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This first text on the theme of the friend introduces the theme of union. This is an important theme for mystics of every tradition that has often generated polemics. Indeed, when the lover is totally transported in the contemplation of the beloved, he feels what the other feels and identifies with him, to the point of using expressions like: “I am you, you are me”. When it comes to a dialogue between the creature and its Creator, this could be interpreted as the creature daring to think of itself as its Creator. In such cases, the most rigorous respond by saying, “Who are you to take yourself for God?” Yet this experience and feeling is at the heart of what lovers experience when they rest in each other.
This theme also appears in the Bible, which already says in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one”.
Or in the verse from Song of Songs 2:16: “My beloved is mine, and I am his who feed his sheep among the lilies.”
Or the famous verse from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”.
In the Gospel, Jesus’ words also use language that reminds us of the dialogue between the betrothed in the Song of Songs: “He who abides in me and I in him, the same bears much fruit” (John 15:5).
And also: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”. (Matthew 16:24)
The apostles also speak of the union between the faithful and Christ:
Here’s what the apostle St. John tells us about God’s vision: “Beloved, even now we are children of God, but what we will be has not yet been made manifest. We know this: when it is manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (First Letter of Saint John)
Or the apostle Saint Paul: “I live, but it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.” (Letter to the Galatians 2:20)
In many of Islam’s spiritual traditions, we also find words that record similar experiences of union between the faithful and God, the Beloved:
In the hadith of Bukhary 6250 (Dar us-salâm edition, In-book ref. Book 79, Hadith 24, USC-MSA Volume 8, Book 74, Hadith 267; Sahih Mouslim, n°2155):
قَالَ سَمِعْتُ جَابِرًا ـ رضى الله عنه ـ يَقُولُ أَتَيْتُ النَّبِيَّ صلى الله عليه وسلم فِي دَيْنٍ كَانَ عَلَى أَبِي فَدَقَقْتُ الْبَابَ فَقَالَ ” مَنْ ذَا “.فَقُلْتُ أَنَا. فَقَالَ ” أَنَا أَنَا “. كَأَنَّهُ كَرِهَهَا.
He said: I heard Jābir – may God be pleased with him – saying: I came to the Prophet, may the prayer and peace of God be upon him, about a debt that engraved on my father, I knocked at the door and he said, “Who is it?” and I said, “Me” and he said, “Me me” as if he despised it.
We can interpret this verse and the Prophet’s rebuke in the sense that we can translate “Me (is) me” and we can imagine that the knocker should not have put his own person first by asserting his own identity. As we will see in the following passages from El-Hallāj, Nezāmi or Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, the one who is is the Beloved.
In hadith 38 of al-Nawāwi (3602 Bukhary):
عن أبي هريرة رضي الله عنه ، قال : قال رسول الله صلي الله عليه وسلم : إن ألله تعالى قال : من عادى لي وليا فقد آذنته بالحرب ، وما تقرب إلي عبدي بشيء أحب إلي مما افترضته عليه ، ولا يزال عبدي يتقرب إلي بالنوافل حتي أحبه ، فإذا أحببته كنت سمعه الذي يسمع به ، وبصره الذي يبصر فيه ، ويده التي يبطش بها ، ورجله التي يمشي بها ، ولئن سألني لأعـطينه ، ولئن استعاذ ني لأعيذ نه
According to Abû Hurayra, may God be pleased with him: the Messenger of Allah, may the prayer and peace of God be upon him, said:
“God, the Most High, said: whoever is an enemy of one of my kinsmen [walī], I declare war against him and my servant does not approach me except by something kinder to me than what I have imposed on him, and my servant does not cease to approach me by supererogatory works until I love him, and when I love him, I am his hearing by which he hears, his sight by which he sees, his hand by which he catches, his foot by which he walks, and if he asks me, I give him, if he seeks refuge with me, I protect him. “
In the mystical El-Hallāj:
رأيت حبّي بعين قلبي فقلت : من أنت ؟ قال أنت
I saw my love with the eye of my heart and said, “Who are you?” He said, “You.”
In Nezāmi’s Leyly Majnun poem:
عشق است خلاصه وجودم عشق آتش گشت و من چو عودم
The substance of my existence is love love became fire and I am like wood
عشق آمد و خاص کرد خانه من رخت کشیدم از میانه
Love came and consecrated the house I made my things disappear
با هستی من که در شمارست من نیستم آنچه هست یارست
Even if they count my presence I am not, what is is the friend
And here’s an example from the Masnavi (مثنوی معنوی) by Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī Rūmī (جلال الدین محمد بلخى رومی ):
Masnavi, book 1, verses 3056-3063 or 1.149.1-1.149.9:
قصۀ آن كس كه در یاری بكوفت، از درون گفت كیست؟ گفت منم، گفت چون تو توی در نمی گشایم که کسی از یارن را نشناسم كه من باشد
Story of the one who knocks on the door of a friend, from inside (the friend) says: “Who is it?”, he answers: “It’s me”, (the friend) says: “Since you are you I don’t open the door because I don’t know anyone among the friends who is “me”.
آن یکی آمد در یاری بزد گفت یارش کیستی ای معتمد
A certain man arrived and knocked on the door of a friend (yār) his friend said, “Who are you, O reliable one” (mu’tamad the one I can trust)
The friend is designated in Persian by two terms: yār and dūst.
گفت من گفتش برو هنگام نیست بر چنین خوانی مقام خام نیست
He said, “Me,” and [the other] said to him, “Go away, this is not the time for one who is raw (or unripe, immature) there is no place at such a table.
خام را جز آتش هجر و فراق کی پزد وا رهاند از نفاق
For the one who is believed, apart from the fire of exile and separation who could cook him, who could free him from duplicity?”
Those who have just embarked on a spiritual path are still acerbic (khām), unripe, uncooked by the fire of love felt through exile (hijr), estrangement, separation (firāq), the suffering of not yet being unified, in harmony (nifāq).
At the beginning of the Masnavi, it is the flute that is separated from its place of origin, the cane has been cut to make a flute, blowing where it has been cut, a lamentation occurs: it burns with love, separated from its origin. (See: Rûmî: Listen to the ney Bishnow az ney)
رفت آن مسکین و سالی در سفر در فراق دوست سوزید از شرر
This poor (meskyn miserable) went on a year-long journey in the separation (firāq) of the friend (dūst) he was burned by the sparks
پخته گشت آن سوخته پس باز گشت باز گرد خانهٔ همباز گشت
He was cooked this burned then he returned he returned circling around the house (khāne) of the friend (hambāz playmate, who plays together)
حلقه زد بر در بصد ترس و ادب تا بنجهد بیادب لفظی ز لب
He circled around the door with a hundred fears and politenesses so that an unpolished expression didn’t leave his lips.
بانگ زد یارش که بر در کیست آن گفت بر در هم توی ای دلستان
His friend (yār) gave voice: “Who is at the door?” He said, “At the door too is you, O beloved (delsetān the one who removes the heart).
گفت اکنون چون منی ای من در آ نیست گنجای دو من را در سرا
He said, “Now that you are me, O me, between there is no room for two selves in the house (sarā palace, abode, used to indicate the heavenly house or the earthly one, the two worlds are also called two sarā)