The Masnavi, Book One (Oxford World's Classics)

An explanation of why one must keep one’s own mystical
state and intoxication hidden from the ignorant
Listen to what Hakim Sana

i said:
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‘Rest where you drank the wine your drunken head!’
For from the tavern if a drunk should stray
He’ll seem a clown with whom the children play:
He’ll tumble into puddles everywhere
And all the wretches will laugh, point, and stare;
They’ll follow him because he’s strange and new
Although of drunkenness they have no clue.
Except those drunk in God, men are just boys,
Mature men 
flee their passions and their toys:
God said, ‘The world is just a toy, and you
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Are merely children’
*––what God says is true!
You keep on bringing toys down from the shelf ––
You won’t gain wisdom till you slay your self !
Lust here’s like infants having sex, my friend,
Compared with what’s there at the other end:
What’s infant sex? Play-acting that brings laughter
Compared with sex by Rostam or a martyr;
The wars of men are like an infant’s
fight
Meaningless, senseless, base, without real might:
They brandish wooden swords and then take aim,
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But there’s no point or meaning to their game:
They ride a length of wood just like at school,
Saying, ‘Here’s Boraq, and here’s the Prophet’s mule!’
They carry it themselves, but stupidly
They think they’re being borne majestically ––
Wait till the day those borne by God should race
Beyond the nine-tiered heavens at great pace:
Spirits and angels to Him will ascend
*––
And make the heavens shake from end to end.
Children, you ride your skirts and run the course,
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Clutching the hem to make it seem a horse,
Hiding your Mystical Station
210

---

Opinion does not free you from all need
*––
You won’t reach heaven on your reasoning’s steed:
Relying on the stronger point of view
Don’t doubt the sun when it’s in front of you!
It’s time now to look down at your own steed ––
You’ve made it from your own two feet, take heed!
Your every feeling, fancy, sense, and care
Is like the children’s wooden horse, beware!
Knowledge of mystics was the steed they rode,
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Knowledge of sensual men an extra load.
Heart knowledge helps you when it 
fills you there,
But other knowledge is a cross to bear:
‘
Like asses carrying their books,’
* God said,
Knowledge that’s not from Him wears down your head!
It has no meaning –– shell without a core,
It doesn’t last, like make-up on a whore!
But when you bear the burden well, it will
Be taken o
ff and you’ll feel such a thrill,
So don’t bear knowledge for your own sake, friend,
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And you’ll
find inner knowledge in the end––
Then you may ride on knowledge’s fast steed
And watch the load fall o
ff and your soul freed.
If you don’t chant ‘He’ how can you then 
flee
Your own desire? Transcend the mere name ‘He’!
*
A thought’s produced by attribute and name,
This thought’s a guide with union as its aim;
A guide without an aim does not exist,
If there were no path, ghouls would not persist:
Do names not tell of a reality?
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Can roses grow from R, O, S, and E?
You’ve said the name, to 
find the named now try––
The moon’s not on the lake but in the sky!
Mere names and words if you wish to transcend
Then purify yourself of self, my friend!
Like iron give up your original colour,
Through discipline become the clearest mirror!
Hiding your Mystical Station
211

---

Thus purge yourself of attributes to view
Your own pure essence lying inside you!
Within your heart you’ll
find the Prophet’s knowledge
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Without a book or teachers from the college:
The Prophet said, ‘There are some in my nation
Who share my essence and my aspiration;
The same as me; they see me by that light
With which I also see them day and night,
Without 
hadiths and their transmitters too
Water of Life
* they drink to know it’s true.’
So understand ‘
Last night I was a Kurd,
Now I’m an Arab though’
*––it’s not absurd!
A parable which shows the mysteries
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Is this about the Greeks and the Chinese: