The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys
Introduction
morality, presuming to prescribe different rules for themselves than for the common herd. The self-righteous have been notably unresponsive to the teachings and commands of new prophets. Jesus did not try to save the “righteous,” respected Scribes and Pharisees. He conferred His blessings not on those who were convinced that salvation was theirs but upon sinners who continued to hunger and thirst after righteousness. True mysticism is not the refuge of the scroundrel, or the haven of the self-lover, or the sanctuary of the fugitive from social responsibility. Through the Seven Valleys passes the Chosen Highway that leads to knowledge of God and service to man.
The
Four Valleys, an epistle written in
Baghdád after the composition of the
Seven Valleys, was addressed to the learned
Shay
kh ‘Abdu’r-Raḥmán of Karkúk, a city in ‘Iráqí Kurdistán. It sets forth four ways in which the Unseen is seen, the four stages of the human heart, and the four kinds of mystic wayfarers in the quest of the Intended One, the Beloved. The four divine states are given in this verse from the
Qur’án (
57:3): “He is the first and the last, the Seen and the Hidden; and He knoweth all things.”
—Robert L. Gulick, Jr
[1952]
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