So if a quality does not combine those two aspects, it is not true perfection; hence anyone who seeks the perfection of his soul should neither vie for it nor grieve over its loss.

True perfection is nothing other than the soul’s knowing its Originator and Maker, its sole Object of worship and true God—the One without whose knowledge, whose Countenance it seeks, and whose path leading to His good pleasure and honor it follows, the soul can have no soundness, bliss, or delight—and then accustoming itself to this until it becomes for it a fixed and abiding disposition.

Everything else—of sciences, ambitions, and deeds—lies between what brings the soul no benefit or completion at all and what actually returns to it with harm, deficiency, and pain, especially when any of that becomes ingrained; for then the soul is tormented by it in proportion to how inseparably it clings to it.

As for external refinements such as clothing, mounts, dwellings, status, and wealth, these are in reality mere loans granted for a while, after which the lender reclaims them. When He does, the soul suffers and is tormented to the degree of its attachment to them—particularly when it has taken them as the summit of its perfection. Once they are stripped away, it is confronted with the greatest deficiency, pain, and remorse.

Let anyone who desires the happiness and delight of his soul ponder this subtle point: most people, in truth, strive only to deprive their souls and burden them with pain, regret, and deficiency, all the while imagining that they are pursuing their souls’ happiness and bliss. A soul’s delight is in direct proportion to what it has attained of that knowledge, love, and spiritual journeying, and its pain and remorse are in proportion to what it has missed of them.

When the soul is bereft of that and void of it, nothing remains in it but the bodily and animal faculties by which it eats and drinks, mates, becomes angry, and pursues the rest of its pleasures and worldly conveniences. From these faculties it gains neither honor nor virtue, but rather baseness and deficiency; for through them it is merely akin to the beasts, belonging to their species, merging into their ranks, and becoming like one of them—indeed, the beasts may even surpass it in securing those enjoyments while being spared the disastrous consequences and the harm they bring upon themselves.