Original content

English translation

The man said to him, “O Commander of the Faithful, how did the soul come down from above into the earth? How did the immeasurable bird enter the cage?” He said: God recited spells and tales over the soul. Over nonexistences, which have neither eye nor ear, when He recites a spell, they begin to seethe. By His spell, nonexistences quickly, quickly leap joyfully, suspended, toward existence. Again, when He recites a spell over an existent thing, He drives that existent thing two-horsed into nonexistence. He spoke into the rose's ear and made it laugh; He spoke to the stone and made it an agate of the mine. He spoke a sign to the body until it became soul; He spoke to the sun until it became radiant. Again He breathes a fearsome subtle point into its ear, and a hundred eclipses fall upon the sun's face. What did that Speaker recite into the cloud's ear, that it shed tears from its own eye like musk? What has God recited into the earth's ear, that it became watchful and remained silent? Whoever is agitated in hesitation has had an enigma spoken by God into his ear, to imprison him between two thoughts: shall I do what He said, or rather the opposite? From God, too, one side receives preponderance; from those two he chooses one from that side. If you do not want the awareness of the soul to remain in hesitation, press less of this cotton into the soul's ear, so that you may understand His enigmas, so that you may perceive both the symbolic and the explicit. Then the soul's ear becomes the place of revelation. What is revelation? Speech hidden from sense. The soul's ear and the soul's eye are other than this sense; the ear of reason and the ear of conjecture are bankrupt of this. The word compulsion made Love impatient; and the one who is not a lover was imprisoned by compulsion. This is being-with God, not compulsion; this is the moon's manifestation, not cloud. And if this is compulsion, it is not the common compulsion; it is not the compulsion of that self-commanding, willful soul. Those know compulsion, O son, for whom God has opened sight in the heart. The unseen and the future became manifest to them; mention of the past became worthless before them. Their choice and compulsion are something else: drops inside shells are pearls. Outside, the drop is small or large; inside the shell, that pearl is small and great. The nature of that people is the musk-deer's navel: outwardly blood, inwardly musk. Do not say, “This substance outside was blood; when it goes into the musk-pod, how does it become musk?” Do not say, “This copper outside was contemptible; when it enters the heart of the elixir, how does it become precious?” Choice and compulsion in you were bad imaginings; when they entered those people, they became the light of majesty. Bread, when it is on the tablecloth, is inanimate; in the human body it becomes joyful spirit. It is not transformed in the heart of the tablecloth; the soul transforms it from Salsabil. This is the soul's nourishment, O truthful reciter; what then must be the nourishment of the Soul of souls? A piece of human flesh, with intellect and soul, splits mountain, sea, and mine. The power of the soul is mountain-cutting and rock-splitting; the power of the Soul of souls is in the splitting of the moon. If the heart opens the mouth of the sack of secrets, the soul will make a cavalry charge toward the Throne.