Aslam

Once Khizr was asked about songs. He said : Surely it is such a slippery stone upon which the feet of the learned can not remain firm. Song arouses the hidden feelings of a man as intoxicants raise the passion of man. But he is saved whom God saves by the light of His guidance.

The poet Sa'labi said with regard to the world in the first meaning of Sama in the following poems.

Leave the world, keep it not in your connection:
Benefits therefrom are less than its harms.
Remember always the angel of death , cruel and hard.
Many statements are there about the word's cruel nature, But it is good to me all life long, who will understand?
It has beautiful face which charms all men.
But its heart is filled up with destructive poison.

In the second meaning of Sama, these poems can be applied well to oneself, that is, to his condition of mind. God says : They don't fear God and He ought to be feared. In this case, he fears

Vol-II The Book of Wordly Usages 173

God for show and not out of fear or love for Him. In other words, he is not placed on a high spiritual plane. For this reason, The Prophet said: O God, I am unable to count Thy glory. Thou art as Thou praised Thyself. He also said : I pray to God for forgiveness seventy times everyday and night, This forgiveness is for reaching a higher plane of spirituality from its lower plane. In the third meaning of song, a man considers his present condition as little after seeing the advanced condition of others. This depends upon the proportion of the purity of his mind and his intellect.
The more his mind is pure, the more he is advanced to spirituality by hearing songs.

(d) The fourth condition is that of the hearer of songs who reached the highest stage of Ma'arfat after crossing different conditions and different stages. He is lost to everything except the knowledge of God. Even he loses his own personality, his own condition and his own actions and deeds. He is like a man who is tossing in the ocean being submerged therein. His condition is that of the women who cut their hands unknowingly seeing the exquisite beauty of Joseph. Thus the Sufi loses himslef and enters the stage of Fana Fillah, immergence in God. He loses himself from all things around him. Those who love God deeply cannot look to things other than God. He is like that intoxicated man who loses sense of all things.

The sage Abul Hasan Nuri said that he heard a man singing this song :-

O darling. I seek from the lasting love.
When it comes, intellect goes from me.