Better than Heaven - Prose of Ramadhan Part 32

Better than Heaven (Ramadhan Verses #18)

Mr. Baldy: You are not seeking heaven?

Mr. Beardy: Not really.

Mr. Baldy: Then where do you wish to go after you die? What is that place which you desire better than heaven?

Mr. Beardy: What I seek is not a place.

Mr. Baldy: Then what?

Mr. Beardy: What I seek is a feeling and a state.

Mr. Baldy: Your own?

Mr. Beardy: No, not mine. I simply want God and the Prophet to feel happy, and be in a state of happiness with me. In that way, does it matter anymore where I will be?

Mr. Baldy: Hmm. You got a point there.

Mystics, neo-mystics, pseudo-mystics and plain old sinners (like yours truly) like to write sometimes about the 'spiritual stations' as if they are train stations that dot the railway line ending up at Godville, Heaven. I myself am guilty and have written thus in this almanac. Such analogies are of course nothing but useful visualisations of something that is actually a state of belief, feeling and knowledge. Essentially, when one discourses about spiritual stations, you must leave the trappings of physicality and enter into the universe of metaphysics. It simply does not matter where you are now, but more importantly how you feel and what you know - and the answers to that does not reside in you, it resides in the hands of God. If God is pleased with you, no doubt He will make His feelings known to you and within you. He is after all, God.

When you and I kaput, we end our physical existence to enter into realm of the soul. The realm of the heart is so metaphysical that 'metaphysical' itself as a concept expires in its relevance ("Metaphysical?" remark the Angels, "That is SO last season."). Reality is directly and immediately created and recreated by what our heart and conscience aspires to, without any physical condition to hamper our vision and its manifestations. Heaven is a wonderful thing, I am sure. God said so. But for the sufis, for those saints and mureeds of their tariqas, it is still a secondary object to God and the Prophet. Why pander to the wine in the dusty cellars when God, Most Wonderous Distiller of Love and Its Intimacies awaits your pleasure?

Have a lovely Thursday, sunshine. And do consider the old saint's question - If you have God's pleasure, why settle for any other?

wa min Allah at-taufiq.