VI. The Greater (Spiritual) Warfare.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana and Redhouse, James W. (James William), Sir
The people answered: “Thou’lt no Caliph’s palace find,
Our Caliph’s sole pavilion’s his enlightened mind.
Through his ‘Commandership’ his fame to Rome has come;185
But like our other poor, a hut’s his ample home.
How shouldst thou see that palace, brother, stranger, guest,
When in thy mind’s eye thou a beam hast, unconfessed?
Cast out that beam; make clear thy eye from every mote
Then mayst thou entertain the hope to see his cote.”
Whoever shall his heart cleanse from all passions’ bale,
Will soon perceive therein a court and presence hale.25
When Ahmed’s heart was cleansed of evil’s fire and smoke,186
Whichever way he turned, God’s countenance bespoke.187
So long as man keeps company with evil thought,
How can he understand God’s countenance in aught?
He that a window’s pierced from heart towards heaven’s recess,
Sees in each mote a ray from Sun of Righteousness.188
God shines apparent in the midst of other things,
As moon in majesty among the stars’ twinklings.
Place thou two finger-tips upon thy two eyeballs.
What seest thou now of all the world? Darkness befalls.30
Thou seest it not; but that the world exists, thou’lt trust.
Our vices are the finger-tips of fleshly lust.
Thy finger-tips remove; instanter, as before,
Thou lookest around and seest whate’er thou wilt explore.
His people asked of Noah where righteousness might be.
He said: “Lo, there! With muffled heads you cannot see.
You’ve wrapped your cloaks in folds about your heads and eyes.
Your sense of sight cannot see what before you lies.”
The world’s eye man is; all the rest’s mere skin and shell.
A real eye’s he who strives his “Friend” to see right well.18935
Unless we see our Friend, ’twere better we were blind,
A friend that is not constant’s better out of mind.
When Rome’s ambassador had heard those words so wise,190
His eager curiosity began to rise.
He sought for ‘Umer with redoubled zeal and zest;
But in so doing lost his horse, and eke his chest.
He wandered everywhere to seek the Caliph out.
Like one distracted asked each passer-by his route.
“Is’t possible,” he said, “that such a man there be,
When like the soul to sight invisible is he?”40