M6:4041 — هر یکی را هست در دل صد مراد / این نباشد مذهب عشق و وداد

Translation: Every heart holds a hundred desires; This is not the creed of love and devotion.

Meaning: A heart fragmented by a multitude of scattered desires cannot truly abide by the principle of love and devotion, for genuine love demands singular focus and an undivided allegiance to the One Beloved.

This couplet from Mawlana, without a doubt, unveils one of the foundational tenets of his practical gnosis. He declares: “Every heart holds a hundred desires; this is not the creed of love and devotion.” This means that anyone whose inner world is fragmented by countless scattered aspirations and wishes is not on the path of love. Love, my friends, is the creed of unity and singularity, not dispersion and multiplicity.

Here, Mawlana emphasizes the core point I have often highlighted: love unifies the heart. A mind and intellect scattered in a hundred directions, in Mawlana’s view, hold no value. These are trivialities, each stealing a portion of your soul. In his own words: “One must gather the parts with love / So you become pleasant like Samarqand and Damascus.” Love here acts like a powerful magnet, drawing the dispersed particles of existence towards itself, bestowing unity upon them; much like scattered dust on a pathway, which the potter’s hand transforms into a single jar. It is this “Master of universal love” who unifies hundreds of thousands of disparate particles.

The analogy of the king and his messenger in Fihi Ma Fihi offers the clearest image: a king sends a messenger to bring one specific item. If the messenger returns not with that one item, but with a hundred other things, he has, in truth, accomplished nothing. However, if he brings only that one item, he has done everything. This illustrates that in the creed of love, the quantity of actions or the multiplicity of concerns is not only not a virtue, but rather the very essence of being misguided.

This is the same point we observe in the story of the two sisters in the presence of Jesus (peace be upon him). One sister busies herself with numerous acts of hospitality, while the other sits beside Jesus, combing his hair. Jesus remarks: “She does one thing; you do many.” That “one thing” is absolute presence and devotion in the beloved’s presence—an act superior to a thousand others.

And it is here that Mawlana reaches an even profounder point: “The Beloved became the sun of love’s day / Or the sun of the day, a veil for that face.” For a true lover, the sun of their day, the source of light and being, is the Beloved Himself, and they recognize no other sun. Indeed, even this apparent sun shining in the sky is merely a mask (niqāb) over the face of the Beloved’s true sun. Woe to him who fails to recognize this mask for what it is, for he will become an “ʿābid al-shams,” a sun-worshiper, a worshiper of forms (ṣūrat-parast), captivated by false manifestations. The task of the gnostic (ʿārif) and the prophet is to show us that behind this glove of nature, a hand is hidden; behind the forms of this world, a meaning is concealed; behind these causes and appearances, a singular Essence resides. It requires an eye that can “pierce through the causes” (sabab-sūrākh-kon) to tear away these veils and perceive unity within multiplicity. And this, precisely, is the creed of love and devotion, which seeks but one thing, sees but one light, and worships but one Soul.

Key takeaways

• Love is singular and wholehearted; a fragmented heart with a hundred scattered desires is incompatible with the creed of love.
• Love acts as a powerful magnet, unifying the dispersed particles of existence and imbuing them with meaning.
• The value of action in love is not in its quantity; performing “one task” with absolute presence and focus is superior to “a hundred scattered tasks.”
• For the true lover, the Beloved Himself is the sun and source of existence, and any other sun is merely a veil over His true countenance.
• One must possess an “eye that pierces through causes” to perceive the unity of the true Essence beyond multiplicities, lest one becomes a worshiper of forms.