yourself if you remember the times of joy and pleasure, and the days of your sovereignty, power, command, prohibition, hunting, fowling, feasting, and glory?" He [Abu al-Tahir] said: The young man wept at his words until his beard was dyed [with tears]. The sheikh said to him as if reproaching him: "O my son, what is this anguish and anxiety that appeared from you? And what is this weeping? Is it sorrow over what you left of the pleasure of the world and the taste of diversion? For the sweetness of the world and its immediate delight are only followed by bitterness, loss, regret, and an evil consequence." The youth said: "Allah — may His secret be hallowed — knows that I did not weep over a blessing I left, nor a pleasure I missed, nor a state I lost. How could I weep over a pleasure that vanishes and a blessing that does not endure? And how can one feel lonely whose companion is his thought and whose sitting-partner is his remembrance? Rather, what made me weep are the years of my life I spent and the days that passed from me in ignorance and idleness. I marched yet I did not recognize therein a friend of Allah to show him loyalty, nor an enemy to show him enmity; I did not earn therein a reward nor did I fear therein a punishment."

The sheikh said to him: "O my son, indeed it is of the nature of the noble, pure, and virtuous soul that it raises itself above ugliness, indecencies, lying, and wickedness. It sees for itself pleasure and joy in its purity, virtue, nobility, status, and rank. When it witnesses its totality, it yearns for its spirituality, and for the return to its luminosity and the union with its source; it is not frightened by the parting of the world and its joy. And it is of the nature of the wicked, dark, murky, lonely, and impure soul that it is not deterred from the ugliness it performs, nor the indecencies it commits. It does not refrain from injustice, wickedness, and immorality, seeing in that fortune, pleasure, and joy. It sees the Truth manifest and clear yet denies it and disbelieves in it; it charges with disbelief the one who follows its religion and curses him. It loves the immediate and treats the hereafter as a lie. How different, how different are the two groups! «A group will be in Paradise and a group