At the outset, let us point out that just as an ant, owing to its limited sight will see the point of the pen blackening a blank sheet of paper and not the fingers and hand of the writer, so the person whose mental sight is not keen will attribute the actions to the immediate doer only. But there are minds, which, with the searchlight of intuition, expose the lurking danger of wrongly attributing power to any except the all-powerful omniscient being. To them every atom in the universe speaks out the truth of this revelation. They find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones. The worldling will say: Though we have ears, we do not hear them. But asses also having ears do not hear. Verily there are such ears which hear words that have no sound, that are neither Arabic nor any other language, known to man. These words are drops in the boundless unfathomable ocean of divine knowledge: “If the sea were ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would surely be consumed before the words of my Lord are exhausted.”[77] THE LOVE OF GOD AND ITS SIGNS[78] Love of God is the highest stage of our soul’s progress and her summum bonum. Repentance, patience, piety, and other virtues are all preliminary steps. Although rare these qualities are found in true devotees and the commonality, though devoid of them, at any rate believe in them. Love of God is not only very rare: the possibility of it is doubted, even by some Ulamas who call it simply service. For, in their opinion love exists amongst species of the same kind, but God being ultra-mundane and not of our kind, His love is an impossibility and hence the much talked of ecstatic states of the “true lovers of God” are mere delusions. As this is far from truth and impedes the progress of the soul, by spreading false notions, we shall briefly discuss the subject. First we shall quote passages from the Quran and the Hadith testifying to the existence of the love of God. “O you who believe, whosoever from among you turns back from his religion, then Allah will bring a people: He shall love them, and they shall love him, lowly before the believers, mightily against the unbelievers, they shall strive hard in Allah’s way and shall not fear the censure of any censurer: this is Allah’s grace, He gives it to whom He pleases and Allah is ample-giving, knowing.”[79] “And there are some among men who take for themselves objects of worship besides Allah, whom they love. Allah and those who believe are stronger in love of Allah.”[80] These passages not only refer to the existence of the love of God but point to the difference in degree. The Prophet has taught us that the love of God is one of the conditions of faith. “None among you shall be a believer until he loves Allah and his apostle more than anything else.”[81]