84:6 "O Man! Thou art toiling to thy Lord with toil, and thou shalt encounter Him."
Some commentators say that here there is a transposition, so the meaning is this: O Man! Thou art toiling to thy Lord with toil, and thou shalt encounter Him when heaven is split open." In other words, "O child of Adam! The Day of Resurrection is the day of uprising and upstirring, the day of decision and judgment. God's awesomeness and harshness and the resurrection's hardness and tremendousness will split open the heavens. In humility and submissiveness the heavens will come under and acquiesce to the Real's command, and so also the earths. On that day, O Adamite, you will see whatever you did in this world-the troubles you took and the good and the evil you stored away-and you will find a recompense appropriate to your own doing and speaking."
O indigent man! If you want not to have wasted your life and not to be disgraced before witnesses tomorrow at the greatest gathering place and most tremendous courtyard, then put into practice today the advice that the Pir of the Tariqah used to give to his disciples: "Yesterday passed you by in your ignorance, and you cannot know what you will find tomorrow. Take advantage of today, for this is where you are and where you can act. Then tomorrow there will be no regrets."
A man must be the owner of the present moment. The owner of the present moment is someone whose occupation at the moment goes by with neither thought of the past nor reflection on the future. Reflecting on days past and pondering days future are to waste the moment. Anyone who recognizes his own present moment and accepts his moment will at once keep himself so busy with the religion that he will have no concern for yesterday and tomorrow. The great ones have said, "The Sufi is the child of the moment." The man who is a "Sufi" [ṣūfī], that is, in a state of "limpidness" [ṣafāÌ], is the child of his own moment, far from everything familiar to his nature.
Ḥasan Baṣrī said, "I have found people who were chevaliers and generous with this world. They would give away the whole world without reminding anyone of the favor, but with their own present moments they were so stingy that they would not give one breath of their own days to their fathers or children."
This is the same as those words spoken by the paragon of the world, the master of Adam's children: "I have a moment with God embraced by no proximate angel, nor any sent prophet."
One of the jurists of the community during the first period was preparing a composition to explain the Shariah and issues of jurisprudence. He was thinking about this when he heard the call of a bird, which interrupted his work. He said, "May its throat be cut!" At once the bird fell dead out of the sky. Sometimes images intrude on the state of the lords of the heart, and sometimes even if the whole world were to fall apart, they in their present moment would have no awareness whatsoever.
In Nīshāpūr Shaykh Abū Saʿīd Abu'l-Khayr sewed up the chains at the door of the house with felt so that when they were shaken, they would not intrude on his present movement. In this meaning someone sang,
Her face is wounded by the morning breeze
like a mirror rusted by a touch of breath.
I fear that if her friend should keep her naked
the sharpness of a creature's gaze would ruin her.
The Shaykh al-Islām Anṣārī said, "The present moment is that within which no one fits but the Real. In it the men are three: The present moment of one is quick like lightning, the present moment of another enduring, the present moment of a third overpowering.
"The one like lightning washes and cleans, the enduring distracts and keeps busy, the overpowering slaughters and kills. The one like lightning is born from thought, the enduring comes from the pleasure of remembrance, the overpowering arises from hearing and gazing.
"The one that is lightning forgets this world such that the remembrance of the next world becomes clear. The enduring keeps preoccupied from the next world so that the Real is seen face-to-face. The overpowering effaces the descriptions of human nature such that nothing remains but the Real."
O Man! Thou art toiling toward thy Lord with toil, and thou shalt encounter Him. Once Pir Bū ʿAlī Siyāh was walking in the bazaar. A beggar was saying, "By the rightful due of the Great Day, give me something!" The Pir fell down unconscious. When he came back to his senses, he was asked, "O Shaykh! What appeared to you at that time?"
He said, "The awe and tremendousness of the Great Day." Then he said, "Oh my sorrow at the lack of sorrow! Oh my remorse at the lack of remorse! A world is busy with the vestiges and traces and has put aside the Presence of the Living, the Self-Standing. No one whatsoever is thinking about this verse: Thou art toiling toward thy Lord with toil, and thou shalt encounter Him."
Someone sits himself down in front of the bride of nature and busies himself with gold and ornaments, color and scent. Then he wants the sultans of the Shariah and the kings of the Haqiqah to give him access to the pavilions of the secret and the tent of piety. What an idea! Someone puts on the shirt of disloyalty and pulls out the blade of caprice and then wants to join the chevaliers of the Tariqah in the row of limpidness and the dome of subsistence! No, never!
How will your inwardness travel with the steeds of kings?
Not until your thoughts mount on the steed of aspiration.
How long will you sit like a woman in hope of color and scent?
Fix your aspiration on the road and set out like man! [DS 205]
If you want your eyes to be anointed tomorrow with the collyrium of the gentle subtlety of Faces that day will be radiant [75:22], anoint the eye of your intellect today with the collyrium of the dust under the hooves of the Burāq of the Shariah and do not pull your feet out of the shackles and snare of Muḥammad, God's messenger. Watch over your own states, persevere in performing the obligatory and supererogatory acts, demand of your feet that they discharge what is rightfully due to the Real, and take an accounting of your own soul, speck by speck and grain by grain in keeping with caution in the road of the religion. Then tomorrow the realities of this verse will be unveiled to you: