The story most often told about Rabia has her walking through Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. Asked what she is doing, she says she means to set fire to paradise and put out the flames of hell, so that both veils will be lifted and God may be worshipped for himself alone, and not out of hope of reward or fear of punishment.
Whether or not she ever said it, the story states her position exactly, and that position is her contribution to Islamic spirituality. Early ascetic piety had been built on fear, on the reckoning to come and the fires waiting for the negligent. Rabia is the point at which the tradition turns to love as its governing term. The prayers ascribed to her make the distinction explicitly, asking that if she worships from fear of hell she be burned in it, and if from hope of paradise she be shut out of it, but that if she worships for God's own sake he not withhold his everlasting beauty.
Everything else about her follows from that. She refused offers of marriage, including from men of standing, on the ground that she had no attention to spare. Asked whether she hated the devil, she is said to have replied that her love of God left no room in her to hate anything. The refusals are not asceticism for its own sake. They are the consequence of an exclusive attachment, and later Sufi writing on mahabba, love, begins from her.