First Note

I addressed myself saying: O heedless Said! Know that it is unworthy of you to attach your heart to something that will not accompany you after this world comes to an end and on its destruction will part from you. It is not reasonable to fasten your heart to transitory things that will turn their backs on you and leave you when the age in which you live comes to an end, and will not befriend you on the journey through

the Intermediate Realm, or accompany you  to the door of the grave,2   and which,

leaving you for ever after one or two years, will burden you with their sins and out of spite abandon you at the moment of accomplishment.

If you are sensible, you will give up matters that will be shattered and destroyed under the blows of worldly revolutions and the stages of the Intermediate Realm and clashing upheavals of the hereafter; which are not able to accompany and befriend you on the  journey  to  eternity. Give them no  importance! Do  not grieve at their passing!

Consider your own nature; among your subtle faculties is one that will be content with nothing other than eternity and the Eternal One. It can address itself to none but He. It cannot  demean itself for any other. Should  you give it the whole world, it would not satisfy that innate need. It is the sovereign of your senses and faculties. So obey it, for it obeys the All-Wise Creator’s command! Find salvation!

Second Note

I had a true dream in which I said to people: “O man! One of the Qur’an’s principles  is  this:  consider  nothing  other  than  Almighty  God  to  be  greater  than yourself to the degree that you worship it. And do not consider yourself to be greater than anything else to the degree that you become arrogant and haughty before it. For just  as  all  creatures  are  equal  in  regard  to  their  distance  from  being  fit  to  be worshipped, so too are they equal in regard to their createdness.”

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2   See, Bukhari, Riqaq, 42; Muslim, Zuhd, 5; Nasa’i, Jana’iz, 52; Musnad, iii, 110.