2:223 Your women are your tillage, so come to your tillage as you like.
The servant has a soul and a heart. The soul is from the low world, and its root is water and dust. The heart is from the high world, that is, the lordly subtlety, and its foundation is pure light. The soul's station is absence, and the heart's station is witnessing. Muṣ?afā alluded to this with his words, "There is no heart that is not between two fingers of God."
God gave the soul, which stays absent, the same living quarters as its similars, and He made this a favor. He said, "Your women are your tillage, so come to your tillage as you like." In another place He said, "Marry the women who seem goodly to you" [4:3]. In another place He said, "That you may rest in them, and He placed between you love and mercy" [30:21].
Finding one's own shares and inclining toward similars in this manner is the portion of the soul, which remains in the lowland of jealousy. As for the heart, it has the station of contemplation, so it is forbidden to incline toward any others or to come down to any creature. Until it cuts itself off from creation and makes its own secret core pure of other than the Real, it will not come under these words: "He loves those who make themselves pure" [2:222]. The Lord of the Worlds loves those who are pure in this manner. He calls them men when He says, "In it are men who love to make themselves pure, and God loves those who make themselves pure" [9:108].
Know also that in this house of the decree, vile things are of two sorts. One is vileness of entity, which can never become pure by washing. If you put a corpse into the ocean a thousand times, it will never become pure, for the impurity belongs to its own entity.
The other is vileness of attribute. At root something is pure, but an impurity has reached it. If you wash it, it becomes pure. This impurity, however, is of two sorts. One is flimsy, so it becomes pure with a single water. The other is heavy, so it must be washed with water and dust to become pure.
At root vile things in the religion have the same divisions. One is vileness of the entity, which will never disappear. This is the vileness of the associationism that He does not forgive: Surely God does not forgive that anything be associated with Him [4:48]. The associators are impure [9:28]. These remain in hell everlastingly, for their impurity is the impurity of the entity and it cannot receive purity, and paradise is the place of the pure.
The other vileness in the religion is vileness of attribute, which is disobedience, and it can receive purity. This also is of two sorts: some sins are small and others are great. The small sins are flimsy and become pure with one pass through hell: And none of you there is but will enter into it [19:71]. The great sins are thick and do not become pure with one pass. They remain longer, but they do not remain everlastingly, for the entity is not impure, and the impurity can be made pure. If someone is washed in this abode with the water of repentance and remorse, he becomes pure. If he does not become pure in this abode, then in the house of retribution nothing but fire will make him pure. Unless the impurity is burnt away, he will not be pure, and unless he is pure, he will not reach the pure Lord. "Surely God is goodly and accepts only the goodly."
Revelation came to David: "'Make for Me a pure house in which I may reside!' Make My house pure so that the Lord of the House may settle down in it.'"
He said, "O Lord, how shall I make it pure?"
He said, "Strike it with the fire of passion so that everything that does not have My lineage will be burnt. Then sweep it with the broom of remorse so that if any caprice of the soul remains not burnt by the fire of passion, the broom of remorse will sweep it away, for the bride of union with Me does not get along with the soul's caprice."
The bride of religion will not show her face to you, brother,
till your soul's caprice has down settled in the religion's road.
How long will you sit like women in hope of color and scent?
Fix your aspiration on the road and set out like a man. [DS 205]