan of love swalloweth the master of reason and destroyeth the lord of knowledge.  He drinketh the seven seas, but his heart’s thirst is still unquenched, and he saith, “Is there yet any more?"(17) He shunneth himself and draweth away from all on earth.

    Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too;
    In him are lunacies seventy-and-two.(18)

He hath bound a myriad victims in his fetters, wounded a myriad wise men with his arrow.  Know that every redness in the world is from his anger, and every paleness in men’s cheeks is from his poison.  He yieldeth no remedy but death, he walketh not save in the valley of the shadow; yet sweeter than honey is his venom on the lover’s lips, and fairer his destruction in the seeker’s eyes than a hundred thousand lives.

Wherefore must the veils of the satanic self be burned away at the fire of love, that the spirit may be purified and cleansed and thus may know the station of the Lord of the Worlds.

    Kindle the fire of love and burn away all things,
    Then set thy foot into the land of the lovers.(19)

And if, confirmed by the Creator, the lover escapes from the claws of the eagle of love, he will enter

The Valley of Knowledge

and come out of doubt into certitude, and turn from the darkness of illusion to the guiding light of the fear of God.  His inner eyes will open and he will privily converse with his Beloved; he will set ajar the gate of truth and piety, and shut the doors of vain imaginings.  He in this station is content with the decree of God, and seeth war as peace, and findeth in death the secrets of everlasting life.  With inward and outward eyes he witnesseth the mysteries of resurrection in the realms of creation and the souls of men, and with a pure heart apprehendeth the divine wisdom in the endless Manifestations of God.  In the ocean he findeth a drop, in a drop he beholdeth the secrets of the sea.

    Split the atom’s heart, and lo! 
    Within it thou wilt find a sun.(20)