Masnavis

The exemplar of the realm, the leader of mankind, king of the Ansar who nurtures the faith. He called on God and he knew God; king of the faith, the light of the eyes of the noble. His court stood higher than the planet Saturn; the pocket of his soul was full of the coin of mystic truth. That one with the glory of a king and the majesty of the heavens, his seat was in the loftiest heights of paradise. The heart and the breast are his throne and his footstool; Qasim is his humblest servant. He whose truthfulness is like that of the Truthful One; whoever denies him is an unbeliever and a heretic. Truthful and trustworthy like Abu Bakr, just and certain in faith like Omar. His emblem is modesty, like Uthman; like Ali, the Lion of God, he is the guiding leader. Pole of the world, leader of faith and guidance, king of the faith, our sheikh and our master. There are four poles in the lands of Khorasan, fountains of grace and mines of good deeds. The first is Bayazid Bastami, truly learned and deeply wise. That chosen soul was drunk on God; he left this world of becoming and decay while drunk on Him. After him comes the king of the Ansar, one of the intimate companions of the Creator. Then Abu al-Qasim, the sky of purity, a saint and lofty one in every state. The fourth, the blessing of truth, of the community and the faith, the sun of the world of sincerity and certainty. Qasim is faithful to them; forever he is the dust beneath their feet. God's blessings upon all four of these; Qasim is among the lovers of all four.

The garden of sinners, Ahmad of Jam, that great whale who drinks up the whole ocean of being. He is a sky full of moon and stars; he is a garden full of roses and wild eglantine. May God's mercy be upon his soul, and God's curse be upon his enemies. Whoever sets himself against God is the enemy of all His saints.

Sometimes I sit alone, weighed down by trouble; sometimes I rise, shaken out of my own thoughts. I am a poor wretch, heartsick and without a friend, long caught in the longing for that beloved. I have spent my time now rising, now sitting still, the moon in its thirty days, and I caught in its net.

The point is threefold, my chosen adorner; once you have heard it, say: we submit. Blackness is surely a kind of whiteness; look at the dark body of the Ahmadi light.

One coin, two coins, three coins: how few does that make? You tell me. It may be just one coin, my friend, but be whatever you want to be, just don't be bad to me.

Those who have been shaped by love have searched for wisdom in the signs of understanding. You are not aware of this, so do not tell the tale; only with the mallet of true knowing can you win the game. The beloved ones who have found their way to the truth keep their hearts alive through justice and fairness.

A fool cried out from some high seat: the age of the true spiritual path is over. There are no men of God left in the world, and if there ever were, they are gone now. His claim goes against reason and faith; may the brand of a curse stay forever on his brow. Do not speak against the faith, you coward, for the Prophet declared it in many places: The world is never empty of the men of God. On this point no one can fault you. To reject his opinion is no departure from faith: if he says it is so, tell him it is not so. If you would be a truthful, fortunate soul, then be obedient to the chosen Ahmad. O Lord, we are poor and grieving; we place our hope in your all embracing grace. Grant our souls success in wisdom, and keep our faith safe from any flaw.

May eternal happiness attend my dear brother, and may he reach acceptance and the meeting with God, and never depart from this world, by the Prophet and his noble family. For some days now the sultan who is the true Beloved has been sending strange gestures of love toward the lovers from the horizon of the divine heart: sometimes He honors us with a coy glance, sometimes He threatens us with sorrow. And I say this verse: Since, by God, your union with Qasim is beyond doubt, for me, the flirting glance and the sorrow are one and the same. Many times I have felt the call of 'compassion toward God's creatures,' for they have said: whenever a seeker offers sincere devotion to a man, that man owes him a duty in return; kindness to him and, on the Day of Resurrection, intercession for his people. And now the Resurrection is at hand, God willing. Since you are among those close to Him, let me tell you a secret: Listen, royal falcon of the realm of the divine, you have stayed trapped in the snare of this material world. When you are a king in the kingdom of both worlds, why go begging, cut off from the wealth of true meaning? Now hear this from the Almighty, ruler of the world, the eternal, all-powerful, self-subsisting, the just Giver. What blessings He gave to a handful made of dust, for He granted them a certainty free of all doubt. What endless grace and generosity is this, that He gives to mere dust such guidance. About the inner states of the masters of meaning let me tell you a subtle point on the theme of truth. At dawn I was caught in restless anguish when a call from the divine Presence reached my soul. It said: Listen, Qasimi, your road is still open, come and hear from Me every hidden secret. When I knew my Beloved had summoned me, my heart grew drunk, and from that drunkenness it rejoiced. The royal falcon of my spirit spread its wings and swiftly passed beyond the four, the five, the nine heavens. It flew into the open space beyond all place, for a while it was free of earth and free of time. It went out beyond this world and the next, and saw the Lord of the world, who is beyond all likeness. When it found itself in the court of Oneness, in awe it pressed its forehead to the ground. Saying: O Beloved of the souls who gamble all, who is Qasimi? A poor, bewildered wretch. That he should be granted such honor, now tender favor, now the sharing of secrets? Yet wherever the everlasting grace reaches down from the height of the Most High, by the outpouring of God's radiant light, even if it is an ant, it becomes a Solomon. A call came to me from the self-subsisting Giver: In your heart you are planning to leave this land. A disaster is descending from Us upon this earth, one that will strike the very eyes of the heavens dumb with dread. Plan the cure for yourself: either get out, or wrap yourself in a shroud of your own blood. With a burning heart I said: My God, I will leave this place if that is Your will. But there are people here, poor and helpless, who cry out in terror of Your affliction. In this land there are many devout ones who, in fear of You, lie humble as the dust. Many people of knowledge and of gnosis keep turning the prayer-beads of praise toward Your face. The call came: We have no need of any of this; all this piety and learning here is mere play. Because of knowledge without action and impure piety, because of rulers who lack justice and fear no one, all of them have fallen into ingratitude for My gifts, and that is why this rain of torment pours down. From my heart I raised a liver-burning sigh: O You by the light of whose face my night turns to day, by the tears of those who keep the night in vigil, by the burning hearts of those who stay awake in prayer, by the tears that fall from the sinner's eyes when his situation grows unbearably tight, by the sigh that the helpless, empty-handed man draws up from his liver at the hour of dawn, by the fire that burns in the breast of the guilty one in the moment of his remorse, by the cold sigh from the souls of the generous, by the hot tears from the eyes of orphans, by the old man whose back is bent like a polo stick, whose few steps have carried him to the edge of the field, by the child with brimming eyes and heaving chest, by the thirsty man like a rose-petal longing for water, by the grief with which a feeble old man weeps over the grave of a young one, by those who long for the secrets of truth, by the connoisseurs in the marketplace of the Path, by the heart that has come to know Your light, by the soul that has kept itself apart from all defilement, turn this disaster away from Your creatures, for I bring Mustafa, the Chosen One, as my intercessor to You. The call came: Qasim, of the four terrors that are set to descend upon these people, one We will wipe out and reduce to nothing, and the other three depend on three things. One is weeping and prayer, the second is justice among them, the third is warding off calamity, that is, giving charity. The call came from God upon my heart ninety times: One saying cannot be fully explained even a hundred times over. If I say more to you, my friend, the force of the truth would tear the skin from your body. Nothing of your being would remain, you would be undone, you would pass from the world, beyond all loss and gain. Yet I wish that the Almighty, ruler of the world, would set even a single atom of His grace to work, so that you might become the confidant of My secrets and know all My affairs and how things stand. For between Me and God there is a hidden state, a hundred secrets and pleas within a single moment. Alas, where is a seeker who has put his head in the shroud, so that I might tell him the secret of 'He is He'? In the realm of meaning I am the sun itself, yet from the springhead I remain veiled to others. Now let me tell the essence of it all, and lay open to you the secrets of God. If I set foot in the territory of this city, I will show two hundred proofs of this truth.