The Kashf al-mahjúb: The oldest Persian treatise on Súfiism

The Shaykhs and spiritualists hold different views as to audition. Some say that it is a faculty appertaining to absence, for in contemplation (of God) audition is impossible, inasmuch as the lover who is united with his Beloved fixes his gaze on Him and does not need to listen to him; therefore, audition is a faculty of beginners which they employ, when distracted by forgetfulness, in order to obtain concentration; but one who is already concentrated will inevitably be distracted thereby. Others, again, say that audition is a faculty appertaining to presence (with God), because love demands all; until the whole of the lover is absorbed in the whole of the Beloved, he is deficient in love: therefore, as in union the heart (dil) has love and the soul (sirr) has contemplation and the spirit has union and the body has service, so the ear also must have such a pleasure as the eye derives from seeing. How excellent, though on a frivolous topic, are the words of the poet who declared his love for wine!

i.e., let my eye see it and my hand touch it and my palate taste it and my nose smell it: there yet remains one sense to be gratified, viz. my hearing: tell me, therefore, this is wine, that my ear may feel the same delight as my other senses. And they say that audition appertains to presence with God, because he who is absent from God is a disbeliever (munkir), and those who disbelieve are not worthy to enjoy audition. Accordingly, there are two kinds of audition: mediate and immediate. Audition of which a reciter (qárí) is the source is a faculty of absence, but audition of which the Beloved (yárí) is the source is a faculty of presence. It was on this account that a well-known spiritual director said: “I will not put any created beings, except the chosen men of God, in a place where I can hear their talk or converse with them.”