Jami - From all eternity

art Josephine Wall

"From all eternity the Beloved unveiled His beauty in the solitude
of the unseen;
He held up the mirror to His own face, He displayed His loveliness
to Himself.
He was both the spectator and the spectacle; no eye but His had
surveyed the Universe.
All was One, there was no duality, no pretence of 'mine' or 'thine.'
The vast orb of Heaven, with its myriad incomings and outgoings,
was concealed in a single point.
The Creation lay cradled in the sleep of non-existence, like a child
ere it has breathed.
The eye of the Beloved, seeing what was not, regarded nonentity as
existent.
Although He beheld His attributes and qualities as a perfect whole
in His own essence,
Yet He desired that they should be displayed to Him in another mirror,
And that each one of His eternal attributes should become manifest
accordingly in a diverse form,
Therefore He created the verdant fields of Time and Space and the
life-giving garden of the world,
That every branch and leaf and fruit might show forth His various
perfections,
The cypress gave a hint of His comely stature, the rose gave tidings
of His beauteous countenance.
Wherever Beauty peeped out, Love appeared beside it; wherever Beauty
shone in a rosy cheek, Love lit his torch from that flame.
Wherever Beauty dwelt in dark tresses, Love came and found a heart
entangled in their coils.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul; Beauty is the mine and Love
the precious stone.
They have always been together from the very first; never have they
traveled but in each other's company."

from Mystics of Islam

 translated by by Reynold A. Nicholson