The Bowl of Saki Commentary
Commentary for:
The secret of a friend should be kept as one's own secret; the fault of a friend one should hide as one's own fault.
Commentary from Hazrat Murshid SAM (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti, Samuel L. Lewis):
The Bowl of Saki Commentary, copyright © 1981, 2012 Sufi Ruhaniat International. All rights reserved.
From the Sufi point of view friendship means a union, and at the very least this union should transcend the realm of mind and thought. Do not consider friend as friend, consider friend as self. This is the condition in Djabrut where lovers are as one being. This is not to be confused with "soul-mate;" there is no "soul-mate" and all the members of the Spiritual Hierarchy form the single embodiment of One Master in a condition beyond Djabrut, called Lahut, which is inconceivable to mind.
Now the truth is that all planes interpenetrate, and for the earth plane it means that all principles operate here now. That is to say, what is true above must be practiced below if we want to bring God-Wisdom to earth. So in considering friend as none other than self, the critical faculty is never used even though in that process one may also have to cease praising the friend. In other words, remove all thought and analysis from the scene. This leads to negation of mind, which helps to blot out the fault of another by never referring to it; this does not acquit another, but it helps to help them.