mind’ and bereft of self-consciousness (bīhūshī). Such bacchanalian terminology is
not personally subjective vagaries that express the poet’s melancholic moods, but
actually cognitively precise descriptions that depict exactly the lover’s intoxication
during contemplation of the beloved’s beauty, his excitement at imagination of her
phantom (khiyāl) and his rapture at the recollection of her beauty previously
witnessed in time-before-time on the Day of the pre-Eternal Covenant (rūz-ialast)
between man and God.^77
Since the reflection of the Beloved’s beauteous countenance is everywhere cast
down and reflected in the ‘goblets of phenomena’ throughout the Tavern of the
Universe, the lover is always intoxicated and bereft of self in a drunken transport.
Loving that absolute Intellectual Beauty, he attains the spiritual station of ‘true idol-
atry’ (but-parastī-yiḥaqīqī),^78 which is the inner meaning of Ḥāfiẓ’s verse:
The Friend’s reflection cast upon the goblet’s surface- Her countenance there – in contemplation I’ve witnessed.
Of such timeless drunken pleasure, you are, alas, oblivious.^79
Ḥāfiẓ’s ‘timeless drunken pleasure’ is not of the unessential or accidental kind, but
rather substantial, since the intoxication it bestows – unlike the drink made from
the vine or imbibed through the heady wine of ambition, pride and thoughtlessness
is not followed by any hangover or morning-after headache. Hence, it can never be
nullified by repentance or by a recovery of sobriety. Those drunk on this wine never
commit the sin of becoming teetotallers; as Sa‛dī says: ‘no man drunk on that wine
served up at the dawn of pre-Eternity becomes sober until vespers are said on the
night of the Day of Resurrection.’
This pre-Eternal ‘wine of the Covenant’ (sharāb-ialast), mentioned so often by Sufi
fedelid’amore, refers to the recollection of the pledge that was sealed in pre-Eternity
(ahd-iAlast) between the uncreated souls of Adam and their Lord. ‘Am I not your
Lord [alastubi-rabbikum]?’, God asked the yet uncreated souls of Adam’s offspring. In
this unconscious and uncreated state, they professed: ‘Yes, we bear witness to it
[balāshahidnā]’.^80 Humankind’s troth plighted to God in that atemporal moment of
Islam’s metahistory comprises the Sufi Religion of Love’s unwritten constitution.
What is missing from this narration for the ordinary reader is the fact that the word
balā, which means ‘yes’ in the above verse in Arabic, signifies ‘calamity’ as well. The
Sufis took the implication of this Arabic linguistic pun very seriously, believing that
the human soul in Eternity before its incarnation in time had actually committed
itself in advance to undergo all life’s trials and tribulations.
The ‘wine of the Covenant’ that the mystic imbibes thus tastes ‘bitter’, just like
the fruit of the vine. Although this wine is quite capable of making a man pass out
in a drunken stupor ‘under the table’, as Ḥāfiẓ says,^81 its ‘bitterness’ has always been
interpreted by the Sufis as an allegory for the pains and troubles man must endure
when he mobilizes himself in service to his fellow men. In fact, ‘servitude to
mankind’ is both the best description of love’s creed and the best indicator of one’s
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