The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys
The Seven Valleys : the Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness
This is the goal thou didst ask for; if it be God’s will, thou wilt gain it.
In this city, even the veils of light are split asunder and vanish away. “His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation.”69 How strange that while the Beloved is visible as the sun, yet the heedless still hunt after tinsel and base metal. Yea, the intensity of His revelation hath covered Him, and the fullness of His shining forth hath hidden Him.
Even as the sun, bright hath He shined,
But alas, He hath come to the town of the blind!70
In this Valley, the wayfarer leaveth behind him the stages of the “oneness of Being and Manifestation”71 and reacheth a oneness that is sanctified above these two stations. Ecstasy alone can encompass this theme, not utterance nor argument; and whosoever hath dwelt at this stage of the journey, or caught a breath from this garden land, knoweth whereof We speak.
In all these journeys the traveler must stray
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