The Mystics Attitude towards Prophet's Three Most Favorite Things

In a famous Hadith, the Prophet has mentioned that women, perfumes and prayer are his three most favorite worldly things. This mysterious and complex hadith has turned to an object for those not so-serious-minded mystics to offer a variety of interpretations on it based on their own individual tastes and likes. In such interpretations, they point to the reasons and elaborate why one of these favorites is preferred to the other ones and furthermore they use it as a mean for showing interest and tendency towards women, having several wives etc.In the historical survey of the mystics attitudes on this hadith, the transformation of their views form a so-called pious mysticism and abandoning its related belongings and letting go of anything not related to God- including woman and also love of mysticism and based on any affection for the creatures- woman are regarded all through as a manifestation of God's beauty.This writing expresses the variety of views which can also be interesting on this hadith. It then concludes that each one of these three issues mentioned in this hadith had led prophet feel more intimate with God. And as a matter of fact, the prophet's tendency and interest in women, perfume and prayer has in other words been his bond and interest in God; in other words a means towards God's intimacy.