واصف علی واصف

          Let us say the moon is your beloved. In that case its light is the beloved’s memory. When your beloved is with you, you don’t remember him. When his memory is there, the beloved is not present. The nearness of one must result in the distancing of the other. Togetherness with one leads to parting from the other. Togetherness with your beloved means a separation from his memory. And togetherness with his memory denotes a separation from your beloved. In other words, there is togetherness ensconced within each parting and parting is an element of every togetherness. If love is regarded as a longing for the beloved it must partake of separation. The existence of desire is limited to what you observe. Desire comes into being by seeing. It is the memory of the seen which nourishes the desire. The desire to see again what we once saw is love. Love will always pass through the stages of parting. Love retains it youthfulness in the infernos of parting and freezes in the icy chambers of togetherness.

          It is not something worth saying. It is something to be pondered upon only. The angels all the time enjoy the nearness of Allah. They are in a state of togetherness. They have been deprived of love. They are angels and nothing but angels. Man is in a state of separation. Man is in love. Man remembers. And this is the difference between this world and the one to come. Here you have Allah’s memory in your hearts and there you will be able o look upon Him. Man as a created being is nobler than others. His nobility lies in the fact that he has separation and love and memory and yearns for togetherness.

          And the angels? They are given to obedience and not to love. Love is a fire, which melts you down, love is a musical instrument, love is silence, and love is sound. In love lies concealed the greatest secret of beauty, that is, parting is what you get out of togetherness.

          The great masterpieces of the world are miracles wrought by separation: Romeo and Juliet, Heer and Ranjha, Sassi and Punnu, Sohni and Maheenwal and many other similar in nature, which beguile the heart, set it on fire and melt it down, are the eternally fresh billows of the sea of separation.

          The most precious gift, which the beloved can offer to the lover, is the gift of parting. The days of parting are the days, which build up one’s personality. There are the very days when a man’s inner being awakes. Dormant and hidden talents are discovered. Man’s inner dimension is revealed to him. The memory of the beloved keeps him awake and the man who goes without sleep obtains much else also from the night of parting. The night of parting, the night of grief is the night when the knowledge of the self is granted. The tears of man write for him a great destiny. He who keeps awake remembering someone can never be called luckless. He who weeps because has given him pan is delivered from thousands of sorrows of the world. When a man prostrates himself for the sake of love he is delivered from thousands of prostrations. Those ho suffer the pangs of paring become familiar with the lament at midnight. They can also change the luck of their era for the better. Among these men are to be found those who have been dubbed destiny-makers?

          Parting is the lamp of awareness, the shining star of madness. It is the discovery that the sun can manifest itself in a sandgrain. It is to perceive the whole within the part. It is to be aware that even the droplet contains in it the vast expanse of the sea.

          Togetherness is limited to one’s being whereas parting encompasses the entire cosmos, all the dimensions of the universe, bringing within its fold the understanding of the possibilities and impossibilities, of the mysteries of life and death.

          Parting has been described as the hoopoe of auspicious omen. It alone is termed the parrot of the sweet melody. Parting alone is the Plato or Galen, capable of tackling manifest and hidden diseases. Distances don’t matter to it and for it the ages are as nothing. The vastness of the earth and heavens is traversed only men of love.

          The parting from the beloved turns illusion into reality. What relation does the “what is besides” has with the “what is beyond”? It is a point which only a man of love can elucidate. Love turns the attributes into referential points which lead to the Being. Love alone knows where the manifestations of the Being are and where the Being itself is. By uniting with the sea, by helping the drop to attain the stage of imperishable ardency, changes it now into a dewdrop, now into a pearl, and now into a tear.

          All the light in the universe is only the memory of, only the love for, the Luminous Being. All the lofty demands of man’s existence are discoveries stemming from parting music, poetry, architecture, paintings, and the creation of literature _____ all these are nurtured in the billows of parting. All creative literature and literary output are the gift of love. It is beauty itself, which lights the lamp of pain in its seeker. The flame of these lamps is fed by the heart’s blood. But these are men who, although in the through of separation, transform their age into a festival of light with the help of these lamps.

          The point to ponder is this: What is it that emanates from the moon and becomes diffused the world over as moonlight? What mystery is it that the impatient lover, when expelled from the domain of the friend, becomes the solace of the ages?

          Togetherness is static and separation dynamic. Togetherness is death, parting is life and the glamour and colourfulness of life.

          Separation is not frustration. It is an extremely precious treasure, which you receive from the beloved. It is a trust handed over only to him who is capable of holding it. It is the trust at the mention of which mountains and earth and sky panicked and refused to accept it. This very trust is a grace bestowed by Allah upon the heart of man. The trust is love _____ not to be obtained through wealth, learning or wisdom. The housefly cannot have the heart of the moth. Allah gives of Hs bounty to whom He pleases; because He alone is Beauty and all the endeavours of love are brought about by and are a gift of His being far away.

          To cut it short, all these are but he manifestations of the beloved. As long as the beloved is before one’s eyes, it is the season of togetherness, the days of spring-tide. When the beloved takes up its abode in the lover’s heart the season of parting takes over. Those are the days of a moral spring. Pearls are formed when the season of separation is in full bloom. Flowers open, that is, blossoms of many a kind blow, stars fall from the sky of meditations, embers fall from the eyes. The world is a vale of separation. This land of ours is, in fact, merely a foreign country. It is the world of longings. There are prostrations of devotion in the Kaaba of memories and after that, following the manifestations of Being, there is nothing but the Being, nothing else. It is not for you to question anything. No chance for you to blink your eyes, no permission to the heart to beat fast. You are completely spell bound by beauty. There is silence in the pavilion of loveliness. No complaint is heard that the way hitherto, was perilous, no one protests that the parting is persistent. There is no awareness of being, no knowledge of not existing. The togetherness is only absorption. Separation is inebriation, it is ecstasy. In the great Sahara of remembrance there only flows a river of tears and from it the seekers drink the cup of eternal wine and daily die only to be resurrected daily. It is simply a matter of having a relationship and not one of being near or far away.