Let it be understood that love is an attribute of the lover as long as it remains valid to assert this quality of him. But when this ceases to be the case, he is translated from the attribute of love to another attribute. When this happens, he is given a new name derived from the attribute to which he has been translated, and he is qualified by a new adjective derived from the state that comes upon him. Thus the old state is subsumed [235] in the new state, and he is called drunk, vanquished, extirpated, or subsumed. All this comes about if the lover is translated from love to love, that is, if he proceeds in love to the limit of annihilation through it, for it, and in it.

But if a man, when he proceeds to the limit of love, is translated to the level of gnosis, he is not vanquished by it, or extirpated, nor does he become drunk with it. Rather, the quality of love is subsumed in the quality of gnosis, and he becomes both lover and knower. His level rises above the previous rank so that he comes to despise all the love that has passed in comparison with that which he sees now. He experiences a kind of love different from the earlier kind and becomes one of those to whom love has come after gnosis. Hence love becomes for him a station (maqām), whereas previously it was a state (ḥāl). This is indeed a very noble station among the people of gnosis, and it is to this that the mystics allude.

Thus Sumnūn, who was among those who had been vanquished [236] by love, alluded to it, after reaching gnosis, when he said:

Now among those whose affection proceeds from nature, love ends in loss of reason, bafflement, and an estrangement from other men like the fearfulness of a wild animal; and this leads to their destruction and their death. But such is not the case with divine lovers.