The Tale of the Penniless Dervish Who Loved the King's Daughter

This metaphor became the bridge to truth, and in the end, by the promise of the verse, 'Those who strive for Us' 'We shall surely guide them on Our paths,' he reached his true goal. There was a dervish, poor and without a coin, dressed in rags, owning nothing of this world. He had nothing but an axe and a begging bowl; he had reaped no harvest from this world at all. One day, wandering about in search of bread, he suddenly heard the clamor of a crowd. 'Stand back, left and right!' they cried, 'For the daughter of the Khan of China is coming.' When that helpless beggar looked up, he saw a sun moving across the sky. Upon a golden saddle, a face like the moon, no, not the moon, a radiant sun itself. The poor man lost his heart and fell senseless, the veil that hid his secret slipped away. The bird of his soul became the prey of that Simorgh, bound fast in the snare of that great bird. For a while he lay stunned upon the ground, gladly caught in the swift trap of love. When the poor beggar came to himself, he found himself drowning in annihilation. The wretched man looked in every direction, but saw no trace of that lovely idol. The reins of self-control slipped from his hands; the poor man wept bitterly, again and again. The flood of his longing tears blocked his way; his troubled mind kept breaking his heart. His eyes turned into springs of blood; grieving for his own Layla, he became a Majnun. The restless agitation of that dervish, his mournful cries, tore at every heart. He moaned and wept gently to himself; no one knew what could remedy his state. Paired with his pain, he spoke his secrets, lifting the veil from hidden mysteries. If I told his whole story from start to end, the very telling would wound the heart. Ask about the lover's condition from love itself; if you want the scent of a rose, go and smell the rose. The rose tells its tale through its own fragrance; everyone knows their own nature best. Listen too to the wordless speech of love; openly it speaks the ancient secrets. With a hundred tongues, from the mark of its own name, it tells its endless beginning. Its words are the secret of the lover's work, the story of the lover's wretched state. But the ears of common folk have no such light; for any but the lover there is no decree. Within its words there lies a glad tiding, and that tiding suits only lovers. Each of its letters, from ayn and shin and qaf, tells its own way and custom without dispute. Not everyone is aware of that secret; none but the lover has a path to its quarter. At every moment it calls out to lovers, offering these captives the cup of affliction. In its tavern there are ruins upon ruins; its wine brings a hundred ecstasies and raptures. Its turning chain has chains within chains, and this is our straight path. Its stirring of the chain is our gardens of paradise, and those palaces and houris are our cloistered maidens. Show a pure eye and heart, my father, and gaze upon our garden of refuge. For that bliss of paradise is the nature of our Beloved; the secret of 'beneath which rivers flow' is ours. Each of its rivers is the sign of a virtue; if you cannot find it, surely it is from some flaw. And what they say of that place as paradise is the truth, may God keep our feet from slipping. Otherwise, what are these verses and these reports? What proof have the Sufis for denial? Go and see its signs, my companion; do not let your feet slip from the straight path. Grasp that secret and hold your breath about it, or they will count you among the crowd of unbelievers. Do not interpret those verses away yourself; go and close this door of interpretations. Opening this door, on the path of guidance, is the beginning of heresy and going astray, O pillar of faith. If you say this too is a secret of the matter, then do not reveal its secret either. If it were permitted to reveal it, the prophets would have been the first, O wise one. Because, for the common people, the word of the Messenger is close to acceptance before reason. And if you say they have kept the outer form, they too have nurtured this very meaning of ours. In truth there is nothing else at all but the qualities that arise from good and evil. When the prophets pierced that pearl, they hid it within the nature of the mystics. Since these people had no limit of insight, the prophets informed them of the outer. That sharp, unerring eye can see, the one from which God has lifted the veil. So make the outer ruling your authority, lest everyone cast stones at your feet. Leave a veil over the matter, my companion; beware, do not stick your foot outside the blanket. And if you say the veil-keepers are others, the mystics tear these veils apart. They are selfless, lost and stunned in the Essence of the Truth; wholly negated, they affirm the Truth. Their speech is from His speaking breath; their utterance too comes from His breaths. Like a parrot behind a mirror, they say only what they hear. The manifestation belongs to that side; what shines here, to ascribe this breath to them comes from seeing double. Through double-seeing, people grew bewildered, and became suspicious of what they said. Like that feeble ant upon the writing, it sees the shapes coming only from the tip of the pen. Between prophets and saints there are many differences; the prophet is bound to revelation, the saint is free. Veil-keeping suits the prophets; the saints have another practice and law. The prophets stitch the veils, and the saints tear them; the saints are intoxicated, the prophets clear-minded. The prophets give knowledge through revelation; the saints know without the medium of revelation. The prophets' breath is nothing but command; for the saints no secret is hidden. The prophets speak from outer revelation; the saints are the very meaning of revelation, unbound. From prophethood to sainthood there are paths, from the lowest of earth to the height of heaven. Without sainthood, a prophet is nothing; for this reason the saint is the nobler and higher. He is nobler than a saint like himself, not than a saint who has stepped ahead. Like the pure, indescribable essence of Ali, who is nobler than every prophet and every saint. He has carried off the field of nobility in the race; his light is poured forth from the light of the Truth. He is nobler than all save Mustafa, for he has outrun the rest to the field of being chosen. Only one still possessed of self can guard the self; how can one who is selfless keep secrets concealed? I say, by God, by God, wash away this book, though I know that stream will turn to blood. Though this breath has several breaths within it, our time still remains, so turn the steed around. Rein in this swift, racing steed; the fellow travelers have grown weary of the road. The jealous fire of love has been kindled; it has burned the wings of Gabriel of intellect. Here it has cast off the horseshoes of the Buraq of fancy and thought, and is left behind in the race. Pass on from here, for the lover is worn out, bound fast in the chains of suffering.