In The Four Valleys, Baha’u'llah describes the qualities and grades of four types of mystical wayfarers. The Seven Valleys follows the soul on a spiritual journey as it passes through seven stages, from this world to other realms which are closer to God. Each stage is accomplished in order, and the goal of the journey is to follow “the Right Path,” “abandon the drop of life and come to the sea of the Life-Bestower,” and “gaze on the Beloved.”

Both of these books discuss a Valley of Love. In The Four Valleys, The Third Valley is where a soul journeys purely by the love of God. In The Seven Valleys, the seeker who resides in The Valley of Love is compared to a moth who has found a flame. Baha’u'llah writes that the heart of the seeker is touched, and the seeker has fallen in love with God.

Julio Savi offers an analysis of the Valley of Love in his article “Will, Knowledge, and Love as Explained in Baha’u'llah’s Four Valleys” published in the Journal of Baha’i Studies in 1994 (Volume 6, Number 1):

“Love–a magical word. Romanticism has tinged the idea of love with a hue of outer beauty that is often untrue. Therefore sometimes people are in love with love itself and yet wholly ignorant of its often challenging reality. Love is difficult; it is hard to love, hard to be loved. There is in this act a resemblance to death itself. To accept or to give love means to renounce a part of oneself. That is why love is crazy and blind. How will a living being accept an experience reminiscent of death? And yet the awareness of death and life is such as to change according to the level of inner experience one has reached. Is not death sometimes the beginning of life?

To love means to be conscious of, and to surrender to, a powerful, irresistible attraction towards the Beloved. Only motion towards the Beloved brings peace to the heart. Any other experience is utterly irrelevant. Love demands a nearness, which appeases the longing heart, only when it is so close as to imply a complete identification between the lover and the Beloved. It is like a humble drop of water merging with the mighty sea.”

The Third Valley (from The Four Valleys)

If the loving seekers wish to live within the precincts of the Attracting One (Majdhúb), no soul may dwell on this Kingly Throne save the beauty of love. This realm is not to be pictured in words.

Love shunneth this world and that world too,
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two.
The minstrel of love harpeth this lay:
Servitude enslaveth, kingship doth betray.

This plane requireth pure affection and the bright stream of fellowship. In telling of these companions of the Cave He saith: “They speak not till He hath spoken; and they do His bidding.”

On this plane, neither the reign of reason is sufficient nor the authority of self. Hence, one of the Prophets of God hath asked: “O my Lord, how shall we reach unto Thee?” And the answer came, “Leave thyself behind, and then approach Me.”

These are a people who deem the lowest place to be one with the throne of glory, and to them beauty’s bower differeth not from the field of a battle fought in the cause of the Beloved.

The denizens of this plane speak no words—but they gallop their chargers. They see but the inner reality of the Beloved. To them all words of sense are meaningless, and senseless words are full of meaning. They cannot tell one limb from another, one part from another. To them the mirage is the real river; to them going away is returning. Wherefore hath it been said:

The story of Thy beauty reached the hermit’s dell;
Crazed, he sought the Tavern where the wine they buy and sell.
The love of Thee hath leveled down the fort of patience,
The pain of Thee hath firmly barred the gate of hope as well.

In this realm, instruction is assuredly of no avail.

The lover’s teacher is the Loved One’s beauty,
His face their lesson and their only book.
Learning of wonderment, of longing love their duty,
Not on learned chapters and dull themes they look.
The chain that binds them is His musky hair,
The Cyclic Scheme, to them, is but to Him a stair.

Here followeth a supplication to God, the Exalted, the Glorified:

O Lord! O Thou Whose bounty granteth wishes!
I stand before Thee, all save Thee forgetting.
Grant that the mote of knowledge in my spirit
Escape desire and the lowly clay;
Grant that Thine ancient gift, this drop of wisdom,
Merge with Thy mighty sea.

Thus do I say: There is no power or might save in God, the Protector, the Self-Subsistent.

The Valley of Love (from The Seven Valleys)

… he shall straightway step into The Valley of Love and be dissolved in the fire of love. In this city the heaven of ecstasy is upraised and the world-illuming sun of yearning shineth, and the fire of love is ablaze; and when the fire of love is ablaze, it burneth to ashes the harvest of reason.

Now is the traveler unaware of himself, and of aught besides himself. He seeth neither ignorance nor knowledge, neither doubt nor certitude; he knoweth not the morn of guidance from the night of error. He fleeth both from unbelief and faith, and deadly poison is a balm to him. Wherefore Attár [Farídu'd-Dín Attár (ca. 1150-1230 A.D.), the great Persian Súfí poet.] saith:

For the infidel, error—for the faithful, faith;
For Attár’s heart, an atom of Thy pain.

The steed of this Valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end. In this station the lover hath no thought save the Beloved, and seeketh no refuge save the Friend. At every moment he offereth a hundred lives in the path of the Loved One, at every step he throweth a thousand heads at the feet of the Beloved.

O My Brother! Until thou enter the Egypt of love, thou shalt never come to the Joseph of the Beauty of the Friend; and until, like Jacob, thou forsake thine outward eyes, thou shalt never open the eye of thine inward being; and until thou burn with the fire of love, thou shalt never commune with the Lover of Longing.

A lover feareth nothing and no harm can come nigh him: Thou seest him chill in the fire and dry in the sea.

A lover is he who is chill in hell fire;
A knower is he who is dry in the sea. [Persian mystic poem.]

Love accepteth no existence and wisheth no life: He seeth life in death, and in shame seeketh glory. To merit the madness of love, man must abound in sanity; to merit the bonds of the Friend, he must be full of spirit. Blessed the neck that is caught in His noose, happy the head that falleth on the dust in the pathway of His love. Wherefore, O friend, give up thy self that thou mayest find the Peerless One, pass by this mortal earth that thou mayest seek a home in the nest of heaven. Be as naught, if thou wouldst kindle the fire of being and be fit for the pathway of love.

Love seizeth not upon a living soul,
The falcon preyeth not on a dead mouse. [Persian mystic poem. Cf. The Hidden Words, No. 7, Arabic.]

Love setteth a world aflame at every turn, and he wasteth every land where he carrieth his banner. Being hath no existence in his kingdom; the wise wield no command within his realm. The leviathan of love swalloweth the master of reason and destroyeth the lord of knowledge. He drinketh the seven seas, but his heart’s thirst is still unquenched, and he saith, “Is there yet any more?” [Qur'án 50:29] He shunneth himself and draweth away from all on earth.

Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too;
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two. [Jalálu'd-Dín Rúmí (1207-1273 A.D.); The Mathnaví. Jalálu'd-Dín, called Mawláná ("our Master"), is the greatest of all Persian Súfí poets, and founder of the Mawlaví "whirling" dervish order.]

He hath bound a myriad victims in his fetters, wounded a myriad wise men with his arrow. Know that every redness in the world is from his anger, and every paleness in men’s cheeks is from his poison. He yieldeth no remedy but death, he walketh not save in the valley of the shadow; yet sweeter than honey is his venom on the lover’s lips, and fairer his destruction in the seeker’s eyes than a hundred thousand lives.

Wherefore must the veils of the satanic self be burned away at the fire of love, that the spirit may be purified and cleansed and thus may know the station of the Lord of the Worlds.

Kindle the fire of love and burn away all things,
Then set thy foot into the land of the lovers. [From an ode by Bahá'u'lláh.]

And if, confirmed by the Creator, the lover escapes from the claws of the eagle of love, he will enter The Valley of Knowledge …