“You have permeated the very passage of my spirit; for this the khalil was called a khalil (an intimate friend).”

The one who “permeates the pathway of another’s spirit” is, in reality, his love for him, his awareness of him, and the like—not the beloved’s very essence.

Likewise someone else has said:
“He dwells within the heart, giving it life;
I do not forget him such that I would need to recall him.”

The “dweller in the heart” here is the object of one’s mental image, love, and knowledge; what resides in the heart is that knowledge and love, not the person’s actual being.

Another poet says:
“When the pool lies still in perfect clarity,
protected from the slightest stirring breeze,
The heavens appear within it, beyond all doubt,
and so too the sun and the stars.
Just so are the hearts of those granted unveiling:
in their limpid calm the majestic God is seen.”

People also say, “So-and-so has nothing in his heart but Allah, and nothing with him but Allah,” meaning that his heart contains only Allah’s remembrance, knowledge, love, awe, obedience, and the like. His heart is free of what fills the hearts of other creatures; within it is Allah alone.

In the same way it is said, “So-and-so has no one but So-and-so,” when a person is constantly invoking that name and giving him precedence over all others.

This is a wide-ranging manner of speech, while both speaker and listener know that the person’s very essence has not indwelt the heart, let alone merged with it. It is like what is said of a mirror when