by this eating, which causes greater pain than the first. Thus, he suffers if he eats and suffers if he does not eat. Likewise, when someone is afflicted with a love that brings him no benefit—infatuation and the like—whether its object is a physical form, leadership, wealth, or something similar, he suffers and is sick and ailing if he does not obtain what he loves and seeks. Yet if he obtains it, his illness, pain, and suffering become even worse.

Similarly, when a sick person feels an aversion to the food and drink he needs, he is already in pain. Persisting in this state causes still greater pain, eventually killing him, unless the cause of his aversion to what benefits him and what he needs is removed. He suffers in the present, and his subsequent suffering will be far greater unless Allah restores him to health.

The envious person’s hatred of Allah’s blessing upon the person he envies is like a sick person’s aversion to healthy people eating and drinking, to the point that he cannot bear to watch them eat. His reluctance to fulfill his duty is like a sick person’s aversion to food and drink that would benefit him. Love and hatred that depart from balance and soundness in the soul are thus like appetite and aversion that depart from balance and health in the body.

The heart’s blindness and muteness—its inability to perceive realities and distinguish what benefits it from what harms it—are like bodily blindness and speechlessness: the inability to see things in their proper order, speak of them, and distinguish what is beneficial from what is harmful. And just as a blind person, upon gaining his sight, finds comfort, well-being, and joy to be something