Need

In Sufi literature one of the most often quoted extra-Qur'anic traditions revealed by Allah, a hadith qudsi, states the purpose of creation in a boldness rarely encountered in religious traditions. God says: "I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known; therefore I created creation." Why did God, who is utter fullness, create the world? Because of a desire, a need to be known. In the hidden unknownness of God, there was one thing missing: there was no one to know Him. Thus, the raison d'etre of creation is God's need to be known. Need is, then, the foundation upon which creation exists. 

Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, pg 193

without need...God does not give anything to anyone...Need, then, is the noose for (all) things that exist: Man has instruments in proportion to his need. Therefore quickly augment thy need, O needy one, in order that the Sea of Bounty may surge you up in lovingkindness.

(Nicholson's translation of Mathnawi, II, 3274-3280)

Rumi sings the praises of the alchemical, transformative power of love. But what is love? in essence it is a state of need. The lover is in need of the beloved, since the beloved reflects something which the lover senses is missing in himself. The experience of love exposes a veiled, unconscious desire to unite with an idealized partner who will supply the bits missing in oneself. But Rumi stresses that when this need awakens, rather than fulfilled it has to be sustained. Need, he argues, creates the primary vehicle of change, evolution, and growth. Without need there is no desire; without desire there is no movement. Therefore to perpetuate the state of need is more conducive to change than to satisfy it.
Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, pg 206

*

*  *

They say in the end, love is the want and need for something. Hence need is the root, and the needed thing is the branch. I say: After all, when you speak, you speak out of need. Your need brings your words into existence...So need is prior, and the words came into being from it....The branch is always the goal--the tree's roots exist for the sake of the branches.

Rumi, Discourses, quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, pg. 207

*

*  *

In order for an evolutionary change to occur, the need has to be immense and conscious. Sometimes there is a need, but it's not strong enough; the longing for fullness has not yet reached sufficient intensity. The seeker can somehow survive, can learn to hide behind psychological defenses, so that the sense of emptiness is less painful. He suffers, but not enough; he is thirsty, but not yet dying of thirst. He is afraid of losing the relative comfort of a lukewarm, chronic state of frustration. But in this process, the Sufi teaching reiterates, only when the seeker reaches a state of despair beyond comfort or consolation will he be able to let go of his painful--yet familiar--patterns of survival. It is not easy to relinquish the familiar for a change whose consequences are unknown, unforeseeable  Therefore the need for change has to become great as the need for air of a drowning man.

In the pursuit of this creative need, Rumi...turns the logic of conventional pragmatism upside down. (I like that) We need comfort, therefore we create comfortable things; we need warmth, so we create shelters, clothes, fire, heaters, air-conditioning; we become self-sufficient in order to alleviate the pain of want. Rumi says: No, don't create anything to fill your emptiness; don't run away from the innate need of your soul.

Don't rush to find a solution to your neediness, continues Rumi; stay with it, acknowledge it, live with it, live it, become more and more needy, more and more thirsty, colder, poorer, more helpless: "I shall cry and cry until the milk of compassion will boil up on Your lips." This wisdom, according to Rumi is known to every infant:

I wonder at this tiny infant who cries, and its mother gives it milk. 

If it should think, 

"What profit is there in crying? What is it that causes the milk to come?"

--then it would not receive any milk. 

But we see that it receives milk because of its crying.

Rumi, Discourses, quoted in Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, pg. 211

Growth comes out of need. When neediness becomes intolerable, then a new organ is created out of the needy one's own potentiality. This is the as-yet-unlived potentiality which the soul has planted in the heart. The inner organs of perception, the eyes and the ears of the heart, are given a new intelligence, a new outlook, a new direction, new possibilities. This is what Rumi expresses in his direct, passionate, provocative language.
Sara Sviri, The Taste of Hidden Things, pg 206-209

*

*  *

If you wish what you need to be given to you without your having to search for it, turn away from it and concentrate on your Lord; you will receive it if God wills.  And if you gave up your needs entirely and were occupied only with God, He would give you all the good things you wish for in this world and in the other; you would walk in Heaven as well as on earth; and more than that, since the Prophet (on him be blessings and peace) has said, in the very words of his Lord : "He who by remembering Me (dhikr) is distracted from his petition will receive more than those who ask."

Hear, faqir, what I said to one of our brothers (may God be well pleased with them): every time I was lacking something, great or small, and turned away from it in turning to my Lord, I found it there in front of me, thanks to the power of Him who hears and knows. We see that the needs of ordinary people are filled by paying attention to them, whereas the the needs of the elect are filled by the very fact that they turn away from them and concentrate upon God.

An excerpt from Letters of a Sufi Master by Shaykh ad-Darqawi, translated by Titus Burckhardt

*

*  *

O, Sovereign Possessor, I call out to You and entreat You, secretly confiding [in You] as a broken servant, who knows that You are listening and who firmly believes that You will respond, one who stands at Your door, constrained in utter need, finding no-one to put trust in, other than You.

Ibn 'Arabi, The Seven Days of the Heart, pg. 45