From the Unveiling of Love by Muzaffer Ozak: Affection make a person forget

Affection makes a person forget about hunger and thirst and keeps him on the road of love. All creatures have taken their alloted share of affection. Even animals when they are in love will go for days without eating and drinking. That poor beast the camel, when love goes to his head, will eat no food for forty days. While in this state he can be made to carry many time his normal load. His inclination and desire for his darling render him immune to what ever kind of pain and torment he may suffer, so that he ignores it and does not even feel it.

Let us think and speak fairly:

If the affecton felt by the lovelorn camel – just an animal afterall – is such that he will give up eating and drinking because of it and endure such agony and suffering, what kind of evidence, what sort of proof can those who claim to have affecton for God, Exalted is He, show to prove this affection of theirs? Have they been able to give up whatever has been forbidden by God, Exhalted is He, Whom they say they love? Lovers cannot doze off in the presence of their beloved. How many nights have they spent without sleep for the sake of God? How many days have they been able to go without food and drink for the sake of their affection for God, Exhalted is He? For how many days have they been able to endure hardship, difficulty and trouble for the sake of that True Beloved

My dear friend:

Are you ready to sacrifice yourself, your property, your rankand station, even your children for the sake of your beloved? If you have not been, and will not be, able to do as much then your pretension and your claims to affection stem from nothing but falsehood and hypocrisy. one who has affection for Almight God must sacrifice himself for the sake of the beloved. Such is the symbol of affection. Be it Hell itself, the truly affectionate is capabale of prefering above Paradise the place to which his beloved invites him. Should the loved one summon him to death, he can regard that death as better than life itself.

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Muzaffer Ozak (1916 – February 12, 1985) was one of the head sheikhs of the Halveti-Jerrahi order of Dervishes, a traditional muslim Sufi order (tarika) from Istanbul (Turkey). In western countries he is well known because of his visits to Europe and the United States of America where he celebrated public dhikrs (Remembrance of God; in Turkish “zikrullah”) with his dervishes. He is also well known in Turkey for his “ilahis,” religious Sufi hymns. The Halveti-Jerrahi Sufi Order is named for him. Ozak also ran a bookstore in the Sahaflar Çarşısı in Istanbul.

Tags: Affection, Christianity, Drink, food, God, Halveti Jerrahi Order, Japan, Recreation, Sake, Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak, Sufism