(1) Whither stumble ye, sots, who have sopped up the wine of ignorance and can so far not carry it that ye already even spew it forth? Stay ye, be sober, gaze upwards with the [true] eyes of the heart! And if ye cannot all, yet ye at least who can! For that the ill of ignorance doth pour o`er all the earth and overwhelm the soul that's battened down within the body, preventing it from fetching port within Salvation's harbors.

(31) But that Man is so very blind and ignorant, or void of Understanding, is because he lies captive in the Regimen [or Dominion] of the Stars and Elements, which many Times figure [or fashion] a wild Beast in the Mind of Man, a Lion, a Wolf, no such Body, yet he has such a Mind; of which Christ spoke to the Jews, and called some of them Wolves, Foxes, and Serpents. Also John the Baptist said so of the Pharisees, and we see apparently, how many Men live wholly like Beasts, according to their bestial Mind, and yet are so audacious, that they judge and condemn those that live in the Image of God, and subdue their Bodies.

(58) He is not ignorant nor absent, O mean one. The carnal soul is made by God blind and deaf; I saw with the heart's eye your blindness afar off. For this cause I never inquired about you for eight years Why indeed should I inquire about one in the furnace, Who is bowed down with reproach, like yourself? Comparison of the world to a bath stove, The lust of the world is like a bath stove, Whereby the bath of piety is heated;

(12) His past year's sins of fornication, fraud, and deceit; In order that the priest may absolve him of those sins; He thinks the priest's absolution the same as God's! That priest is unable to condemn or to absolve; But faith and love are a mighty enchantment! God's dealings visible to the spiritual. The wine is from that world, the vessels from this; The vessels are seen, but the wine is hidden! Hidden indeed from the sight of the carnal, But open and manifest to the spiritual! O God, our eyes are blinded!

(28) Hence, through ignorance, sloth, and folly, Though he stands hard by us, we are shut off from him. The noise of thunder makes the head of the thirsty ache; When he knows not that it unlocks the blessed showers, His eyes are fixed on the running stream, He urges the steed of his desire towards the caused, Whoso beholds the Causer face to face, How can he set his heart on things caused on earth?

(35) Now I shall fall into the School of the Master in his uPontificalibus, who will ask out of what the Beasts, Fowls, Fishes, and Worms were made; for he will have it, that all of them were made out of the Earth, and will prove it out of Moses, and he understands as much of Moses as of Paradise, which he will have to be altogether corporeal. Therefore there is a gross Deadness in the Understanding; and though I write plain enough, yet I shall be still dumb to that deadened Soul which is void of Understanding, and yet I cannot help it; for it is said, You must be born anew, if you will see the Kingdom of God. Would you know [out of what the Beasts are made,] then lay aside your Bonnet of Pride that is in your Mind, and walk along into the paradisical Garden of Roses, and there you shall find an Herb; if you eat of it, your Eyes will be opened, so that you shall see and know what Moses has wrote.

(61) Is made to revolve by the strokes of the King's hand. O man of double vision, hearken with attention, Many are the holy words that find no entrance Into blind hearts, but they enter hearts full of light. But the deceits of Satan enter crooked hearts, Though you repeat pious expressions again and again, If you are a fool, they affect you not at all; Nay, not though you set them down in writing, And though you proclaim them vauntingly; Wisdom averts its face from you, O man of sin,

(12) What need has He to wheedle a worm like Moses?" O babbler, while thy soul is drunk with mere date wine, For the token of thy having seen that divine light Is this, to withdraw thyself from the house of pride. When a fowl flies to the salt water, It has never beheld the blessing of sweet water; But its faith is mere imitation of other fowl, Wherefore the blind imitator encounters great perils, Perils of the road, of robbers, of cursed Satans. But when he has seen the light of God, he is safe

(3) And hence appears it, that each minor nature Is scant receptacle unto that good Which has no end, and by itself is measured. In consequence our vision, which perforce Must be some ray of that intelligence With which all things whatever are replete, Cannot in its own nature be so potent, That it shall not its origin discern Far beyond that which is apparent to it. Therefore into the justice sempiternal The power of vision that your world receives, As eye into the ocean, penetrates; Which, though it see the bottom near the shore, Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet 'Tis there, but it is hidden by the depth. There is no light but comes from the serene That never is o'ercast, nay, it is darkness Or shadow of the flesh, or else its poison. Amply to thee is opened now the cavern Which has concealed from thee the living justice Of which thou mad'st such frequent questioning. For saidst thou: 'Born a man is on the shore Of Indus, and is none who there can speak Of Christ, nor who can read, nor who can write;

(2) "Wherefore, then, I send thee to the Gentiles," it is said, "to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God; that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith which is in Me." Such, then, are the eyes of the blind which are opened. The knowledge of the Father by the Son is the comprehension of the "Greek circumlocution;" and to turn from the power of Satan is to change from sin, through which bondage was produced. We do not, indeed, receive absolutely all philosophy, but that of which Socrates speaks in Plato. "For there are (as they say) in the mysteries many bearers of the thyrsus, but few bacchanals;" meaning, "that many are called, but few chosen." He accordingly plainly adds:

(12) These three, of course, are not the only marks which differentiate them from common people, but the only ones that come within our cognizance. Just as no one knows the real nature of God but God Himself, so no one knows the real nature of a prophet but a prophet. Nor is this to be wondered at, as in everyday matters we see that it is impossible to explain the charm of poetry to one whose ear is insusceptible of cadence and rhythm, or the glories of colour to one who is stone-blind. Besides mere incapacity, there are other hindrances to the attainment of spiritual truth. One of these is externally acquired knowledge. To use a figure, the heart may be represented as a well, and the five senses as five streams which are continually conveying water to it. In order to find out the real contents of the heart these streams must be stopped for a time, at any rate, and the refuse they have brought with them must be cleared out of the well. In other words, if we are to arrive at pure spiritual truth, we must put away, for the time knowledge which has been acquired by external processes and which too often hardens into dogmatic prejudice.

(1) But since they will believe neither in what is good justly nor in knowledge unto salvation, we ourselves reckoning what they claim as belonging to us, because all things are God's; and especially since what is good proceeded from us to the Greeks, let us handle those things as they are capable of hearing. For intelligence or rectitude this great crowd estimates not by truth, but by what they are delighted with. And they will be pleased not more with other things than with what is like themselves. For he who is still blind and dumb, not having understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the contemplative soul, which the Saviour confers, like the uninitiated at the mysteries, or the unmusical at dances, not being yet pure and worthy of the pure truth, but still discordant and disordered and material, must stand outside of the divine choir.

(114) Is the blessed moon of love thereby eclipsed? The beauty of Joseph was not visible to his brethren; Was it therefore hidden from the eyes of Jacob? The eyes of Moses regarded his staff as a stick, The eye of the head was at issue with the divine eye, To the eyes of Moses his hand looked a mere hand, This subject in its entirety is endless, The only realities to him are lust and gluttony; To us believers lust and gluttony are only ideas, To all men whose creed is lust and gluttony,

(5) "Then you don't think that I have sought?" "Yes, if you think you do not know." So with the lamps of the wise virgins, lighted at night in the great darkness of ignorance, which the Scripture signified by "night." Wise souls, pure as virgins, understanding themselves to be situated amidst the ignorance of the world, kindle the light, and rouse the mind, and illumine the darkness, and dispel ignorance, and seek truth, and await the appearance of the Teacher.

(26) Since many Questions fall to be in this Place (for the Mind of Man seeks after its native Country again, out of which it is wandered, and would return again Home to the eternal Rest) and since it is permitted to me in my Knowledge, I will therefore set down the deep Ground of the Fall, wherein Men may look upon the Eyes of Moses: If you be born of God, then it may well be apprehended by you, but the unenlightened Mind cannot hit the Mark; for if the Mind desireth to see what is in without seeing it oneself, there is always doubting whether a Thing be as is related. But what the Eye sees, and the Mind knows, that is believed perfectly, for [the Eye and the Mind] apprehends it.

(71) Suppose he wears the semblance of one clad in mail, The God-intoxicated are not sobered by old age, The wine of God is true, and not false, Thou makest thyself out to be a Junaid or a Bayazid; Go! for do I not know a hatchet from a ploughshare? O plotter, how canst thou conceal by fraud Baseness, sloth, covetousness, and lust? Thou holdest thyself out as a lover of God, The lover and the beloved on the last day How foolish and silly thou hast made thyself!

(7) Those who deny the reality of the ecstasies and other spiritual experiences of the Sufis merely betray their own narrow mindedness and shallow insight. Some allowance, however, must be made for them, for it is as, difficult to believe in the reality of states of which one has no personal experience as it is for a blind man to understand the pleasure of looking at green grass and running water, or for a child to comprehend the pleasure of exercising sovereignty. A wise man, though he himself may have no experience of those states, will not therefore deny their reality, for what folly can be greater than his who denies the reality of a thing merely because he himself has not experienced it! Of such people it is written in the Koran, "Those who have not the guidance will say, 'This is a manifest imposture.'"