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The meditation known in Arabic as '''Naẓar ila'l-murd''' ({{lang-ar|النظر إلى المرد}}), "contemplation of the beardless", and in [[Persian language|Persian]] ''Shahed-bāzī,'' ({{lang-fa|شاهدبازی}}), "witness play", is a [[Sufi]] practice of spiritual realization recorded since the earliest years of [[Islam]]. It is seen as an act of worship, held to realise the absolute beauty that is God through the relative beauty of the human form that is the divine image. In its best-known form it simply consists of gazing upon a beautiful boy.
Peter Lamborn Wilson (a.k.a. [[Hakim Bey]]) explains this as the use of "imaginal [[yoga]]" to transmute erotic desire into spiritual consciousness.<ref>Peter Lamborn Wilson, "CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNBEARDED: The Rubaiyyat of Awhadoddin Kermani" in ''Paidika'' V.3-4 p.13 (1995): "Love imagery in Persian Sufi poetry usually flows from this mystical, symbolic appreciation of love's spiritual power. In some works, however, the imagery refers also to specific practices, code named 'naẓar ila'l-murd' or 'contemplation of the unbearded,' namely, the unbearded boy."</ref> Its exponents quote the saying of the prophet [[Mohammed]]; "God is beautiful and loves beauty", as well as the [[Platonic love]] of the [[Symposium]].
By the 13thCCE such ideas were crystallised in the [[Sufi metaphysics]] of the [[Illuminationist philosophy]] of [[Ibn Arabi]], whose Arabic poems, called ''The Interpreter of Desires'', enshrined them in love poetry:
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