by Caroline McCutcheon
On the Sufi Path men and women are considered to be equal in their capacity for spiritual endeavor. Those drowned in the Ocean of Love lose all trappings of individual identity and transcend the distinction between ‘he’ and ‘she’. Since all aspirants on the Path are essentially one in spirit, the outer differences of sex, race and social position are irrelevant. In the words of the great Sufi master Nur Ali Shah to his wife Bibi Hayati:
In the realm of love, sincerity and Sufism, you too are a man. True manhood is courage. The real man is one who never retreats, who holds firm once he has put down his feet in search of perfection.
Examples of women who inspired others through their courage and single-mindedness exist throughout the history of Sufism. The greatest of them all is Rābe‘a, whose own spiritual excellence made her renowned as the Crown of Men. Of her, ‘Attār wrote:
No, she was not a single woman
But a hundred men over.
Robed in the quintessence of pain
From head to foot, immersed in the Truth,
And liberated from all superfluous excess.
This extraordinary woman experienced an early life full of circumstantial misfortune. She was born into extreme poverty, the fourth daughter of a poor but pious family. While she was still a young child, both her parents died, and later, during a famine in Basra, what remained of her family were scattered. Rābe‘a fell into the hands of an unscrupulous trader, who sold her as a slave to a nobleman of the town. Although deserted by worldly fortune, an orphan among strangers, Rābe‘a was supported and sustained by an inner Friend, and in Him she took refuge.
One night, while she was at prayer, her master observed with astonishment a lamp glowing in the air above her head. The light from this lamp illumined the entire house. The nobleman, realizing the special grace of his slave, released her from bondage. Rābe‘a left his house and went to live in some deserted ruins outside the town, where she settled down in poverty and seclusion.
Rābe‘a made one pilgrimage to Mecca, and after completing it, returned to live in her ruined cell. Here she remained, devoting herself to spiritual practice and illuminating those who came to her for guidance.
Rābe‘a lived in extreme poverty, refusing all gifts with the words, “I have no need of this world.” Her nights were spent in prayer and her days in fasting, yet within this austere life she burned in the fire of her yearning for God.
When questioned about the substantial reality of her faith, Rābe‘a replied:
Neither fear of hellfire nor hope
of heavenly reward excites my
love and worship of God…
My longing and love, rather,
is the sole basis of my devotion to Him.
Rābe‘a’s prayers and fasting were the outer symbol of her inner detachment, her turning away from everything but His face. Rejecting both worlds, she was nourished by His light and the sweetness of His companionship. Her self-denial was an affirmation of her love, an outward sign of her inner attention on the One, Who was her fountain of mercy and blessing. Despite the hardship of her early life and the material deprivation of her later years, Rābe‘a never complained or asked for assistance from anyone, for she considered herself to be truly fortunate. While the outward aspects of her life may appear to us as harsh and barren, the inner reality was grace beyond measure. At dawn she sang:
How much grace, how many gifts,
Favors and bounty have You shown to me!
Your love I seek; in it I am blessed;
O radiant eye of my yearning heart!
You are my heart’s commander!
As long as I live, I shall never be free from You.
Be satisfied with me, O my heart’s desire,
And I am fortunate, blessed.
While Rābe‘a’s asceticism expressed her love of God, her seclusion from people also betokened her loyalty to Him. In the company of others she feared that she might forget Him, if only for an instant. As she explained:
I have so absolutely broken my ties with people that when each day breaks, fearing that people will distract me from Thee, I pray, “Lord, engage me solely with Yourself, so that none shall distract me from You.”
Rābe‘a was terrified of losing God’s love through her own lack of single-mindedness. “My deepest fear,” she confessed, “is separation, for I have become so accustomed to Him.” Her total attention to God was uncompromising, allowing nothing at all to distract her from the object of her quest. She did not merely reject normal life or seek escape from the world and its entanglements; she valiantly chose to dedicate herself utterly and completely to God.
Rābe‘a was a rare example of someone who belonged totally to God; she could not share her life with anyone else. “I do not belong to myself,” she said in response to a marriage proposal, “I am His possession.” Her heart had no room for hatred, not even for Satan, for God’s love alone resided within her.
Thus, Rābe‘a always lived alone, childless and detached from others. Such a life, however, did not shelter her from the joys and sorrows of human experience. Her love of God was so intense that it surpassed in tenderness and passion the love of a human relationship. Her relationship with God was real and tangible to her, as real as the light that illumined her cell every night — a light that shone without a lamp. Rābe‘a would talk quietly to God every evening, saying:
My Lord, all has grown quiet; and
every outer motion has become still.
Every lover has secreted himself with his sweetheart.
Now I am at last secluded with You.
The fervor and urgency of Rābe‘a’s love of God was a spark that set fire to the dry asceticism of earlier Sufism and enflamed the hearts of those who followed her. Rābe‘a gave herself so completely to the fire of His love that she became a torch to others, exhorting them by her example to “Light the world, though like wax you burn yourself.” Her impact on Sufism is well summed up in the following story:
Once a group of gnostics saw her running with a bucket of water in one hand and a flaming torch in the other. “O lady of the hereafter, where are you going? What are you doing?” they asked. Rābe‘a replied, “I am going to set Heaven afire and put out Hell’s flames. In this way, the wayfarers to God can do away with both these veils and clearly see the true goal.”
There are many stories written about Rābe‘a, illustrating her piety and special grace. These anecdotes alone do not give us a complete picture of her, for they seldom reveal her inner state. It is easy to perceive her as a remote figure, living in the distant past, in a time when asceticism and piety were the rule for aspirants on the Sufi Path. If, however, we look at the poems and prayers attributed to her, we see the timelessness of the inner Rābe‘a — the lover, who, veiled from the eyes of strangers, burned in the flames of her heart’s longing. At sunrise she would sing:
O my joy, my longing,
O my sanctuary, my companion,
O provision of my way,
O my ultimate goal!
You are my spirit;
You are my hope;
You are my friend.
Without You, O my life and love,
I would never have wandered
across these endless lands.
In Rābe‘a’s poetry we can still feel the intensity of her yearning — a yearning that consumes the veil of time. She was ecstatic in her passionate desire for her Beloved; she could think of no one but Him. He was her sustenance, refreshment, and repose. Rābe‘a is a model for anyone, in any time, for she surrendered herself totally to love.
In conclusion, let us remember Rābe‘a’s admonition to the people of her time — one that still applies to us today:
O children of Adam! Your eyes
provide no passage to perceive the Truth, nor is there any access to Him through speech. The true work is in the heart. Try to acquire an awakened heart,
for when the heart is awakened,
it will have need of a friend.