بخش 76 - معجزهٔ هود علیه‌السلام در تخلص مؤمنان امت به وقت نزول باد

All the true believers, (seeking refuge) from the violence of the pernicious Wind, seated themselves in the circle (drawn by Húd).

The Wind was (like) the Flood, and His (God's) grace was the ship (Ark): He hath many such arks and floods.

God makes a king to be (as) an ark (for his subjects), to the end that he, (impelled) by selfishness, may assault the ranks (of his enemies).

The king's aim is not that the people should become safe; his aim is that his kingdom should become (like) a fetter (on his foot).

The ass that turns the mill is running along: its aim is (to obtain) release, so that it may gain refuge from blows at that moment.

Its aim is not to draw some water or thereby (by turning the mill) to make sesame into oil.

The ox hurries for fear of (receiving) hard blows, not for the purpose of taking the cart and baggage (to their destination);

But God put such fear of pain in him, to the end that good results might be achieved in consequence (of his fear).

Similarly, every shopkeeper works for himself, not for the improvement of the world.

Every one seeks a plaster for his pain, and in consequence of this a whole world is set in order.

God made of fear the pillar (support) of this world: because of fear every one has devoted himself to work.

Praise be to God that on this wise He has made a fear to be the architect and (means for the) improvement of the world.

All these (people) are afraid of (losing) good and (suffering) evil: none that is afraid is himself frightened by himself.

In reality, then, (the creator of their fear and) the ruler over (them) all is that One who is near, though He is not perceived by the senses.

He is perceived in a certain hiding-place (the heart), but not perceived by the sense of this house (the body).

The sense to which God is manifested is not the sense of this world; it is another.

If the animal sense perceived those (Divine) forms (ideas) an ox or an ass would be the Báyazíd of the time.

He who made the body to be the theatre in which every spirit is manifested, He who made the Ark to be the Buráq (steed) of Noah,

He, if He will, makes (what is) a very ark in (its ordinary) character to be a (destructive) flood for you, O seeker of light.

At every moment, O man of little means, He has conjoined with your grief and gladness an ark (to save you) and a flood (to destroy you).

If you do not perceive the ark and the sea (flood) before you, (then) consider (whence come) the tremors in all your limbs.

Since his (the trembling man's) eyes do not perceive the source of his fear, he is affrighted by diverse kinds of phantasy.

(For example), a drunken boor strikes a blind man with his fist: the blind man thinks it is a kicking camel,

Because at that moment he heard a camel's cry: the ear, not the eye, is the mirror for the blind.

(But) then again the blind man says, “No, it was a stone (which some one threw at me), or perhaps it was (a brick) from an echoing dome.”

It was neither this nor that nor that: He who created fear produced these (phantasies).

Certainly fear and trembling are (produced) by another: nobody is frightened by himself, O sorrowful man.

The miserable philosopher calls fear “imagination” (wahm): he has wrongly understood this lesson.

How should there be any imagination without reality? How should any false coin pass (into circulation) without a genuine one?

How should a lie fetch a price (have value) without truth? Every lie in both worlds has arisen from truth.

He (the liar) saw the currency and prestige enjoyed by truth: he set going (circulated) the lie in hope of (its enjoying) the same.

O (incarnate) lie, whose fortune is (derived) from veracity, give thanks for the bounty and do not deny the truth!

Shall I speak of the philosopher and his mad fancy, or of His (God's) ships (arks) and seas (floods)?

Nay, (I will speak) of His arks, which are the spiritual counsel (given by the saints); I will speak of the whole: the part is included in the whole.

Know every saint to be a Noah and captain of the Ark; know companionship with these (worldly) people to be the Flood.

Do not flee from lions and fierce dragons, (but) beware of friends and kinsmen.

They waste your time (when you are) face to face (with them), and your recollections of them devour (the time of) your absence (from them).

Like a thirsty ass, the image of each one (in your phantasy) is licking up the sherbet of (spiritual) thought from the flagon of the body.

The (mental) image of those talebearers has sucked out of you the dew that you have (derived) from the Sea of Life.

The sign, then, of the absorption (drying up) of the water (sap) in the boughs is that they are not moved to sway (to and fro).

The limb of him who is free (detached from the world) is (like) a moist fresh bough: (if) you pull it in any direction, it is (easily) pulled.

If you want a basket, you can make it (a basket); you can also make its neck a hoop;

(But) when it has been sucked dry by the draining of (the sap from) its root, it does not come (readily) in the direction to which (your) command is pulling it.

Recite, then, from the Qur’án (the words) they stand up languidly, when the bough gets no medicinal (curative) treatment from its root.

This symbol (allegory) is fiery, (but) I will cut it short and resume (the story of) the fakir and the treasure and the circumstances connected with it.

You have seen the fire that burns every (dry) sapling; (now) see the fire of the Spirit by which phantasy is burnt.

Neither for phantasy nor for reality is there any protection against a fire like this which flamed forth from the Spirit.

He is the adversary of every lion and every fox: everything is perishing except His Face.

Go into His aspects (attributes) and Face (Essence), become spent (emptied of self): go in, become enveloped (suppressed), like the alif in bism.

In bism the alif has stayed hidden: it is in bism and also it is not in bism.

Such is the case with all the letters that disappear when they are elided for the purpose of (effecting) conjunctions.

It (the suppressed alif in bism) is a sila (means of conjunction) and through it the b and the s have attained to union: the union of the b and the s could not bear the (external intervention of the) alif.

Since this union cannot bear (the intervention of) a single letter, it behoves me to cut short the discourse.

Since a single letter is the cause of separation between the s and the b, here silence is a most urgent duty.

When the alif has passed away from self(-existence), taking shelter (in self-abandonment), the b and the s say “alif” without it.

(The words) thou didst not throw when thou threwest are (an utterance spoken) without him (the Prophet); likewise (the words) God said sprāng from his silence.

So long as a drug exists (independently), it has no effect; it removes diseases (only) when it has perished (has been dissolved and assimilated).

(Even) if (all) the forest should become pens and (all) the ocean ink, (yet) there is no hope of bringing the Mathnawí to an end.

So long as the Brick-maker's mould is (filled with) earth, the scansion of its (the Mathnawí's) poetry, too, will be kept up.

When earth remains no more and He (God) dries (withers and destroys) its existence, His sea when it foams will make (fresh) earth.

When the forest remains no more and disappears (from existence), (other) forests will raise their heads from the essence of the Sea.

Hence that Lord of relief (from sorrow) said, “Relate Traditions (drawn) from our Sea, since there is no harm (in doing so).”

(Now) turn back from the Sea and set thy face towards dry land: talk only of the plaything, for it is better (more suitable) for the child,

So that in his boyhood, (advancing) little by little beyond the plaything, his spirit may become acquainted with the ocean of Reason.

By means of that play the boy is (gradually) acquiring reason, though superficially it (his play) is repugnant (to reason).

How can a demented child play? There must be (in the child) a part (of reason) in order that it (the part) may attain to the whole.