Original content

English translation

One person accused a shaykh, saying: he is bad and is not on the path of right guidance; he is a wine-drinker, a hypocritical fraud, and vile; how could he be a helper to disciples? Another said to him: keep watch over adab; such suspicion toward the great is not wisdom. Far be it from him, and far from his qualities, that his clear purity should be muddied by a torrent. Do not lay such slander on the people of Truth; this is your own imagining, turn the page. This is not so; and even if it were, O earth-bound bird, what fear has the Sea of Qulzum of a carcass? He is not less than two qullahs, nor a little pool, so that one drop could put him out of use. The fire did Abraham no harm; whoever is Nimrod-like, let him fear that fire. The lower self is Nimrod, and reason and soul are Khalil; spirit is in direct vision/reality, while the lower self is in proof. Proof belongs to the road-going traveler who gets lost in the desert at every breath. For those who have arrived there is only eye and lamp; they are free of proof and road. If the man of union speaks a proof, he speaks it for the understanding of disputants. For a young child, a father babbles baby-talk, though his intellect may compass the geometry of the world. The master's lofty excellence is not diminished if, for teaching, he says of alif: 'It has nothing.' To teach one whose mouth is bound, one must leave one's own language; one must enter his language, so that he may learn knowledge and craft from you. Thus all creatures are like children to him; this elder must do so when giving counsel. The disciple of the shaykh said to the slanderer, to that one filled with unbelief and error: do not strike yourself against a sharp sword; beware, do not contend with king and sultan. If a pool tries to stand beside the sea, it tears itself up from the root of its being. There is no sea with a shore such that it could be muddied by your carcass. Know that unbelief has boundary and measure; the shaykh and the shaykh's light have no shore. Before the Limitless, whatever is limited is negation: everything except the Face of God is perishing. Where he is, there is neither unbelief nor faith, for he is the kernel and these two are color and husk. These perishing things have become the veil over that Face, like a hidden lamp under a basin. Thus the secret of this body veils that Secret; before that Secret, this bodily secret is unbelief. Who is an unbeliever? One heedless of the shaykh's faith. Who is dead? One unaware of the shaykh's soul. Soul is, in trial, nothing but awareness; whoever has more awareness has more soul. Our soul is greater than the animal's soul. Why? Because it has more awareness. Thus the angel's soul is greater than ours, for it has been purified from the common sensory faculty. Greater than the angel's soul is the soul of the lords of the heart; leave bewilderment aside. For this reason Adam was the one before whom they prostrated: his soul was greater than their being. Otherwise, commanding a lesser one to prostrate before a greater would not be fitting at all. How would the Creator's justice and grace approve a rose prostrating before a thorn? When the soul becomes greater, it passes beyond limit; the souls of all things become obedient to it: bird and fish and peri and human, because it is greater and they are in deficiency. Fish become needle-workers for his cloak; threads follow the needles.