Ghazzalfs Alchemy of Happiness. 



115 



ment, and then if suddenly he should become offended 

 with her and sell her to another person, and should after- 

 wards become conscious of his concealed love, his heart 

 would hourly assail him and sting him like a serpent. 

 The fire of regret and rage would burn within him, 

 so that he might be not only sick from its effects, but might 

 even die. Now if it is possible that such results should 

 follow from the loss of a female slave, consider what must 

 be the degree of grief and affliction of a man who is sud- 

 denly called upon to part with all his beloved objects in a 

 moment. Just as it might happen that the master of the 

 female slave should throw himself into the water to drown 

 himself, or cast himself into the fire to burn himself, all on 

 account of his separation from her, so those spirits of men 

 who are in their graves utter many wishes, exclaiming, " Ah ! 

 would that these scorpions and serpents, like those in the 

 material world, would only sting us and destroy us, that at 

 least we might be delivered from this torment." 



Pain in the world is an accident of the body, and passes 

 from the body to the spirit, and thus the spirit participates 

 in the torment. But in the future world, pain has its home 

 in the spirit itself, and hence it is excruciating. 



Every one bears away from this world within himself 

 the essence of his torment, but men are not aware of it. 

 God says in his eternal word, " Ah ! if you knew by in- 

 fallible knowledge, you would see hell, you w T ould see it 

 with the eyes of certainty," 1 and again He says in another 

 place in the glorious Koran, " Truly hell encompasseth the 

 infidels." 2 He does not say, it shall encompass, but rather 

 that it already surrounds them. . . . 



If you say, O student of the mysteries, that " the tor- 

 ments of the grave are occasioned by the relations arising 

 from this present world, from which no one can be exempt, 



1 S. 102 : 7. 

 2 S. 9: 49. 



