(18) On another occasion Bayazid said, "Were God to offer thee the intimacy with Himself of Abraham, the power in prayer of Moses, the spirituality of Jesus, yet keep thy face directed to Him only, for He has treasures surpassing even these." One day a friend said to him, "For thirty years I have fasted by day and prayed by night and have found none of that spiritual joy of which thou speakest." Bayazid answered, "If you fasted and prayed for three hundred years, you would never find it." "How is that?" asked the other. "Because," said Bayazid, "your selfishness is acting as a veil between you and God." "Tell me, then, the cure." "It is a cure which you cannot carry out." However, as his friend pressed him to reveal it, Bayazid said, "Go to the nearest barber and have your beard shaved; strip yourself of your clothes, with the exception of a girdle round your loins. Take a horse's nosebag full of walnuts, hang it round your neck, go into the bazaar and cry out, 'Any boy who gives me a slap on the nape of my neck shall have a walnut.' Then, in this manner, go where the Qadi and the doctors of the law are sitting." "Bless my soul!" said his friend, "I really can't do that, do suggest some other remedy." "This is the indispensable preliminary to a cure,' answered Bayazid, "but, as I told you, you are incurable."

(2) I think he thought that I perhaps might think So many voices issued through those trunks From people who concealed themselves from us; Therefore the Master said: "If thou break off Some little spray from any of these trees, The thoughts thou hast will wholly be made vain." Then stretched I forth my hand a little forward, And plucked a branchlet off from a great thorn; And the trunk cried, "Why dost thou mangle me?" After it had become embrowned with blood, It recommenced its cry: "Why dost thou rend me? Hast thou no spirit of pity whatsoever? Men once we were, and now are changed to trees; Indeed, thy hand should be more pitiful, Even if the souls of serpents we had been." As out of a green brand, that is on fire At one of the ends, and from the other drips And hisses with the wind that is escaping; So from that splinter issued forth together Both words and blood; whereat I let the tip Fall, and stood like a man who is afraid. "Had he been able sooner to believe," My Sage made answer, "O thou wounded soul, What only in my verses he has seen,

(2) Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; His heart was visible, and the dismal sack That maketh excrement of what is eaten. While I was all absorbed in seeing him, He looked at me, and opened with his hands His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me; How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; And all the others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators of scandal and of schism While living were, and therefore are cleft thus. A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge Putting again each one of all this ream, When we have gone around the doleful road; By reason that our wounds are closed again Ere any one in front of him repass. But who art thou, that musest on the crag, Perchance to postpone going to the pain That is adjudged upon thine accusations?" "Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him," My Master made reply, "to be tormented; But to procure him full experience,