(3) The parents of Laila refused to let Majnun go near their tents. But Majnun, intoxicated with love, borrowed the skin of a sheep from a shepherd in the desert, where Laila's tribe pitched their tents. He bent his head down and put on the sheep-skin, and said to the shepherd: 'In the name of God, let me crawl along in the middle of your sheep, then lead the flock past Laila's tent, so that I may perhaps discover her sweet perfume, and being concealed in this skin may contrive something.' The shepherd did as Majnun wished, and as they passed her tent he saw her, and swooned away. The shepherd then carried him from the tents into the desert and threw water on his face to cool his burning love.

Another day, Majnun was with some companions in the desert, and one of them asked him: 'How can you, a nobleman, go about naked? I wdll get some clothes for you if you wish.' Majnun said: 'No garments that I can wear are worthy of my friend, so for me there is nothing better than my bare body or a sheepskin. She, for me, is as ispand to avert the evil eye. Majnun would willingly wear garments of silk and cloth of gold, but he prefers this sheepskin by means of which he caught sight of Laila.'

Love should tear aside your prudence. Love changes your attitude. To love is to give up your ordinary life and forsake your tawdry pleasures.

(3) Where are your bridegrooms that you keep forever' Where is your 'Little Shepherd' bird that went up over you! See here now, I will recite the list of your lovers. Of the shoulder (?)... his hand, Tammuz, the lover of your earliest youth, for him you have ordained lamentations year upon year! You loved the colorful 'Little Shepherd' bird and then hit him, breaking his wing, so now he stands in the forest crying 'My Wing'! You loved the supremely mighty lion, yet you dug for him seven and again seven pits. You loved the stallion, famed in battle, yet you ordained for him the whip, the goad, and the lash, ordained for him to gallop for seven and seven hours, ordained for him drinking from muddled waters,' you ordained far his mother Silili to wail continually. You loved the Shepherd, the Master Herder, who continually presented you with bread baked in embers, and who daily slaughtered for you a kid.

(1) The Hoopoe continued: 'The next valley is The Valley of Love. To enter it one must be a flaming fire - what shall I say? A man must himself be fire. The face of the lover must be enflamed, burning and impetuous as fire. True love knows no after-thoughts; with love, good and evil cease to exist.

'But as for you, the heedless and the careless, this discourse will not touch you, your teeth will not even nibble at it. A loyal person stakes ready money, stakes his head even, to be united to his friend. Others content themselves with promising what they will do for you tomorrow. If he who sets out on this way will not engage himself wholly and completely he will never be free from the sadness and melancholy which weigh him down. Until the falcon reaches his aim he is agitated and distressed. If a fish is thrown on to the beach by the waves it struggles to get back into the water.

'In this valley, love is represented by fire, and reason by smoke. When love comes reason disappears. Reason cannot live with the folly of love; love has nothing to do with human reason. If you possessed inner sight, the atoms of the visible world would be manifested to you. But if you look at things with the eye of ordinary reason you will never understand how necessary it is to love. Only a man who has been tested and is free can feel this. He who undertakes tliis journey should have a thousand hearts so that he can sacrifice one at every moment.'

(7) Salutations, O Nightingale of the Garden of Love! Utter your plaintive notes caused by the wounds and pains of love. Lament sweetly from the heart, like David. Open your melodious throat and sing of spiritual things. By your songs show men the true Way. Make the iron of your heart as soft as wax, and you will be like David, fervent in the love of God.

(5) There was once a king who had a son as charming as Joseph, full of grace and beauty. He was loved by ever)'one, and all who saw him would gladly have been the dust under his feet. If he went out at night, it was as if a new sun had risen over the desert. His eyes were the black narcissus, and when they glanced they set a world on fire. His smile scattered sugar, and wherever he walked a thousand roses bloomed, not waiting for the spring.

Now there was a simple dervish who had lost his heart to this young prince. Day and night he sat near the prince's palace, neither eating nor sleeping. His face became like yellow gold, and his ecs shed tears of silver, for his heart was cut in two. He would have died, but that from time to time he caught a glimpse of the young prince when he appeared in the bazaar. But how could such a prince comfort a poor dervish in this state? Yet the simple man, who was a shadow, a particle of an atom, wished to take the radiant sun on his breast.

One day when the prince was riding at the head of his attendants the dervish stood up and gave a cry and said: ' My reason has left me, my heart is consumed, I no longer have patience or strength to suffer,' and he beat his head on the ground in front of the prince. One of the courtiers wanted to have him killed, and went to the king. 'Sire,' he said, 'a libertine has fallen in love with your son.' The

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king was very angr)': 'Have this audacious scoundrel impaled/ he said. 'Bind him hand and foot and put his head on a stake.' The courtier went at once to do his bidding. They put a running noose on the neck of the beggar and dragged him to the stake. No one knew what it was about and no one interceded for him. When the wazir had had him brought under the gibbet, the dervish gave a cry of grief and said: 'For the love of God, give me a respite, so that at least I can say a prayer under the gibbet.' This was allowed, and the dervish prostrated himself and prayed: ' O God, since the king has given orders for my death - I, who am innocent - grant me, your ignorant servant, before I die, the good fortune to see only once the face of this young man, so that I may offer myself as a sacrifice. O God, my King, you who give ear to a thousand prayers, grant this last wish of mine.'

No sooner had the dervish uttered this prayer than the arrow of his desire reached its mark. The wazir divined his secret and took pity on him. He went to the king and explained the true state of things. At this the king became thoughtful; then compassion filled his heart and he pardoned the dervish, and said to the prince: 'Go and fetch this poor man from under the gibbet. Be gentle with him and drink with him, for he has tasted of your poison. Take him to your garden and then bring him to me.'

The young prince, another Joseph, went at once - the sun with a face of fire came face to face with an atom. This ocean of beautiful pearls went to seek a drop of water. Beat your head for joy, set your feet dancing, clap your hands! But the dervish was in despair; his tears turned the dust to mud and the world became heavy with his sighs. Even the prince himself could not help but weep. When the dervdsh saw his tears he said: 'O Prince, now you may take my life.' And so saying, he gave up the ghost and died. When he knew that he was united to his beloved no other desires were left.

O you, who at once exist and are yet a non-entity, whose happiness is mingled with unhappiness, if you have never experienced unrest, how will you appreciate tranquillity? You stretch out your hand towards the lightning and are stopped by swept-up heaps of snow. Strive valiantly, burn reason, and give yourself up to folly. If you wish to use this alchemy reflect a little and, by my example, renounce yourself; withdraw from your wandering thoughts into your soul so that you may come to spiritual poverty. As for me, who am neither I nor not-I, I have strayed from myself, and I find no other remedy than despair.

(1) Another bird said to the Hoopoe: 'As long as I live the love of the Eternal Being will be dear and agreeable to me, and I shall never cease to think of him. I have been about with

all living creatures and far from being attached to them I am identified with none. The folly of love occupies all my thoughts, so for me, love is enough. But such love is not expedient for everyone, and now the time has come when I must draw a line on my life so that I shall be able to take a cup of wine from my beloved; then the eye of my heart will be rendered luminous by his beauty, and my hand will touch his neck as a pledge of the union.'

The Hoopoe replied: 'It is not by these pretentious boastings that one can become an honoured guest of the Simurgh of the Caucasus. Do not extol so much the love that you believe you feel for him, for it is not given to everyone to possess it. It is necessary that the wind of good fortune should lift the veil of the mystery, then the Simurgh will draw you to him and you shall sit with him in his harem. If you wish to come to the sacred place you must first of all strive to have a knowledge of spiritual things, otherwise your love for the Simurgh will be turned to torment. For your true felicity it is necessary that the Simurgh shall also love you.'

(4) One day, Mahmud called his favourite to him and gave him his crown and made him sit on his throne, and said to him: 'Ayaz, I give you my kingdom and my army. Reign, for this country is yours; and I now wish you to take my place and throw your ear-ring of slavery to the Moon and the Fish.'

When the officers and courtiers heard about it their eves went black from jealousy and they said: 'Never in the world has a king given so much honour to a slave/ But Ay' wept, and they said to him: 'Have you lost your senses? You are no longer a slave but of the royalty. Why do you weep? Be contented!' Ay' replied: 'You do not see things as they are, you do not understand that the Sultan of this great countty has exiled me from his presence. He wishes me to rule his kingdom, but I do not wish to be separated from him. I wish to obey him but not to leave him. What have I to do with government and royalty? My happiness is in seeing his face.'

Learn from Ayaz how to sere God, you who remain idle day and night, occupied with cheap and 'ulgar pleasures. Ay' descends from the summit of power, but you do not stir from where you are, neither have you any wish to change yourself. To whom will you at last be able to tell your sorrows? So long as you depend on paradise and hell, how will you be able to understand the secret which I wish to reveal to you; but when you no longer depend on those to the dawn of the mystety will lift itself from the night. The garden of paradise moreover is not for the indifferent; and the empyrean is only for the men of heart.

(3) But say again if other cords thou feelest, Draw thee towards Him, that thou mayst proclaim With how many teeth this love is biting thee." The holy purpose of the Eagle of Christ Not latent was, nay, rather I perceived Whither he fain would my profession lead. Therefore I recommenced: "All of those bites Which have the power to turn the heart to God Unto my charity have been concurrent. The being of the world, and my own being, The death which He endured that I may live, And that which all the faithful hope, as I do, With the forementioned vivid consciousness Have drawn me from the sea of love perverse, And of the right have placed me on the shore. The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love As much as he has granted them of good." As soon as I had ceased, a song most sweet Throughout the heaven resounded, and my Lady Said with the others, "Holy, holy, holy!" And as at some keen light one wakes from sleep By reason of the visual spirit that runs Unto the splendour passed from coat to coat,

(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

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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.'