(11) The pitcher of this body holds the water of life, If you look at the contents you are wise; Know words resemble these bodies, The body's eyes are ever intent on bodies, The soul's eyes on the reasonable soul; Wherefore, in the figures of the words of the Masnavi, The form misleads, but the inner meaning guides. In the Koran it is declared that its parables "Mislead some and guide some." O God! when a spiritual man talks of wine,

A thirsty man discovered a tank of water, but could not drink of it because it was surrounded by a high wall. He took some of the bricks off the top of the wall and cast them over it into the water. The water cried out, "What advantage do you gain by doing this?" He made answer, "The first advantage is this, that I hear your voice; and the second, that the more bricks I pull off the wall, the nearer I approach to you." The moral is, that so long as the wall of the body intervenes, we cannot reach the water of life. The abasement of the body brings men nearer to union with the Deity. Destroy, therefore, the fleshly lusts which war against the soul. Then follows another parable to illustrate the folly of procrastination in this important matter.

The cup of prayer contains wine and water, for it represents the blood for which thanksgiving is offered. It is full of the holy spirit, and it belongs to the completely perfect human. When we drink it, we take to ourselves the perfect human. The living water is a body, and we must put on the living human. Thus, when one is about to go down into the water, one strips in order to put on the living human.

A certain noble, who lived under the Christian dispensation when wine was allowed, sent his servant to a monastery to fetch some wine. The servant went and bought the wine, and was returning with it, when he passed the house of a very austere and testy devotee. This devotee called out to him, "What have you got there?" The servant said, "Wine, belonging to such a noble." The devotee said, "What! does a follower of God indulge in wine? Followers of God should have naught to do with pleasure and drinking; for wine is a very Satan, and steals men's wits. Your wits are not too bright already, so you have no need to render them still duller by drink." In illustration of this, he told the story of one Ziayi Dalaq, a very tall man, who had a dwarfish brother. This brother one day received him very ungraciously, only half rising from his seat in answer to his salutation, and Ziayi Dalaq said to him, "You seem to think yourself so tall that it is necessary to clip off somewhat of your height." Finally the devotee broke the wine-jar with a stone, and the servant went and told his master. The noble was very wrathful at the presumption of the devotee in taking upon himself to prohibit wine, as condemned by the law of nature, when it had not been prohibited by the Gospel, and he took a thick stick and went to the devotee's house to chastise him. The devotee heard of his approach and hid himself under some wool, which belonged to the ropemakers of the village, He said to himself, "To tell an angry man of his faults one needs to have a face as hard as a mirror, which reflects his ugliness without fear or favor." Just so the Prince of Tirmid was once playing chess with a courtier, and being checkmated, got into a rage and threw the chessboard at his courtier's head. So before playing the next game the courtier protected his head by wrappings of felt. Then the neighbors of the devotee, hearing the noise, came out and interceded for him with the noble, telling him that the devotee was half-witted, and could not be held responsible for his actions; and moreover, that as he was a favorite of God, it was useless to attempt to slay him before his time, for the Prophet and other saints had been miraculously preserved in circumstances fatal to ordinary persons. The noble refused to be pacified; but the neighbors redoubled their entreaties, urging that he had so much pleasure in his sovereignty that he could well dispense with the pleasure of wine. The noble strenuously denied this, saying that no other pleasure of sovereignty, or what not, could compensate him for the loss of wine, which made him sway from side to side like the jessamine. The prophets themselves had rejected all other pleasures for that of spiritual intoxication, and he who has once embraced a living mistress will never put up with a dead one. The moral is, that spiritual pleasures, typified by wine, are not to be bartered away for earthly pleasures. The Prophet said, "The world is carrion, and they who seek it are dogs;" and the Koran says, "The present life is no other than a pastime and a sport; but the future mansion is life indeed."

(29) Leaf 15. The first sentence reads: "The fruit of plants by virtue of the Sun, our Stone." The boy holding the dish is made to say: "Drink here all ye that are athirst. Come unto me, run to the waters. Here drink, without price, and drink your fill. Open your eyes and see the wonders of the earth. They learn, my thirsty twenty and four." Beneath the boy are the words: "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, and divided the waters from the waters. Bless the waters which are above the Heavens." The circle contains this statement: "The earth without form and void. Out of the stars come the rains." The lower left panel continues the alchemical process, ending with admonition to renounce the misery of worldly existence. Above is a prayer to the Virgin Mary which opens thus: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord be with thee. Blessed thou among women."

(4) T: And where hath He set it up? H: He filled a mighty Cup with it, and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the hearts of men: Baptize thyself with this Cup's baptism, what heart can do so, thou that hast faith thou canst ascend to him that hath sent down the Cup, thou that dost know for what thoudidst come into being! As many then as understood the Herald's tidings and doused themselves in Mind, became partakers in the Gnosis; and when they had "received the Mind" they were made "perfect men". But they who do not understand the tidings, these, since they possess the aid of Reason [only] and not Mind, are ignorant wherefor they have come into being and whereby.

(6) Jesus,--that is Aberamenthō,--said unto his disciples: "Amēn, I say unto you: I have brought nothing into the world when I came, save this fire, this water, this wine and this blood. I have brought the water and the fire out of the region of the Light of the lights of the Treasury of the Light; and I have brought the wine and the blood out of the region of Barbēlō. And after a little while my father sent me the holy spirit in the type of a dove. "And the fire, the water and the wine are for the purification of all the sins of the world. The blood on the other hand was for a sign unto me because of the human body which I received in the region of Barbēlō, the great power of the invisible god. The breath on the other hand advanceth towards all souls and leadeth them unto the region of the Light.

(6) The water which thou seest springs not from vein Restored by vapour that the cold condenses, Like to a stream that gains or loses breath; But issues from a fountain safe and certain, Which by the will of God as much regains As it discharges, open on two sides. Upon this side with virtue it descends, Which takes away all memory of sin; On that, of every good deed done restores it. Here Lethe, as upon the other side Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not If first on either side it be not tasted. This every other savour doth transcend; And notwithstanding slaked so far may be Thy thirst, that I reveal to thee no more,

(12) And in whomsoever the eye of the soul has been blinded by ill-nurture and teaching, let him advance to the true light, to the truth, which shows by writing the things that are unwritten. "Ye that thirst, go to the waters," says Esaias, And "drink water from thine own vessels," Solomon exhorts. Accordingly in "The Laws," the philosopher who learned from the Hebrews, Plato, commands husbandmen not to irrigate or take water from others, until they have first dug down in their own ground to what is called the virgin soil, and found it dry.

(7) "For this cause have I said unto you: 'I am come to cast fire on the earth,'--that is: I am come to purify the sins of the whole world with fire. "And for this cause have I said to the Samaritan woman: 'If thou knewest of the gift of God, and who it is who saith unto thee: Give me to drink,--thou wouldst ask, and he would give thee living water, and there would be in thee a spring which welleth up for everlasting life.' "And for this cause I took also a cup of wine, blessed it and give it unto you and said: 'This is the blood of the covenant which will be poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins.' "And for this cause they have also thrust the spear into my side, and there came forth water and blood. "And these are the mysteries of the Light which forgive sins; that is to say, these are the namings and the names of the Light."

(41) But whoso seeks his water of life in worldly joys, The eyes of the heart which behold the heavens Mankind are ever being changed, and God's elixir Joins the body's garment without aid of needle. On the day that you entered upon existence, You were first fire, or earth, or air. If you had continued in that, your original state, How could you have arrived at this dignity of humanity? But through change your first existence remained not In lien thereof God gave you a better existence

(27) The Holy Cup can be discovered only by those who have raised themselves above the limitations of sensuous existence. In his mystic poem, The Vision of Sir Launfal, James Russell Lowell discloses the true nature of the Holy Grail by showing that it is visible only to a certain state of spiritual consciousness. Only upon returning from the vain pursuit of haughty ambition did the aged and broken knight see in the transformed leper's cup the glowing chalice of his lifelong dream. Some writers trace a similarity between the Grail legend and the stories of the martyred Sun Gods whose blood, descending from heaven into the earth, was caught in the cup of matter and liberated therefrom by the initiatory rites. The Holy Grail may also be the seed pod so frequently employed in the ancient Mysteries as an emblem of germination and resurrection; and if the cuplike shape of the Grail be derived from the flower, it signifies the regeneration and spiritualization of the generative forces in man.

(12) 'Tis like water in a vessel, or light through a glass; If they think they come from themselves, they are wrong. When the vessel leaves the fountain, it sees its error; The glass also learns, when the moon sets, When his eyes are opened by the command, "Arise!" Then that disciple smiles a second time, like the dawn. He laughs also at his own previous laughter, When he returns from his long and distant wanderings He says, "Lo! this was the truth, this the secret! To experience joy in that distant valley? What a delusion I was under! what a mistake!

(11) Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

(108) Jesus said, "He who will drink from my mouth will become like Me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will become revealed to him."

(27) To the multitudes Jesus spoke in parables; to His disciples He also spoke in parables, though of a more exalted and philosophic nature. Voltaire said that Plato should have been canonized by the Christian Church, for, being the first propounder of the Christos mystery, he contributed more to its fundamental doctrines than any other single individual. Jesus disclosed to His disciples that the lower world is under the control of a great spiritual being which had fashioned it according to the will of the Eternal Father. The mind of this great angel was both the mind of the world and also the worldly mind. So that men should not die of worldliness the Eternal Father sent unto creation the eldest and most exalted of His powers--the Divine Mind. This Divine Mind offered Itself as a living sacrifice and was broken up and eaten by the world. Having given Its spirit and Its body at a secret and sacred supper to the twelve manners of rational creatures, this Divine Mind became a part of every living thing. Man was thereby enabled to use this power as a bridge across which he might pass and attain immortality. He who lifted up his soul to this Divine Mind and served It was righteous and, having attained righteousness, liberated this Divine Mind, which thereupon returned again in glory to Its own divine source. And because He had brought to them this knowledge, the disciples said one to another: "Lo, He is Himself this Mind personified!"

(28) Jesus said, "I took my place in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in the flesh. I found all of them intoxicated; I found none of them thirsty. And My soul became afflicted for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight; for empty they came into the world, and empty too they seek to leave the world. But for the moment they are intoxicated. When they shake off their wine, then they will repent."

(9) If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

(1) Be not intoxicated with these goblets of forms, Pass by these cups full of forms, linger not; There is wine in the cups, but it proceeds not from them. Look to the Giver of the wine with open mouth; When His wine comes, is not cup too small to hold it? O Adam, seek the reality of my love, When sand was made meal for "The Friend of God," Know, O master, the form of wheat was dispensed with. Form proceeds from the world that is without form, The Divine art without form designs forms (ideals),

(42) Sings to me in organ tones, 'To him shall we return.' Like a water-lily seek life there! Yea, like that drawer of water, at the risk of life, Water will be his death, yet he still seeks water, And still drinks on, and God knows what is right. O lover, cold-hearted and void of loyalty, Who from fear for your life shun the beloved! O base one, behold a hundred thousand souls Dancing towards the deadly sword of his love: Behold water in a pitcher; pour it out;