names

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.

It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.

Some time ago I took a trip on the Hudson and Manhattan Transit System. Not being familiar with the names of the various stops, I asked the man next to me the name of the station where we had just stopped. He replied, "I've been riding this line for fifteen years and I only know two stops: where I get on and where I get off."

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold:- Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?" -The vision raised its head, And with a look made all of sweet accord, Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so." Replied the angel, Abou spoke more low, But clearly still, and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed. And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

All {the divine Names} refer to one and the same Named One. But each one of them refers to an essential determination, different from all the rest; it is by this individualization that each Name refers to the God who reveals himself to and by the theophanic imagination.

. . . in Ibn 'Arabi's own terminology Al-Lah is the Name which designates the divine Essence qualified and invested with the sum of His attributes, whereas al-Rabb, the Lord, is the personified and particularized Divine in one of its attributes (hence the divine Names designated as so many "lords", arbab).

Paraphrased: The devotee who is faithful to the divine Name that is His Lord recognizes his Beloved in every Beloved and in every divine Name the totality of Names, because among the divine Names there is a sympathetic union.

. . . the Divine Being is not fragmented, but wholly present in each instance, individualized in each theophany of His Names, and it is invested in each instance with one of these Names that He appears as Lord.