Love, That You May Know!

Sages and seers have always emphasized that the gaze of Majnun can perceive the beauty of Layla. Such a view is based on the idea that within every human being lie valuable treasures and reserves of beauty and loveliness that only become visible to eyes that gaze upon the expanse of another’s being with delight and amorous subtlety. There is a center of attraction, an amber-like quality, in the essence of every creature that is experienced solely when we behold it with kindness and affection.

Love is transcending the self and expanding one’s own boundaries. It is opening oneself toward another, and until this openness toward another—which is the requisite of love—is realized, the delicate dimensions and facets of human beings remain undiscovered.

“The Little Prince replied: … I don’t have much time. I have friends to find and many things to understand.

The fox said: One cannot know anything until it has been tamed. People no longer have time to know anything.”(1)

It seems we have no way to know the truth and delight in the hidden subtleties of existence, unless we open a window of love toward one another.

“Open the window,

If you open the window,

I will show you

Beauty.”

(Hamid Mosaddeq)

The experience of beauty requires love. You have seen how fathers and mothers, who are in love with their little children, dote on them so much! What delight they take in watching them! Because they love them, they perceive their grace, charm, and sweetness so well. Someone who sits apart, indifferent, feels no delight upon seeing that child. They see little beauty in him, because they lack a loving gaze. The spiritual sages said that to see beauty, one must be in love with life and existence.

Sohrab Sepehri said: “Beauty is the amorous interpretation of forms.” When we look at phenomena lovingly, beauty finds meaning. When we interpret and narrate what we have seen lovingly, beauty emerges. The loving gaze is a gaze that does not seek possession or profit. In true contemplation, absence from the self and one’s own interests is necessary:

“We cannot see well unless we do not seek our own interests in what we see.”(2)

The tale of Layla and Majnun has served as a touchstone for profound spiritual thinkers to express valuable aesthetic truths. Layla appeared very beautiful in Majnun’s eyes, but others saw her as ordinary. They had not sat in Majnun’s gaze and did not look upon Layla with affection and love. Sa‘di said:

“One must look upon Layla’s beauty through the window of Majnun’s eye for the secret of his contemplation to be revealed to you.”(3)

Shams Tabrizi’s account has another subtlety:

“As it is told that Harun al-Rashid said, ‘Bring this Layla before me so that I may see her, for Majnun has cast such a passion from love of her into the world, and from East to West lovers have made the tale of his love a mirror for themselves.’ They spent much and devised many a ruse, and brought Layla. The Caliph entered into seclusion at nightfall, candles lit, and gazed upon her for a while, and for a while bowed his head. He said to himself, ‘Let me engage her in speech; perhaps through speech that something will become more apparent in her face.’ He turned to Layla and said, ‘Are you Layla?’

She said:

‘Yes, I am Layla, but you are not Majnun! That eye which is in Majnun’s head is not in your head. Behold me with the gaze of Majnun. The beloved must be seen with the lover’s gaze.’”(4)

The Caliph said to Layla, “Are you the one

For whom Majnun became distraught and astray?

You are not more than other beauties.”

She said, “Be silent, since you are not Majnun.”

(Masnavi: Book One)

If you wish her to be sugar to you,

Then behold her through the eyes of her lovers.

(Masnavi: Book Four)

Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani wrote:

“O dear one! You must have the quality of Majnun, to be able to lose your life upon hearing Layla’s name. One who is free from care, what fear or knowledge can he have of Layla’s love! And one who is not a lover of Layla, what is incumbent upon him is not what is incumbent upon the path of Majnun. Not everyone has the eye to behold Layla’s beauty and become a lover of Layla, until he finds that eye to become a lover of Layla, and this love itself is a necessity.”(5)

This mystical idea and perspective is well expressed by Pascal, the French philosopher and theologian:

“In short, when speaking of human affairs, it has been said that we must know them in order to love them, and this has become a proverb; but the saints, on the contrary, when speaking of divine matters, say that we must love them in order to know them, and that we only enter into truth through charity; from this saying they have made one of their most useful maxims.”(6)

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1- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, translated by Mohammad Ghazi, Pocket Books Company, 16th edition, 2001

2- Resurrection, Christian Bobin, translated by Sirus Khazaeli, Sedaye Moaser Publishing, 2nd edition, 2009

3- Saadi’s Golestan, Chapter Five, Phoenix Publications, edited by Mohammad Ali Foroughi, 19th edition, 2007

4- A Jar of Divine Wine: Selections from Shams’s Discourses, selected and annotated by Mohammad Ali Movahed, Sokhan Publishing, 2nd edition, 2009

5- The Property of Mirroring: Selections from the Works of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani, Najib Mayel Heravi, Ney Publishing, 2nd edition, 2010

6- Quoted from: Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited, Charles Taylor, translated by Mostafa Malekian, Shur Publishing, 2008

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Love, That You May Know!

Author: Sedigh Qotbi

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