GULSHAN-I RÂZ

گلشن راز

The Mystic Rose Garden

SHEIKH MAHMÛD SHABISTARI

Edited by: Dr. Necati Aksu
 

QUESTION V.

395

Who then is he who attains to the secret of unity ?

Who is the understanding one that is a knower ? 1

ANSWER V.

396

That man attains to the secret of unity
Who is not detained at the stages on the road.

397

But the knower is he that knows Very Being,
He that witnesses Absolute Being. 2

398

He recognises no being but Very Being,
And being such as his own he gambles clean away.

399

Your being is naught but thorns and weeds, 3

Cast it all clean away from you.

400

Go sweep out the chamber of your heart,

Make it ready to be the dwelling-place of the Beloved.

401

When you depart out, He will enter in,
In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauty.

402

The man who is loved for his 'pious works,' 4 

Whom the pains of ' negation ' 5 purify as a room that is swept,

403

He finds an abode in a ' laudable station,'
He finds a portion in ' what eye hath not seen, nor car heard.' 6

404

But while the stain of his own being remains on him,
The knowledge of the knower assumes not the form of experience. 7

405

Until you cast away obstacles from before you,
The light enters not the chamber of your heart.

406

As there are four obstacles in this world,
So also the modes of purification from them are four : 8

407

First, purification from filthiness of the flesh ;

Second, from sin and evil " whispers of the tempter ; " 9

408

The third is the purification from bad habits,
Which make men as beasts of the field ;

409

The fourth is the purification of the secret, 10

For at this point the pilgrim's journeyings cease.

410

Whoso is cleansed with these purifications,
Verily he is fit to commune with God.

411

Until you utterly gamble away yourself, 11

How can your prayer be true prayer ? 12

412

When your essence is pure from all stain, 13

Then it is that your prayers are ' a joy of the eyes,' 14

413

There remains then no distinction,
Knower and known are one and the same.

1 Knower, one who beholds " The Truth " with his ' illumined ' soul, and not with his reason. The ' secret of Unity' is that there is no other being besides "The Truth." L.

2 Absolute Being is that which is free from all limitation, kaid. L.

3 Compare Hafiz, Ode 385 (Brockhaus' edition) :

     " Sweep off the life of Hafiz as a dream,

       Whilst Thou art, none shall hear me say ' I am.' "

And Ode 487 :

     " From His heart girdle-wise you dwell apart,

       While girdle- wise your ' self enfolds your heart."

4 " And watch some part of the night in the same exercise as a pious work of supererogation for thee, peradventure thy Lord will raise thee to a laudable station." -Koran, Sura XVII. 81.

5 In the ejaculation " zikr " of the creed, kalima, (' There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God'), the first clause is called negation, nafi. Here ' negation ' means denying all other existences besides God. L. The expression ' pains of negation ' would also seem to imply self-denial in a practical sense, mortifying the flesh.

6 See 1 Corinthians ii. 9.

7 See couplet 63. His theoretical knowledge is naught, till he personally experiences and feels the ' Secret of Unity.' L.

8 These are the four degrees of purification enumerated by Ghazzali. Sale's Koran, Prelim. Discourse, 75.

9 Koran, Sura CXIV. 4.

10 " Secret," i. e. the heart, the secret thoughts. L.

   11 From the harvest of existence he will never reap a grain
        Who has never sown a seed corn in annihilation's lane.
          Hafiz (Brockhaus 7 edition), Ode 61.

12 Ghazzali, quoted in Tholuck, Ssufismus, pp. 4. 105, says, " Prayers (zikr) have three veils, (1) prayers pronounced with the tongue only, (2) prayers undis- tracted by evil thoughts, (3) prayers offered with such fervour, that the mind can hardly be recalled from thoughts of God. But the marrow of prayer is when the object of prayer possesses the heart, and prayer is effaced and ceases, and the sayer of prayer attends no more to prayer nor his own heart. These are submerged, and if he attends to them that is a veil and a distraction. This is the state named fana, effacement, wherein he is effaced from self, so that he is aware neither of his body, nor of outward things, nor of inward affections. He is ' rapt ' from all these, journeying first to his Lord, second in his Lord : and if the thought that he is effaced from self occurs to him, that is a blemish. The best stage is to be effaced from effaeement." Compare St. Theresa's ' Prayer of Rapture.' Vaughan, II. 132.

13 I.e. stain of your own phenomenal individual being, or self. L. This is just Eckart's view. Vaughan, 1. 163.

14 Koran, Sura XXXII. 18.