Prelude on Earth: The Spirit of Rumi Appears and Explains the Mystery of the Ascension

Tumulutous love, indifferent to the city; for in the city’s clangour its flame dies.

Seeks solitude in desert and mountain-range or on the shore of an unbounded sea.

I, who saw among my friends none to confide in, rested a moment on the shore of the sea:

The sea, and the hour of the setting sun; the blue water was a liquid ruby in the gloaming.

Sunset gives to the blind man the joy of sight, sunset gives to evening the hue of dawn.

I held conversation with my heart; I had many desires, many requests.

A thing of the moment, unsharing immortality, a thing living, unsharing life itself,

Thirsty, and yet far from the rim or the fountain, involuntarily I chanted this song.

Open your lips, for abundant sugar-candy is my desire; show your cheek, for the garden and rosebed are my desire.

In one hand a flask of wine, in the other the beloved’s tress; such a dance in the midst of the maidan is my desire.

You said, ‘Torment me no more with your coquetry: begone!’ That saying of yours, ‘Torment me no more, ‘ is my desire.

O reason, become out of yearning a babbler of words confused; O love, distracted subtleties are my desire.

This bread and water of heaven are fickle as a torrent; I am a fish, , a leviathan-Oman is my desire.

My soul has grown aweary of Pharaoh and his tyranny; that light in the breast of Moses, Imran’s son, is my desire.

Last night the Elder wandered about the city with a lantern saying, ‘I am weary of demon and monster: man is my desire.’

My heart is sick of these feeble-spirited fellow-travellers; the Lion of God and Rustam-i Dastan, are my desire.

I said, ‘The thing we quested after is never attained.’ He said, ‘The unattainable – that thing is my desire!’

The restless wave slept on the grey water, the sun vanished, dark grew the horizon:

Evening stole a portion of its capital and a star stood like a witness above the roof.

The spirit of Rumi rent the veils asunder; from behind a mountain mass he became visible;

His face shining like the sun in splendour, his white hairs radiant as the season of youth.

A figure bright in a light immortal, robed from head to foot in everlasting joy.

Upon his lips the hidden secret of Being; loosed from itself the chains of speech and sound:

His speech was as a suspended mirror, knowledge commingled with an inward fire.

I asked him, ‘What is the existent, the non-existent? What is the meaning of praiseworthy and unpraiseworthy?’

He said, ‘The existent is that which wills to appear: manifestation is all the impulse of Being.

Life means to adorn oneself in one’s self, to desire to bear witness to one’s own being;

The concourse on the day primordial arrayed desired to bear witness to their own being.

Whether you be alive, or dead, or dying – for this seek witness from three witnesses.

The first witness is self-consciousness, to behold oneself in one’s own light;

The second witness is the consciousness of another, to behold oneself in another’s light;

The third witness is the consciousness of God’s essence, to behold oneself in the light of God’s essence.

If you remain fast before this light, count yourself living and abiding as God!

Life is to attain one’s own station, life is to see the Essence without a veil;

The true believer will not make do with Attributes – the Prophet was not content save with the Essence.

What is Ascension? The desire for a witness, an examination face-to-face of a witness.

A competent witness without whose confirmation life to us is like colour and scent to a rose.

In that Presence no man remains firm, or if he remains, he is of perfect assay.

Give not away one particle of the glow you have, knot tightly together the glow within you;

Fairer it is to increase one’s glow, fairer it is to increase one’s glow, fairer it is to test oneself before the sun;

Then chisel anew the crumbled form; make proof of yourself; be a true being!

Only such an existent is praiseworthy, otherwise the fire of life is mere smoke.’

I asked again, ‘How shall one go before God? How may one split the mountain of clay and water?

The Orderer and Creator is outside Order and Creation; we \- our throats are strangled by the noose of Fate.’

He said, ‘If you obtain the Authority you can break through the heavens easily.

Wait till the day creation all is naked and has washed from its skirt the dust of dimension;

Then you will see neither waxing nor waning in its being, you will see yourself as of it, and it of you.

Recall the subtlety Except with an authority or die in the mire like an ant or a locust!

It was by way of birth, excellent man, that you came into this dimensioned world;

By birth it is possible also to escape, it is possible to loosen all fetters from oneself;

But such a birth is not of clay and water – that is known to the man who has a living heart.

The first birth is by constraint, the second by choice; the first is hidden in veils, the second is manifest;

The first happens with weeping, the second with laughter, for the first is a seeking, the second a finding;

The first is to dwell and journey amidst creation, the second is utterly outside all dimensions;

The first is in need of day and night, the second-day and night are but its vehicle.

A child is born through the rending of the womb, a man is born through the rending of the world;

The call to prayer signalizes both kinds of birth, the first is uttered by the lips, the second of the very soul.

Whenever a watchful soul is born in a body this ancient inn the world trembles to its foundations!’

I said, ‘I know not what manner of birth this is.’ He said, ‘It is one of the high estates of life.

Life plays at vanishing and then reappearing – one role is constant, the other transitory;

Now life dissolves itself in manifestation, anon it concentrates itself in solitude.

Its manifestation shines with the light of the Attributes, its solitude is lit up by the light of the Essence.

Reason draws life towards manifestation, love draws life towards solitude.

Reason likewise hurls itself against the world to shatter the talisman of water and clay;

Every stone on the road becomes its preceptor, lightning and cloud preach sermons to it.

Its eye is no stranger to the joy of seeing, but it possesses not the drunkard’s boldness;

Therefore, fearing the road, it gropes like a blind man, softly, gently it creeps along, just like an ant.

So long as reason is involved with colour and scent showly it proceeds upon the path to the Beloved;

Its affairs achieve some order gradually – I do not know when they will ever be completed!

Love knows nothing of months and years, late and soon, near and far upon the road.

Reason drives a fissure through a mountain, or else makes a circuit around it;

Before love the mountain is like a straw, the heart darts as swiftly as a fish.

Love means, to make assault upon the Infinite, without seeing the grave to flee the world.

Love’s strength is not of air and earth and water, its might derives not from toughness of sinew;

love conquered Khaibar on a loaf of barley, love clove asunder the body of the moon,

Broke Nimrod’s cranium without a blow, without a battle shattered Pharaoh’s hosts.

Love in the soul is like sight it in the eye, be it within the house or without the door;

Love is at once both ashes and spark, its work is loftier than religion and science.

Love is authority and manifest proof, both worlds are subject to the seal – ring of love;

Timeless it is, and yesterday and tomorrow spring from it, placeless it is, and under and over spring from it;

When it supplicates God for selfhood all the world becomes a mount, itself the rider.

Through love, the heart’s status becomes clearer; through love, the draw of this ancient inn becomes void.

Lovers yield themselves up to God, give interpretative reason as an offering.

Are you a lover? Proceed from direction to directionlessness; make death a thing prohibited to yourself.

You who are like a dead man in the grave’s coffer, resurrection is possible without the sound of the Trumpet!

You have in your throat melodies sweet and delicate; how long will you croak like a frog in the mud?

Boldly ride upon space and time, break free of the convolutions of this girdle;

Sharpen your two eyes and your two ears – whatever you see, digest by way of the understanding.

‘The man who hears the voice of the ants also hears from Time the secret of Fate.’

Take from me the glance that burns the veil, the glance that becomes not the eye’s prisoner.

‘Man is but sight, the rest is mere skin; true sight signifies seeing the Beloved.

Dissolve the whole body into sight – go to gazing, go to gazing, go to gaze!’

Are you afraid of these nine heavens? Fear not; are you afraid of the world’s immensity? Fear not.

Open wide your eyes upon Time and Space, for these two are but a state of the soul.

Since first the gaze advanced on manifestation the alternation of yesterday and tomorrow was born.

The seed lying in the soil’s house of darkness a stranger to the vast expanse of the sky.

Does it not know that in an ample space it can display itself, branch by branch.

What is its substance? A delight in growing; this substance is both its station and itself.

You who say that the body is the soul’s vehicle, consider the soul’s secret; tangle not with the body.

It is not a vehicle, it is a state of the soul; to call it its vehicle is a confusion of terms.

What is the soul? Rapture, joy, burning and anguish, delight in mastering the revolving sphere.

What is the body? Habit of colour and scent, habit of dwelling in the world’s dimensions.

Your near and far spring out of the senses; what is Ascension? A revolution in sense,

A revolution in sense born of rapture and yearning; rapture and yearning liberate from under and over.

This body is not the associate of the soul; a handful of earth is no impediment to flight.’