On the Music of the Enlightened Heart, and What Is True and False in It

If you are a man of love, count yourself as nothing; otherwise take the safe road instead. Don't fear that love will grind you to dust, for if it destroys you, you become eternal. No plant grows from a whole seed until its state changes and it first breaks open. Love gives you the kind of closeness with truth that frees you from your own grasp. For as long as you cling to yourself, there is no path into yourself; only the self-forgotten grasp this point. It isn't the musician: even the sound of an animal's footsteps becomes music, if you have love and passion. A fly could not flit past the troubled heart without him striking his head like a fly wringing its legs. The distraught one knows neither high note nor low; a beggar can break down weeping at a single bird's song. The singer never falls silent, but not every moment is the ear open to hear. When the enraptured worship wine, they grow drunk on the creaking of the water wheel. They begin to spin like a water wheel, and like it they weep bitterly over themselves. In surrender they bow their heads into their collars, and when patience fails, they tear their collars apart. Do not blame the dervish, dazed and drunk, for he is drowning, and that is why he flails hands and feet. I won't tell you, brother, what this sacred music is, until I know who the listener is. If his spirit-bird takes wing from the tower of meaning, even an angel is left behind by his flight. But if he is a man of frivolity, play, and jest, the demon in his mind only grows stronger. When the man of this music is a slave to lust, a sweet voice merely wakes the sleeper, not the drunk in ecstasy. A rose scatters at the dawn breeze; it is not firewood that only an axe can split. The world is full of music, drunkenness, and passion, but what can a blind man see in a mirror? Haven't you seen the camel stirred by an Arab's song, how joy sets it dancing? If even the camel has the thrill of joy in its head, then the human who lacks it is worse than a donkey.