Zinda-Rud Puts His Problems before the Great Spirits

Why do you keep far from the station of believers? That is, why are you exiled from Paradise?

The free man who knows good and evil, his spirit cannot be contained in Paradise.

The mullah's Paradise is wine and houris and page boys, the Paradise of free men is eternal voyaging;

The mullah's Paradise is eating and sleeping and singing, the lover's Paradise is the contemplation of Being.

The mullah's Resurrection is the splitting of the tomb and the trumpet's blast, tumult-arousing Love is itself the Dawn of Resurrection.

Science is founded upon fear and hope, lovers are troubled by neither hope nor fear;

Science is fearful of the grandeur of creation, Love is immersed in the beauty of creation;

Science gazes upon the past and the present, love cries, 'Look upon what is coming!'

Science has made compact with the canon of constraint and has no other resource but constraint and resignation;

Love is free and proud and intolerant and boldly investigates the whole of Being.

Our love is a stranger to complaining even though it weeps the tears of drunkenness.

Our constrained heart is not truly constrained, our arrow is not shot by any houri's glance;

Our fire augments out of separation, separation is congenial to our soul.

Life without prickings is no true life; one must live with a fire under one's feet.

Such living is the destiny of the self and through this destiny the self is built up.

A mote through infinite yearning becomes the envy of the sun, in its breast the nine spheres cannot be contained;

When yearning makes assault upon a world it transforms momentary beings into immortals.

The wheeling of destiny is death and life; no man knows what the wheeling of destiny is.

Whoever possesses the apparatus of destiny, Iblis and death tremble before his might.

Predestination is the religion of men of zeal, predestination for heroes is the perfection of power.

Ripe souls become yet riper through constraint which for raw men is the embrace of the tomb.

Khalid constrained turns a world upside down; for us, constraint tears us up by the roots.

The business of true men is resignation and submission; this garment does not suit the weaklings.

You who know the station of the Sage of Rum, do you not know the words of the Sage of Rum?

Our concern is only with hope and fear; not every man has the zeal to surrender.

You who say, 'This was to be, and so happened, all things were tethered to a divine decree, and so happened,'

You have little understood the meaning of destiny; you have seen neither selfhood nor God.

The believer true thus petitions God: 'We accord with you, so accord with us.'

His resolution is the creator of God's determination and on the day of battle his arrow is God's arrow.

Men of short vision have stirred up commotions and hung God's true servant on the gibbet.

The hidden things of Being are manifest to you; declare then, what was your crime?

The sound of the Last Trump was in my breast; I saw a people hastening to the tomb,

Believers with the character and colour of infidels who cried 'No god but God' and denied the self.

'God's bidding' they called a vain image because it was bound to water and clay.

I kindled in my self the fire of life and spoke to the dead of the mysteries of life.

The whole world has been founded on selfhood, love therein has been compounded with violence;

Selfhood is everywhere visible, yet invisible, our gaze cannot endure to look on selfhood;

Within its light many fires lurk hidden, from its Sinai creation's epiphanies shine.

Every moment every heart in this ancient convent discourses, albeit secretly, of the self;

Whoever has not taken his share of its fire has died in the world, a stranger to himself.

India and Iran alike are privy to its light, but few there are who also know its fire.

I have spoken of its light and its fire; confidant of my secret, see now my crime.

What I have done you too have done; beware! You have sought to resurrect the dead: beware!

Tahira From the sin of a frenzied servant of God new creatures come into being;

Unbounded passion rends veils apart, removes from the vision the old and stale,

And in the end meets its portion in rope and gallows; neither turns back living from the Beloved's street.

Behold Love's glory in city and fields, lest you suppose it has passed away from the world;

It lies concealed in the breast of its own time - how could it be contained in such a closet as this?

You who have been given the agony of the eternal quest, explain to me the meaning of a verse of yours:

The dove is a handful of ashes, the nightingale a network of colour - O lamentation, what is the true sign of a broken heart?

The lament that rises out of a broken heart - I have seen its effect different in every place;

The dove is consumed through its influence, the nightingale daubed with colours as its result.

In it, death is in the embrace of life, one moment here is life, there is death;

Such a colour as glowed in Mani's abode, such a colour as begets colourlessness.

You know not, this is the station of colour and scent; the portion of every heart is according to its ululation.

Either enter colour, or pass into colourlessness, that you may grasp a token of the broken heart.

A hundred worlds are manifest in this azure expanse; are there saints and prophets in every world?

Consider well this being and not-being; continuously worlds are coming into existence.

Wherever the tumultuous clamour of a world arises, there too is a Mercy unto all beings.

Speak more plainly; my understanding flags.

It were a sin to speak of these things more plainly.

Then is the conversation of adepts unprofitable?

It is difficult to give tongue to this subtlety.

You are wholly afire with the glow of the quest, yet how strange, you cannot master mere words!

'Creation', 'Predestination', 'Guidance' are the beginning; a Mercy unto all beings is the end.

I have not yet glimpsed the face of the meaning; if you possess a fire, then burn me!

You who like me descry the secrets of poetry, these words overstretch the string of poetry;

The poets have adorned the banquet of words, but these Moses lack the White Hand.

What you demand of me is unbelief, an unbelief transcending poetry.

Wherever you see a world of colour and scent out of whose soil springs the plant of desire

Is either already illumined by the light of the Chosen One or is still seeking for the Chosen One.

I ask of you - though to ask is a sin - the secret of that essence whose name is the Chosen One;

Is it a man, or an essence in being such as but rarely comes into existence?

Before him the whole world bows prostrate, before him who called himself His servant.

'His servant' surpasses your understanding because he is man, and at the same time essence.

His essence is neither Arab nor non-Arab; he is a man, yet more ancient than man.

'His servant' is the shaper of destinies, in him are deserts and flourishing cultivations;

'His servant' both increases life and destroys it, 'His servant' is both glass and heavy stone.

'Servant' is one thing, 'His servant' is another; we are all expectancy, he is the expectation.

'His servant' is time, and time is of 'His servant'; we all are colour, he is without colour and scent.

'His servant' had beginning, but has no end; what have our morn and eve to do with 'His servant'?

No man knows the secret of 'His servant', 'His servant' is naught but the secret of 'save God'.

'Save God' is the sword whose edge is 'His servant'; do you want it plainer? Say, He is 'His servant'.

'His servant' is the how and why of creation, 'His servant' is the inward mystery of creation.

The true meaning of these two verses becomes not clear until you behold from the station of Thou threwest not.

Zinda-Rud, have done now with speaking and listening, become drowned in the ocean of being, Zinda-Rud.

I know so little - what is this business of Love? Is it the joy of beholding? Then what is beholding?

The meaning of beholding that Last of Time is to make his rule binding on oneself.

Live in the world like the Apostle of men and jinn that like him you may be accepted by men and jinn.

Then behold yourself - that is the same as beholding him; his Sunna is a secret of his secrets.

What is the beholding of the God of the nine spheres, of Him without whose command moon and sun do not revolve?

First, to implant on one's soul the image of God, then next to implant it on the world;

When the soul's image is perfected in the world, to behold the commons is to behold God.

Blessed is the man whose single sigh causes the nine heavens to circle about his dwelling;

Woe to the dervish who, having uttered a sigh, then closes his lips and draws back his breath!

Such a one never made God's rule to run in the world; he ate barley-bread, but never fought like Ali;

He sought a convent and fled from Khyber, he practised monkhood and never saw royal power.

Do you possess God's image? The world is your prey; destiny shares the same reins as your design.

The present age seeks to war with you; imprint God's image on this infidel's tablet!

God's image has been implanted on the world; I do not know how it has been implanted.

It has been implanted by force of love or it has been implanted by force of violence;

Because God is more manifest in love, love is a better way than violence.

Declare, master of the secrets of the East, what difference is there between the ascetic and the lover?

The ascetic is a stranger in this present world, the lover is a stranger in the world to come.

The end of gnosis is not-being; what is life to repose in annihilation?

The intoxication of lovers comes from emptied cups; not-being is to be ignorant of gnosis.

You who seek your goal in annihilation, non-existence can never discover existence.

He who counted himself better than Adam; in his jar and cup remains neither wine nor lees;

Our handful of dust is acquainted with the skies; where is the fire of that destitute one?

Speak little of that Leader of those in separation, throat athirst, and eternally a blood-filled cup.

We are ignorant, he knows being and not-being; his infidelity revealed to us this mystery,

How that from falling comes the delight of rising, from the pain of waning springs the joy of waxing.

Love is to burn in his fire; without his fire, burning is no burning.

Because he is more ancient in love and service, Adam is not privy to his secrets.

Tear off the skirt of blind conformity that you may learn God's Unity from him.

You who hold the clime of the soul under your royal signet, keep company with me a moment more.

We do not tolerate confinement to one station, we are wholly and singly a yearning to soar;

Every instant our occupation is to see and to quiver, our labour is to fly without feathers and wings.