The Bowl of Saki Commentary
Commentary for:
To love is one thing; to understand is another; one who loves is a devotee, but one who understands is a friend.
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.
This is the difference between Ishk and Ilm. The devotee is intoxicated by the love and light of God and longs for nothing else but to be bathed in the Universal Spirit; that one is a devotee, and sometimes a saint. But there is another stage: to be bathed in this ocean, to drink of the cosmic wine and not be drunk. This is an ultimate stage of sobriety, the fruit of which is Ilm—the supreme knowledge or universal intelligence, possession of which makes one a sage.
The devotee, possessing Ishk, becomes nothing in the sight of God; one is non-existing in the Existent. But the sage, possessing Ilm, is as God in the sight of nothing; one is Existent in the non-existent. Fana describes the devotee in Ishk, and Baqa describes the sage with Ilm.