"In Him we live, and move, and have our being." This teaching of the Bible describes the nature of God: that God is the ocean, the waves of which are all its activities, small or great. The Qur'an says in support of this that not a single atom moves, groups, or scatters without the command of God.

Rumi explains it still more plainly: "Air, earth, water and fire are God's servants; to us they seem lifeless, but to God living."

In those who are conscious of this knowledge, and to the extent of their realization of this truth, there arises the spirit of renunciation which may be called the spirit of God.

He who wants anything becomes smaller than the thing he wants; he who gives away anything is greater than the thing he gives. Therefore to a mystic each act of renunciation becomes a step towards perfection.

Forced renunciation, whether forced by morality, religion, law, convention, or formality, is not necessarily renunciation. The real spirit of renunciation is willingness; and willing renunciation comes when one has risen above the thing one renounces. The value of each thing in life, wealth, power, position, possession, is according to the evolution of man. There is a time in his life when toys are his treasures, and there is a time when he puts them aside; there is a time in his life when copper coins are everything to him, and there is another time when he can give away gold coins; there is a time in his life when he values a cottage, and there is a time when he gives up a palace.

Things have no value; their value is as man makes it; and at every step in his evolution he changes their value. Certainly there is no gain in leaving home, friends, and all affairs of life, and going to the forest and living the life of an ascetic; and yet who has the right to blame those who do so? How can the worldly man judge and understand the point of view of the one who renounces? Perhaps that which seems of the greatest value to the worldly man is nothing to the one who has renounced.

The Sufi makes no restrictions and has no principles of renunciation, nor does he teach renunciation. He believes that to sacrifice anything in life which one does not wish to sacrifice is of no use, but that renunciation is a natural thing, and grows in one with one's evolution. A child which cries for its toy at one stage of its childhood, comes to an age when it is quite willing to give away the toy it once cried for.