بخش 2 - گلشن راز جدید

The old ardour has disappeared from the life of the East; its breath wavered and soul left its body;

Like a picture without the chain of breath and does not know what the taste of life is.

Its heart lost desire and craving, its flute ceased to produce notes.

I am expressing my ideas in a different form, and writing in reply to the book of Mahmud.

Since the time of the Shaikh, no man has given the sparks of fire to our life.

We lay on the earth with shrouds around our bodies, and did not experience a single resurrection.

That wise man of Tabriz witnessed before his eyes calamities that resulted from the invasion of Genghis.

I saw a revolution of another type: Appearance of a new sun.

I removed veil from the face of meaning, and gave sun in the hands of a mote.

Don’t you think I am intoxicated without wine, and spin tales likes poets.

You will see no good from a low person, who accuses me of being a poet.

I have nothing to do with the street of the beloved, and do not have a grief-stricken heart nor a longing for the beloved;

Neither is my earth the dust of a street, nor is within my clay a heart without self-control.

My mission in life is in line with Gabriel the Truthful; I have neither a rival, nor a messenger, nor a porter.

Though a mendicant, I have the wherewithal of Moses: Kingly pomp under a beggar’s garment.

If I am earth, desert cannot contain me; if water, river cannot encompass me.

The heart of a stone trembles at my glass, the ocean of my thought is without a shore.

Behind my curtain lie concealed several destinies, and several resurrections take birth at my hand.

For a moment I retired unto myself, I created an immortal world.

‘I am not ashamed of such poetry, for in a hundred years an Attar might not appear.’

A battle of life and death is being waged in my soul; my eye is riveted on immortal life.

I saw your clay stranger to life, hence I breathed into your body of my own soul.

I am wholly affected by the fire that I possess: Illumine the darkness of your night by my lamp.

Heart was sown into the soil of my body like a seed, a different destiny was written on my tablet:

To me the ideal of khudi is sweet as honey. What else can I do? My whole stock consists of this experience.

First I tasted the fruit of this experience myself, then I decided to share it with the people of the East.

If Gabriel were to go through this book, he would cast aside the pure \[Divine\] Light as if it were dust;

He would bewail about his \[low\] station, and relate to God the condition of his heart:

‘I no longer desire unveiled Epiphany; I desire nothing but hidden heart-sore.

I am ready to forego eternal union, for now I realize what sweetness is in lamentation!

Give me the pride and submissiveness of man, give unto my heart burning and consuming of man.’

First of all I am perplexed about my thought: What is that which is called ‘thought’?

What sort of thought is the condition of my path? Why is it sometimes obedience, sometimes sin?

What a light there is within the heart of man! A light that is manifest in spite of its invisibility.

I saw it in the constancy of change; I saw it both as light and fire.

Sometimes its fire is nourished by argumentation and reasoning, sometimes its light is derived from the breath of Gabriel;

What a life-illuminating and heart-kindling light! The sun is nothing in face of a single ray of this light.

Conjoined with dust, it is above limitations of space; chained to the alternation of day and night, it is free from the bonds of time.

The calculation of its time is not through breath, there is none like it in seeking and discovering.

Sometimes it feels exhausted and sits on the shore, sometimes a shore-less ocean is in its cup.

It is both the river and the staff of Moses, on account of which the river is divided into two.

It is a deer whose pasture is the sky, who drinks water from the stream of the Milky Way.

Earth and sky are its halting places; it walks alone amid a caravan.

Some of its states are: the world of darkness and light, the sound of the trumpet, death, paradise, and Houri.

It gives both to Iblis and Adam opportunity to develop, and provides them a chance of expansions.

Eye is impatient at its sight; its charms even beguile God.

With one eye, it sees its own privacy, with the other eye; it looks at its apparent lustre.

Out of its little stream, it produces an ocean; it becomes a pearl and then settles at its bottom.

Soon it takes a different form; becomes a diver and catches itself again.

In it there are noiseless commissions; it has colour and sound perceptible without eye and ear.

There is a world hidden in its glass, but it reveals itself to us piecemeal.

Life makes it into a lasso and throws it to catch everything low and high.

By its means it ensnares itself, and wrings also the neck of duality.

One day the two worlds fall a prey to it and are caught into its beautiful lasso.

If you conquer both these worlds, you will become immortal even if everything else dies.

Do not set foot in the desert of search lazily; first, take hold of that world which lies within you.

If you are low, become strong by conquering the self. If you wish to seek God, get nearer yourself.

If you become proficient in conquering self, conquering the world will become easy for you.

Happy is the day when you conquer this world, and pierce the bosom of the skies.

The moon will prostrate before you, and you throw over it a lasso of waves of smoke.

You will be free in this ancient world, able to fashion the idols to your purpose;

To hold in the grasp of your hand all the world of light and sound, of colour and smell;

To change its quantitative aspect, to mould it according to your purpose;

Not to be captivated by its sorrows and delights to break the spell of its nine skies;

To go down into its heart like the point of an arrow, not to exchange your wheat for its barley;

This is indeed the-true kingly glory; this is the State that is linked to religion.

What is this ocean whose shore is knowledge? What is that pearl which is found in its depth?

Ever-moving Life is a flowing ocean, consciousness is its shore.

What an ocean that is deep and surging a thousand mountains and deserts are on its bank.

Don’t talk about its surging waves, for each had overflowed its bank.

It left the ocean and imparted moisture to the desert; it gave to the eye the sense of quantity and quality.

Whatever thing comes into its presence gets illumined through the grace of its consciousness.

It is satisfied with its privacy and is not inclined to association with others, yet all things are illumined by its light.

First it brightens it up, then it ensnares it in a mirror.

Its consciousness makes it familiar with the world, the world made it aware of its potentiality.

Intellect removes veil from its face, but speech reveals it much better.

Yet it is not confined to this mundane world \- it is only one of its stages in the path of evolution.

You look upon the world as existing outside you: These mountains and deserts, oceans and mines;

This world of colour and smell is our nosegay; it is independent and yet intimately related to us.

The ego bound them all by its one glance: The earth and the sky, the moon and the sun.

Our heart has a secret gateway to it, for every existent depends for its existence upon our perception.

If nobody sees, it becomes contemptible; if anybody sees, it becomes mountains and oceans.

The world has significance through our seeing it – its tree grows by our growth.

The problem of subject and object is a mystery; the heart of every particle of matter is expressing its supplication:

O observer, make me your object, make me existent by the grace of your sight.

The perfection of the being of a thing lies in being present, in becoming an object for an observer;

Its defect, not to be before our eyes, not to be illumined by our awareness.

The world is nothing but our manifestation, for without us there would be no world of light and sound;

You also should crave help by associating with it; discipline your eyes by its twists and turns.

Rest assured that master-huntsmen have sought help in this matter from insects.

With its help, keep a watchful eye on yourself; you are like Gabriel the truthful; take wings.

Open the eye of intellect on this world of plurality, so that you may enjoy the revelations of the One.

Take your share from the smell of the shirt, while sitting in Kan‘an, get fragrance from Egypt and Yemen.

Ego is the hunter, the sun and the moon are its prey; they are chained to the strings of his intellectual efforts.

Throw yourself on this world like fire! Make an assault on the visible and the invisible worlds alike.

What is the union of the contingent and the necessary? What are ‘near-and-far’, ‘more-and-less’?

ہیں، خرد جہان کے بیش و کم معلوم کرنے والی ہے۔ (dimensions) اس کائنات کے تین البعاد The world of how and why has three dimension intellect controls its quantitative aspect.

This is the world of Tusi and Euclid: The fit object of earth-measuring intellect.

Its time and space are relative, and so are its earth and sky.

Draw your bow and find the target, learn from me the secret of ascension.

Do not seek the Absolute in this mundane world, for the Absolute is nothing but the Light of the Heavens.

Its limit is internal, not external; there are no distinctions of low and high, more or less, in its internal aspect.

Its internal aspect is devoid of high and low, but its external aspect is liable to extension.

Infinity is not amenable to our intellect; ‘One’ in its hand becomes a thousand.

As it is lame, it likes rest; it does not see the kernel; it therefore looks towards the shell.

As we divided Reality into several spheres, we made a distinction of change and rest.

In non-spatial sphere intellect introduced spatial categories, like a belt it girdled time round its waist.

We did not look for time within the depth of our hearts, and so we created months and years, nights and days.

Your months and years are of no value: just ponder over the Quranic verse, ‘How long did you remain?’

Reach within yourself and retire from this noisy world, throw yourself into the inner recesses of your heart.

To talk of body and soul as two separate entities is wrong; to see them as two is sinful.

The whole secret of the universe lies in the soul, body is one of its modes of expression.

The bride of Reality adorned itself by the henna of form; it assumed different shapes for its manifestation.

Reality weaves veils for its face, for it finds delight in display.

Since the West viewed body and soul as separate, it also regarded State and Religion as two.

The churchman only tells his beads, for he has no work of the State to perform.

See deceit and artifice in statecraft: It is a body without a soul, or a soul without a body.

Make intellect a companion of your heart; behold, for instance, the Turkish nation.

By imitation of the West, the Turks lost their individuality; they did not see any link between State and Religion.

We looked at the One as compound of so many parts that we created numerals to count it.

Do you think that this ancient world is a handful of earth? It is a fleeting moment of God’s activity.

The scientists tend to adorn a dead body; they neither possess the Hand of Moses nor the Breath of Jesus.

I have seen nothing of value in this type of science; I have been craving for a wisdom of another sort.

I believe that the world is undergoing a revolution, its inside is alive and in convulsions.

Pass beyond your numerals, look for a while within your self and leave.

In a universe where a part is greater than the whole, the calculations of Razi and Tusi are irrelevant.

For a while familiarize yourself with Aristotle, for another while sit in the company of Bacon.

But then you must pass beyond their stand, don’t get lost in this stage, journey on.

With the aid of that intellect that deals with quantities probe the depths of mines and oceans;

Master the world of how and why; catch the moon and Pleiades from the sky.

But then learn wisdom of another sort; free yourself from the snare of night and day.

Your real place is beyond this mundane world, aspire for a right that is without a left.

How did the eternal and temporal separate that one became the world, and the other God?

The life of the ego is to bring non-ego into existence, the separation of the knower and known is good.

Our ideas of eternal and temporal are due to our way of reckoning; our reckoning is the result of the spell of mathematical time.

We constantly talk of yesterday and tomorrow, we deal with ‘is’, ‘was’, and ‘might be’.

To sever ourselves from Him is our nature, and also to be restless and not to reach the goal.

Neither do we get worth in separation from Him, nor does He feel peace without union with us;

Neither He without us, nor we without Him! How strange! Our separation is separation ‘in’ union.

Separation gives to this dust (i.e. man) an insight, it gives the weight of a mountain to a straw.

Separation is a token of love; it agrees with the nature of lovers.

If we are alive, it is due to this affliction (of separation), and if we are immortal, it is due to it.

What is ‘I’ and ‘He’? It is a divine mystery! ‘I’ and ‘He’ are a witness to our immortality.

The light of the Essence is everywhere, hidden and apparent; to live in company is real life.

Love does not acquire insight without company, and without company, it does not become self-conscious.

In our assembly, there are divine manifestations, behold! The world is non-existent and He is existent, behold.

Doors and walls, cities, towns and streets are not there, for here there is nothing existent except we and He.

Sometimes He makes Himself a stranger to us; sometimes He plays upon us as upon a musical instrument.

Sometimes we fashion His idol out of stone, sometimes we prostrate before Him without having seen Him.

Sometimes we tear every veil of Nature, and boldly see His beautiful face.

What fancy has this handful of dust? It is due to this fancy that his inner self is illumined.

What a nice fancy that he bewails in separation and yet he grows and develops through it.

This separation developed in him such a spiritual insight, that he turned his dusk into a dawn.

He made the ego subject to affliction: Thus turned the ancient grief into an ever-living joy.

He got strings of pearls from the tears of his eyes from the tree of bewailing he got sweet fruit.

To press the ego tightly to the bosom is to turn death into everlasting life.

What is Love? It is to tie all the different stages in a knot. What is Love? It is to pass beyond all goals.

Love does not know of any termination, its dawn has no dusk.

There are no bends in its way as in that of intellect, in its lustre of a moment, there is a world.

Thousands of worlds lie along our path, how can our endeavours reach their finale?

O traveler I live for ever and die for ever, take hold of the world that comes before you.

It is not the goal of our journey to merge ourselves in His Ocean. If you catch hold of Him, it is not fana (extinction).

It is impossible for an ego to be absorbed in another ego, for the ego to be itself is its perfection.

What am I? Tell me what ‘I’ means. What is the meaning of ‘travel into yourself’?

Ego is the amulet for the protection of the universe. The first ray of its essence is Life.

Life awakens from its sweet dream, its inside, which is one, becomes many.

Neither it develops without our expansion, nor do we expand without its development.

Its inner core is a shoreless sea; the heart of every drop is a tumultuous wave.

It has no inclination to rest; its manifestation is nothing but individuals.

Life is fire and egos are like its flames; like stars they are (both) stationary and moving.

Without going outside, it looks towards others; though in company, is yet in privacy.

Just see its self-meditation; it develops out of the trodden earth.

Hidden from the eyes, it is in tumult, it is constantly in search of adornment.

It is in perpetual activity through its internal ardour, as if it is at war with itself.

The world gets order through this strife of the ego! A handful of dust becomes translucent through strife.

From its ray, nothing comes into being save egos, from its sea, nothing appears save pearls.

The earthly garb is a veil for khudi; its appearance is like the rising of the sun.

In the innermost heart of ours is its sun, our dust is illumined through its potency.

You ask to be informed about ‘I’, and what is meant by ‘travel into yourself’.

I informed you about the relation of body and soul travel into yourself and see what ‘I’ is.

To travel into self: It is to be born without father and mother, to catch Pleiades from the edge of the roof;

To hold eternity with a single stroke of anguish, to see without the rays of the sun;

To obliterate every sign of hope and fear, to sunder the river like Moses;

To break this spell of sea and land, to split the moon with a finger.

So to return from this experience of the spaceless world, that it is within his heart, and the world in his hand.

But it is difficult to unravel this secret: Here ‘seeing’ is valuable and ‘describing’ worthless.

What can I say about ‘I’ and its brilliance? It is manifest from the Quranic text, ‘We proposed’.

The heavens are in terror of its glory, time and space are in its grip.

It sought refuge in the heart of man, and has fallen to the lot of this handful of dust.

It is distinct from the other and yet related to it, is lost within itself and yet conjoined with the other.

What kind of aspiration this handful of dust has that its flight is beyond the limitations of time and space.

It is in prison and yet free! What is this? It is the lasso, the prey, and the hunter! What is this?

There is a lamp within your heart; what is this light which is in your mirror?

Don’t be negligent; you are its trustee, what folly that you do not look within your self!

What is that part which is greater than its whole? What is the way to find that part?

Ego is greater than what we imagine it to be; ego is greater than the whole which you see.

It falls from the heaven again and again to rise; it falls into the sea of the world to rise.

Who else in the world is self-conscious? Who else can fly without wings?

It lies in darkness and yet has a light in its bosom, outside the paradise and yet has a houri in embrace!

With the charming wisdom that it possesses, it brings out pearls from the depth of life.

The impulse of life is eternal, but looked at from outside, it is bound by time.

Upon its destiny depends the position of this universe, its manifestation and preservation of it.

What do you ask about its nature? Destiny is not something separate from its nature.

What should I say about its character? Outwardly it is determined, inwardly it is free.

Such is the saying of the Lord of Badr, that faith lies between determinism and indeterminism.

You call every creature to be determined, to be confined to the chains of ‘near’ and ‘far’.

But the soul is from the breath of the Creator, which lives in privacy with all its manifestations.

Determinism with regard to it is out of question, for soul without freedom is not a soul.

It lay in ambush on this world of quantitative measurements. From determinism it passed over to freedom.

When it (ego) removes from itself the dust of determinism, it drives its world like a camel.

The sky does not revolve without its permission, nor do stars shine without its grace.

One day it reveals its hidden nature, and sees its essence with its own eyes.

Rows of heavenly choir stand on either side of the road, waiting for a glimpse of its countenance.

The angel gets wine from its vine; it gets significance from its earth.

You ask about the way of its seeking; come down to the state of lamentation.

Change your days and nights for eternity, change from intellect to the morning lamentation (intuition).

Intellect has its source in senses, lamentation gets light from love.

Intellect grasps the part, lamentation the whole. Intellect dies but lamentation is immortal.

Intellect has no categories to comprehend eternity; it counts moments as the hands of the watch.

It contrives days and nights and mornings; it cannot catch the flames; therefore it takes on sparks.

The lamentation of the lovers is the ultimate goal, in one moment of it lies hidden a world.

When the ego manifests its potentialities, it removes its inner knots and veil.

You do not have that light by which it sees. You look upon it as momentary and mortal.

Why fear that death which comes from without? For when the ‘I’ ripens into a self it has no danger of dissolution.

There is a more subtle inner death which makes me tremble!

This death is falling down from love’s frenzy, saving one’s spark and not giving it away freely to the heaps of chaff;

Cutting one’s shroud with one’s own hands; seeing one’s death with one’s own eyes;

This death lies in ambush for thee! Fear it, for that is really our death.

It digs your grave in your body; its Munkar and Nakir are with it.

Of what sort is this traveler, who is the wayfarer? Of whom shall I say that he is the Perfect Man?

If you direct your eyes towards your heart, you will find your destination within your bosom.

To travel while at rest is: To travel from one’s self to one’s self.

None knows here where we are, that we look so insignificant in the eyes of moon and stars.

Don’t seek the end of the journey; for you have no end; as soon as you reach the end, you lose your soul.

Do not look upon us as ripe; for we are raw, at every destination we are perfect and imperfect.

Not to reach the end is life; immortal life for us lies in constant traveling.

The whole world from the centre of the earth to the moon is within our reach, time and space are like dust in our path.

Our selves are our centres and pine for manifestation, for we are waves and rise from the bottom of Being.

Lie in constant ambush against the self, fly from doubt to faith and certainty.

The fire and ardour of love are not subject to extinction; faith and ‘sight’ have no end.

The perfection of life consists in seeing the Essence, the way of achieving it is to free oneself from the limits of time and space.

You should enjoy privacy with the Divine Person in such a way, that He sees you and you see Him.

Become illumined by the light of ‘what you see.’ Do not wink; otherwise you will be no more.

In His presence, be strong and self-possessed; don’t merge yourself in the ocean of His Light.

Bestow that perturbation to the mote that it may shine in the vicinity of the sun.

So burn amid the splendour of the Beloved that you may illumine yourself in public and Him in privacy.

He who ‘saw’ is the leader of the world, we and you are imperfect; he alone is perfect.

If you do not find him, rise in search of him; if you find him, attach yourself to him.

Do not allow yourself to be guided by the faqih, shaikh, and mulla; like fish, do not walk about careless of the hook.

He is a man of the path in matters of State and religion; we are blind and he is a man of insight.

Like the sun of the morning, wisdom shines from every root of his hair.

The West has set up the rule of democracy; it has untied the rope from the neck of a fiend.

It does not possess sound without plectrum and musical instruments, without a flying machine it does not possess the power of flying.

A desolate field is better than its garden, a desert is better than its city.

Like a marauding caravan it is active, its people are ever busy in satisfying their hunger.

Its soul became dormant, and its body awoke; art, science and religion all became contemptible.

Intellect is nothing but fostering of unbelief, the art of the West is nothing but man-killing.

A group lies in ambush against another group, such a state of affairs is sure to lead to disaster.

Convey my message to the West that the ideal of democracy is a sword out of its sheath:

What a sword that it kills men and does not make a distinction between a believer and an unbeliever!

If it does not remain in the sheath for a little more time, it will kill itself as well as the world.

What point does the aphorism ‘I am the Truth’ imply? Do you think that this mystery was mere nonsense?

I am once again going to explain the mystery of ‘I am the Truth’. Before India and Iran I am unfolding a secret again.

The Magi in the circle of his followers said: ‘Life was taken in by itself and uttered ‘I’.

God went to sleep and our being is through His dream; our existence and appearance are merely His dreams.

Down and above, all four dimensions are illusions, rest and motion, desire and search are all illusions!

Wakeful heart and wise intellect, a dream; dread and anxiety, certainty and belief, a dream.

Your wakeful eye is in reality in a state of dream, your speech and action are all in a dream!

When He wakes up, nothing else remains; there is no customer for the merchandise of yearning.’

The development of our intellect is through reasoning; our reasoning depends upon the nature of the senses.

When sense changes, this world becomes different: Rest and motion, quality and quantity are changed.

It can be said that the world of colour and smell is non-existent, earth and sky, house and street, are nothing.

It can be said that all these are dreams or illusions, or veils over the countenance of the Divine Person.

It can be said that all is sorcery of the senses, a deception produced by our eyes and ears.

But the ego does not belong to the universe of colour and smell; our senses do not intervene between us and it.

Eyesight has no access to its sacred precincts; you can see ‘self’ without eyesight.

The calculation of its days is not through the revolution of the sky; if you look within, there is no doubt or misgiving about it.

If you say that the ‘I’ is a mere illusion: An appearance among other appearances.

Then tell me who is the subject of this illusion; look within and discover.

The world is visible, yet its existence needs proof! Not even the intellect of an angel can comprehend it.

The ‘I’ is invisible and needs no proof: Think awhile and see thine own secret!

The ‘I’ is Truth, it is no illusion; don’t look upon it as a fruitless field.

When it ripens, it becomes eternal! Lovers, even though separated from the Beloved, live in blissful union!

It is possible to give wings to a mere spark, and to make it flutter for ever and for ever!

The Eternity of God is (elemental and) not the reward of His action! For His eternity is not through seeking.

That eternity is superior, which a borrowed soul wins for herself by love’s frenzy.

The being of mountains and deserts and cities is nothing, the universe is mortal, the ego immortal and nothing else matters.

Do not talk of Shankar and Mansur any longer, seek God through seeking your own self.’

Be lost in your self to find the reality of the ego, say ‘I am the Truth’ and affirm the existence of the ego.