Qalb · the heart-mirror

In Sufi anatomy the organ of knowing God is not the mind but the heart — and the heart is a mirror. The world rusts it; every act of remembrance polishes it; polished, it does not contain the divine (nothing contains it) but reflects it, which is all a created thing can do and all it needs to do. The hadith the tradition leans on: "Heaven and earth cannot contain Me, but the heart of My believing servant contains Me." The Tree places the same organ at its own center — Tiferet, the heart-sefirah, where the light of the unknowable upper faces is gathered and given a face the lower world can meet. Two maps, one claim: the meeting-place is the heart.