(2) When Bayazid departed from the palace of this world a disciple saw him the same night in a dream and asked this excellent pir how he had escaped Munkir and Nakir. The Sufi said to him: ' When these two angels questioned me about the Creator, I said to them, "The question cannot be answered precisely, for if I say 'he is my God, and that is all', this will only express a desire on my part; it will be better if you return to God and ask him what he thinks of me. If he calls me his servant, you will know that it is so. If not, then he abandons me to the bonds which hold me. Since it is not easy to obtain union with God, what will it serve me to call him My Lord? If he does not agree to my

service how can I claim him for my master? It is true that I have bowed my head, but it is also necessary that he calls me his slave."'

(3) An old woman offered Bu All a piece of gold saying: 'Accept this from me.' He replied: 'I can accept things only from God.' The old woman retorted: 'Where did you learn to see double? You are not a man of power to bind and unbind. If you were not squint-eyed would you see several things at once?'

There is neither Ka'aba nor Pagoda. Learn from my mouth the true doctrine - the eternal existence of Being. We

must not see anyone other than Him. We are in Him, by Him, and with Him. We may also be outside these states. Whoever is not immersed in the Ocean of Unity is not worthy of the race of men.

The day will come when the Sun will draw' aside the veil which covers it. So long as you are separate, good and evil will arise in you, but when you lose yourself in the sun of the divine essence they will be transcended by love. While you loiter on the road you will be held back by faults and weaknesses. Have you not yet realized that in your body there are conceit, vanity, self-pride, selflove and other dirty things! Though the serpent and the scorpion may seem to be dead within you they are only asleep; and if something touches them they will wake up with the strength of a hundred dragons. In each of us is a Hell of serpents. If you make yourself secure against these unclean creatures you may remain tranquil; if not, they will sting you even in the dust of the tomb until the day of reckoning.

And now, O Attar, leave your metaphorical discourses and return to the description of the mysterious Valley of Unity.

The Hoopoe continued: 'When the spiritual traveller enters this valley he will disappear and be lost to sight because the Unique Being will manifest himself; he will be silent because this Being wiU speak.

'The part will become the whole, or rather, there will be neither part nor whole. In the School of the Secret you will see thousands of men with intellectual knowledge, their lips parted in silence. What is intellectual knowledge here? It stops on the threshold of the door like a blind child. He who discovers something of this secret turns his face from the kingdom of the tuo worlds. The Being I speak of does not exist separately; everyone is this Being, existence and nonexistence is this Being. '

(13) Regarding some adepts, it is related that they attain to such a degree of ecstasy that they lose themselves in God. Such was the case with Sheikh Abu'l Hassan Nuri, who, on hearing a certain verse, fell into an ecstatic condition, and, coming into a field full of stalks of newly cut sugar-cane, ran about till his feet were wounded and bleeding, and not long afterwards, expired. In such cases some have supposed that there occurs an actual descent of Deity into humanity, but this would be as great a mistake as that of one who, having for the first time seen his reflection in a mirror should suppose that, somehow or other, he had become incorporated with the mirror, or that the red and white hues which the mirror reflects were qualities inherent in it.

(4) Lokman of Sarkhasi said: 'O God, I am old, and my mind is troubled; I have strayed from the Way. To an old slave they give a certificate of freedom. In your service, O my King, my black hair has become white as snow. I am a slave, cast down; give me now the certificate of freedom.'

A voice from the inner world replied: 'You, who have been specially admitted to the sanctuar}', know that he who wishes for release from slavery must discard his reason, and not occupy himself with cares and anxieties.'

Lokman said: 'O my God, I desire only you, and I know 'that I must not give way to imagination or care and anxiety.' When Lokman had renounced these things, he said: 'Now I do not know what I am. I am not a slave, but what am I? My slavery is ended, but my freedom has not taken place: in my heart is neither joy nor sadness. I am without quality, yet I am not deprived of it. I am a contemplative, yet I do not possess contemplation. I do not know if Thou art I or I am Thou; I have been reduced to nothing in Thee and duality has been lost.'

(3) A holy man who had found prosperity in God gave himself up to worship and adoration for forty years. He had fled from the world, but since God was intimately united to him he was satisfied. This dervish had enclosed a plot of ground in the desert; in the middle of it was a tree, and in the tree a bird had made its nest. The song of the bird was sweet to hear for in each of its notes were a hundred secrets. The servant of God was enchanted. But God told a seer about this state of things in these words: 'Tell this Sufi I am astonished that after so many years of devotion he has ended by selling me for a bird. It is true that this bird is admirable, but its song has caught him in a snare. I have bought him, and he has sold me.'

(2) The beloved of Tus, that ocean of spiritual secrets, said to one of his disciples: 'Melt yourself in the fire of love until you become as thin as a hair, then you will be fit to take your place among the locks of your beloved. If your eyes are turned towards the Way and if you are clear-seeing, then contemplate and ponder, hair by hair.

'He who leaves the world to follow this Way, finds death; he who finds death finds immortality. O my heart, if you have been turned inside out, cross the bridge Sirat and the burning fire; for when the oil in the lamp is burning it produces smoke as black as an old crow, but when it has been consumed by fire it ceases to have a coarse existence.

'If you wish to arrive at that high place first get rid of yourself; then go out from nothing as another Borak. Put on the khirka of nothingness and drink of the cup of annihilation, then cover your breast with the belt of belittlement

(1 ' 5)

and put on your head the burnous of non-existence. Place your foot in the stirrup of non-attachment, and urge your useless steed towards the place where there is nothing. But if there remains in you the least egoism the seven seas will be, for you, full of adversity.'

(4) A Sufi was sauntering leisurely along when he was struck from behind. He turned round and said to the rogue who had hit him: ' He whom you struck has been dead more than thirty years.' The rogue replied: 'How can a dead man speak? Be ashamed, you are not united to God. If you are separated from him even by one hair it is as if you were a hundred worlds away.'

i 26)

When you are reduced to ashes, including your baggage, you will have not the least feeling of existence; but if there remains to you, as to Jesus, only a simple needle, a hundred thieves will lie in wait for you on the road. Although Jesus had thrown down his baggage, the needle was still able to scratch his face.

When existence disappears, neither riches nor empire, honours nor dignity, have any meaning.

(9) The philosopher Avicenna says, "The spirit which is truly sanctified attains to so lofty a degree that all which it sees is real, all which it desires is granted, and in all which it commands, it is obeyed." When the free spirit is stablished in true sanctification, it draws God to itself, and were it placed beyond the reach of contingencies, it would assume the properties of God. But God cannot part with those to anyone; all that He can do for the sanctified spirit is to impart Himself to it. The man who is wholly sanctified is so drawn towards the Eternal, that no transitory thing may move him, no corporeal thing affect him, no earthly thing attract him. This was the meaning of St Paul when he said, "I live; yet not I; Christ liveth in me."

(3) One night, when the Angel Gabriel was in the Sidrah he heard God pronounce the words of consent, and he said to himself: 'A servant of God at this moment invokes the Eternal, but who can he be? I only know that he must be of great merit, that his body of desire is dead and that his spirit is living.' And at once he set off to find this happy mortal. But though he searched the earth and the islands, the mountains and the plains, he could not find him. So he returned to God, and again heard a favourable response to the prayer.

Once more he flew over earth and sea, but at last he had to ask: 'O God, which way will lead me to }Our servant?' God said: 'Go to the country of Rum, and in a certain Christian monastery you will find him.' Gabriel flew off to the monastery" and there he saw the object of celestial favours bowing before an idol. 'O master of the world,' said Gabriel, ' draw aside the veil from this mystery. How can you answer the prayer of an idolworshipper in a monastery?' God said: 'His heart is darkened. He is unaware that he has lost his

way. Since he strays through ignorance my loving-kindness pardons him and I have opened the way for him to a high estate.' Then the Most High unloosed the man's tongue so that he could pronounce the name of God.

One must not neglect the smallest thing. Renunciation is not bought in a shop; neither can you reach the court of the Most High by paying a small sum.

(2) One evening, Abbasah said: 'Supposing that the unbelievers who fill the earth, and even the loquacious Turkomans, should sincerely accept the Faith - such a thing could be possible. But a hundred and twenty thousand prophets have been sent to the unbelieving soul so that it should accept the Musulman faith or perish, and they have not yet succeeded. Why so much zeal and so little result?'

We are all under the domination of the Nafs of this unfaithful disobedient body, which we maintain in ourselves.

E

Helped as it is from two sides, it were astonishing if this body perished. The Spirit, like a faithful knight, rides on, but always the dog is his companion; he may gallop but the dog follows. The love the heart receives is taken by the body. Yet he who makes himself master of this dog will take in his net the lion of the tvo worlds.