counterpart that could be set beside it for comparison; yet in certain respects it resembles the body’s need for food and drink, although the differences between the two are many.

For the servant’s true reality is his heart and his spirit, and they can find no soundness except with their God—Allah, there is no god but He. In this world they know no tranquillity save in remembering Him; they toil toward Him with unremitting toil, and they will inevitably meet Him, nor can they be made whole without that meeting.

If the servant should experience pleasures or joy through something other than Allah, such delight never endures. It shifts from one form to another, from one person to the next. At one moment he may enjoy it under certain circumstances, yet at another the very thing that once gratified and pleased him neither gratifies nor pleases; indeed, its mere presence and his attachment to it may harm and distress him.

His God, however, is indispensable to him in every condition and at every moment, and wherever he may be, Allah is with him. Thus our Imam, Abraham the Friend—peace be upon him—declared: “I do not love things that set.” (6:76). And the greatest verse in the Noble Quran is: “Allah—there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Self-Sustaining.” (2:255). Elsewhere I have discussed at length the meaning of al-Qayyūm, demonstrating that it denotes the One who is everlasting and abiding, who neither perishes nor ceases to exist, in any respect whatsoever.