How the King made trial of the two slaves whom he had recently purchased.
A King bought two slaves cheap, and conversed with one of the twain.
He found him quick-witted and answering sweetly: what issues from the sugar-lip? Sugar-water.
Man is concealed underneath his tongue: this tongue is the curtain over the gate of the soul.
When a gust of wind has rolled up the curtain, the secret of the interior of the house is disclosed to us,
(And we see) whether in that house there are pearls or (grains of) wheat, a treasure of gold or whether all is snakes and scorpions;
Or whether a treasure is there and a serpent beside it, since a treasure of gold is not without some one to keep watch.
Without premeditation he (that slave) would speak in such wise as others after five hundred premeditations.
You would have said that in his inward part there was a sea, and that the whole sea was pearls of eloquence,
(And that) the light that shone from every pearl became a criterion for distinguishing between truth and falsehood.
(So) would the light of the Criterion (Universal Reason), (if it shone into our hearts), distinguish for us truth and falsehood and separate them mote by mote;
The light of the (Divine) Pearl would become the light of our eyes: both the question and the answer would be (would come) from us.
(But) you have made your eyes awry and seen the moon's disk double: this gazing in perplexity is like the question.
Make your eyes straight in the moonshine, so that you may see the moon as one. Lo, (that is) the answer.
Tell your thought not to see awry and to look well (rightly): that thought is the radiance of that Pearl.
Whenever an answer comes to the heart through the ear, the eye says, “Hear it from me; let that (answer given through the ear) alone!”
The ear is a go-between, while the eye is possessed of union (immediate vision); the eye has direct experience (of reality), while the ear has (only) words (doctrine).
In the ear's hearing there is a transformation of qualities; in the eyes' seeing there is a transformation of essence.
If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words (alone), seek to be cooked (by the fire itself), and do not abide in the certainty (of knowledge derived from others).
There is no intuitive (actual) certainty until you burn; (if) you desire this certainty, sit down in the fire.
When the ear is penetrating, it becomes an eye; otherwise, the word (of God) becomes entangled in the ear (and does not reach the heart).
This discourse hath no end. Turn back, that (we may see) what the King did to those slaves of his.
