5-1742 If your spirit shall not live without the body, for whom is the blessing promised

in the words in Heaven is your provision310?

5-1743 If you are delivered from this provision of coarse scraps, you will fall to eating
dainty and noble food.

5-1744 Even if you are eating a hundred pounds’ weight of His food, you will depart
pure and light as a parī311.

5-1745 For they will not make you a prisoner of (incapacitated by) wind and dysentery
and crucify you with belly cramps.

5-1748 Ride like a ship on such a spiritual ocean by eating the Food of God and the
easily digested (delicious) nutriment.

4-2517 Perhaps, by the effect of the river of honey312, this poison of hatred may be
turned into honey in my body;

4-2518 Or by the reflection of the river of that pure milk, my captive intelligence may
be nourished for a moment;

4-2519 Or perhaps, by the reflection of those rivers of wine, I may be intoxicated and
catch a scent of the delight of obedience to the Divine command;

4-2520 Or perhaps, by the favour of those rivers of water, my barren devastated body
may be refreshed –

4-2521 Some verdure may appear on my barren soil, my thorn thicket may become the
Garden of everlasting Abode;

4-2522 Perhaps, by the reflection of Paradise and the four rivers, with God’s help, my
spirit may become a seeker of the Friend.

The four rivers in Paradise313. [1.7.8]

5-1628 The Throne is the mine (source) of justice and equity: beneath it are four rivers
filled with forgiveness:

5-1629 Everlasting rivers of milk, honey, wine and running water.

5-1630 Then from the Throne they flow into Paradise; some little thing (offshoot)
appears in this world too,

5-1631 Although here those four rivers are defiled – by what? By the poison of
mortality and indigestion.

310
Qur’ān 51:22.
311
Parī: in Persian mythology, a beautiful and benevolent supernatural being or fairy.
312
Qur’ān 47:15.
313
Qur’ān 47:15.

116