The following is taken from ‘Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment’ by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.  It mentions Maruf al-Karkhi, who was a prominent Sufi of Baghdad in the late eighth century CE.  For more about al-Ghazali, see this earlier post.

A certain Sufi said, “God possesses servants whom neither their dread of hell nor their hope of paradise distracts from Him; how then could this world distract them from God?” In this vein too one of the brothers of Maruf al Karkhi said to him: “Tell me, what stirred you to serve God and sever your bonds with creatures?” Maruf remained silent.  The brother then asked, “Was it remembrance of death?” Maruf said, “What is death?” The brother asked further, “Was it remembrance of the tomb and of the barzakh*?” Maruf replied, “What are the tomb and the barzakh?” The brother then asked, “Was it dread of hell and hope of heaven?” But he answered then, “What is all that? There is a King who holds everything in His hand. If you love Him, then He causes you to forget all else, and when there is a relationship between Him and you, He replaces all of that for you.”

It was reported that another Sufi said, “I saw in dream as though I had entered paradise.…I passed into an awesome sanctuary of heaven and in the pavilion of the Throne I saw a man who was gazing fixedly and without blinking in contemplation of God.  So I asked Ridwan [the angel in charge of paradise], ‘Who is this?’ And he replied, ‘This is Maruf al-Karkhi, who worships God neither out of fear of his hellfire nor out of longing for His garden but rather, out of love for Him. Therefore God permits him to gaze upon Hm until the Day of Resurrection.'”

*Barzakh means the intermediate realm, a sort of limbo in which the dead await resurrection at the Last Judgement.

Tr. Eric Ormsby