The True Purification
303
Purity of body without the purity of heart is just outward apparel concealing impurity. But purity of heart cleanses the body as well even if one were to have been at some point the consummate moral wretch before attaining this purity. This is what the story of Jesus (ع) and the prostitute about to be stoned and/or Mary Magdalene is supposed to convey. There is only one agency that purifies the heart authentically, and that is sincere love that progressively becomes unconditional and ruptures into the Divine reality itself, whether it be for another human being or for God as its axiomatic starting point(s). This is its power as an alchemical agent which is simultaneously Fire that burns and Water that cleanses, i.e.the alchemical mercury/quicksilver.
We humans - even those of us claiming religion - don't understand this dynamic properly and how pivotally important it is beyond everything else. New Age and related have appropriated cliches like "unconditional love" but without truly comprehending its Tantra, this alchemy. On top of that, the warped conditioning of modern life has made us usually blind to it although mainstream humans everywhere have always been quite stupid in that regard, as history has proven repeatedly everywhere.
But since God works in mysterious ways, consider that when an opportunity arises to that end to exercise this reality in the here and now beyond abstractions, this opportunity has come directly from the Almighty Itself - and it is a Gift whatever its packaging. Here if you allow the rational mind to takeover to make sense of things and judge an object or situation by its skewed rationalizations, you have totally failed the All-High's test to you and rejected this Gift, and there is truly nothing more blameworthy than this because that Gift is Allah (swt) Herself, the Goal of all things!
And this is why the purification of the heart for the wayfarer is far more important than just the fleshy body because with the purification of the heart, the wayfarer will see God in the loci of forms It will Self-Disclose (تجلّي) to him/her because that heart becomes a mirror who will behold the Manifestation of the Beloved "at two bows length or nearer" (Qur'an 53:9), for at this juncture of its true purification, "the heart does not lie regarding what it sees" (ibid. 11).
مَا كَذَبَ ٱلْفُؤَادُ مَا رَأَىٰٓ
Be that as it may, only the true gnostic wayfarer comprehends this station for what it well and truly is: the realization of Tawḥīd in the horizons (الآفاق) and in the soul (نفس), the Unity in the multiplicity (وحدت در كثرت), the abstract (مجرّد) within the concrete (مركب), the Spirit within matter, purusha and prakriti united, Shiva and Shakti in Union because it is one of the meanings behind what ꜤAlī (ع) tells Kumayl in their dialogue about Ultimate Reality (الحقيقة):
The magnetic/ecstatic attraction of the Divine Exclusive Oneness by the attributive apprehension of the Divine Unicity!
جذب الأحدية لصفة التّوحيد
