"

In the year 1636 A.D. he returned again, as usual, from Lahore to
Kashmir, and practised his austerities without relaxation, when one day,
by the special favour of the Divinity, and without the assistance of any
spiritual preceptor, "the desired image" revealed itself to him. By this
expression is understood, in mystic phraseology, union with God, and the
conception of Absolute Being, which is equivalent to the knowledge of
one's self. When Mullah Shah thus attained the goal of his mystical
aspirations he was in his forty-seventh year, and had been engaged
twenty-seven years in the spiritual exercises of the Sufis. When he
returned to Lahore, he informed his spiritual guide that he had attained
union with God. The latter advised him not to divulge the fact, and not
to give up his ascetic practices. In Kashmir Mullah Shah had collected
round him a little circle of devoted disciples. The strong emotional
condition into which Mullah Shah's new spiritual experience had brought
him did not prevent him from doing his best not to offend against the
religious law, and he was in the habit of saying to his friends, "Whoso
does not respect the precepts of the religious law is not one of us."

Mullah Shah had always been of a retiring disposition, but in his
present mood he carried his self-isolation so far that he closed the
door of his house and only received his intimates at fixed times, when
he dropped his habitual reserve. The spiritual power of Mullah Shah had
become so great that every novice whom he caused to sit in front of him
and to concentrate his mental faculties on his own heart, became
clairvoyant to such a degree that his internal senses were unfolded, and
the unseen world appeared to him.

Mullah Shah expressed himself in very bold terms regarding the manner
with which he conceived God and His relation to humanity. Thus he said,
"Since I have arrived at understanding the absolute Reality and that I
know most positively that nothing exists besides God, existence and
non-existence are in my eyes the same thing." In one of his poems he
says, "The sage who knows himself has become God, be sure of that, my
friend." In another poem, which caused a temporary estrangement between
himself and the Sheikh Mian Mir, he said:

"My heart by a thousand tongues cries to me 'I am God.' What reproach of
heresy can they bring against me that this utterance comes to my lips?

"Those who had attained union with God used to say,