Yes if a lover with metaphorical love for the transitory face of the world
sees the ugliness of the decline and transience on that face and turns away
from it. If he searches for an immortal beloved and is successful in seeing
the world's other two most beautiful faces that of mirror to the Divine Names
and the tillage of the hereafter his illicit metaphorical love then starts
to be transformed into true love. But on the one condition that he does not
confuse with the outside world his own fleeting and unstable world which is
bound to his life. If like the people of misguidance and heedlessness he forgets
himself plunges into the outside world and supposing the general world to
be his private world becomes the lover of it he will fall into the swamp of
Nature and drown unless extraordinarily a hand of favor saves him. Consider
the following comparison which will illuminate this truth.
For example if on the four walls of this finely decorated room are four full-length
mirrors belonging to the four of us then there would be five rooms. One would
be actual and general and four similitudes and personal. Each of us would
be able to change the shape form and color of his personal room by means of
his mirror. If we were to paint it red it would appear red if we were to paint
it green it would appear green. Likewise we could give it numerous states
by adjusting the mirror; we could make it ugly or beautiful give it different
forms. But we could not easily adjust and change the outer and general room.
While in reality the general and personal rooms are the same in practice they
are different. You could destroy your own room with one finger but you could
not make one stone of the other stir.
Thus.
this world is a decorated house. The life of each of us is a full-length mirror.
We each of us have a world from this world but its support center and door
is our life. Indeed that personal world of ours is a page and our life is
a pen; many things that are written with it pass to the page of our actions.
If we have loved our world later we have seen that since it is constructed
on our life it is fleeting transitory and unstable like our life. We have
perceived and understood this. Our love for it turns towards the beautiful impresses
of the Divine Names to which our personal world is the mirror and which it represents.
Moreover if we are aware that that personal world of ours is a temporary seed-bed
of the hereafter and Paradise and if we direct our feelings for it like intense
desire love and greed towards the benefits of the hereafter which are its
results fruits and shoots then that metaphorical love is transformed into
true love. Otherwise manifesting the meaning of the verse. "Those who
forget God; and he made them forget their own souls. Such are the rebellious
transgressors (59:19)" a person will forget himself not think
of life's fleeting nature suppose his personal unstable world to be constant
like the general world and imagine himself to be undying; he will fix himself
on the world and embrace it with intense emotions; he will drown in it and depart.
Such love will be boundless torment and tribulation for him. For an orphan-like
compassion a despairing softness of heart will be born of that love. He will
pity all living beings. Indeed he will feel sympathy for all beautiful creatures.
which suffer decline and the pain of separation but he will be able to do
nothing he will suffer in absolute despair.
However the first man who is saved from heedlessness finds an elevated antidote
for the pain of that intense compassion. For in the death and decline of all
the living beings he pities he sees the mirrors of their spirits in which
are depicted the perpetual manifestations of the enduring Names of an Ever-Enduring
One to be immortal; his compassion is transformed into joy. He also sees behind
all beautiful creatures which are subject to death and transience an impress.
a making beautiful an art adornment bestowal and illuminating which are
permanent and which make perceived a transcendent beauty a sacred loveliness.
He sees the death and transience to be renewal for the purpose of increasing
the beauty refreshing the pleasure and exhibiting the art and this augments
his pleasure his ardor and his wonder.