Submitted by SHABDA - Preceptor on
The Guidance of the Shaykh - Shams-i Tabrizi
He who follows blackness has gone astray. His whole body is tongue, questions and answers, eloquence---but he knows nothing of the Real! (624)
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What is the shaykh? Being. What is the disciple? Nonbeing. Until the disciple becomes nonbeing, he is not a disciple. (739)
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When he falls into the ocean, if he moves his hands and feet, the ocean will break him, even if he's a lion---unless he makes himself dead. The custom of the ocean is that, as long as someone is alive, it swallows him down until he is immersed and dies. When he is immersed and dies, it picks him up and becomes his carrier. Now, make yourself dead from the first, and go forth happily on top of the water.
If someone wants to look at a dead man walking the earth, let him look at Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. He grew up from the dark dustbin, and he resides in the company of subtle, spirit increasing water.
That ocean is one of God's servants.
After all, if all of this hasn't happened to you, some of it has happened, and some of it has happened to other companions. If at this time it has not happened, it will happen in the future. (148)
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When the water passes the mouth and nose and head, then he is secure. As long as mouth and nose are above the water, he still goes by himself and lives through himself. When he is completely immersed in the water and his mouth and nose go down into the water, then they say that he is dead. Others say that he has come to life. Both speak the truth. That borrowed life has gone, and the abiding, subsistent life has come. (210)
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I was speaking some words in a dream. The shaykh reitereated them for me one by one.
When someone does not consider the shaykh truthful, neither in act or word, this is precisely the cause of being cut off. I wonder what the motive is for not considering the shaykh truthful? He should put that motive in the palm of one hand, and what he hopes for from the shaykh in the palm of the other. He should see whether this is worth that. The shaykh has a world tremendously full of tasting and is utterly occupied. The disciple will not be occupied with such delight. How can conformity and kindness be greater than this?
This is like those ten Sufis. One of them fell in love with a Christian youth. He kept around him, in the church and elsewhere. The Christian found him out. He said, "Why are you keeping around me?" He recounted his state. The Christian youth said, "I dislike seeing other than the folk of my own creed from afar. How can you crave that I allow you to come near?"
He saw no escape. He quickly went and bid good-bye to his companions. They said,"It's for the best!"
He told them the story and then said, "Now I am going to buy myself a [Christian] sash."
They said, "We will conform ourselves to you. Let's buy ten sashes, and bind them around our waists. After all, we are one Soul in many bodies."
When the Christian youth saw them, he asked about them. They recounted the story to him: "Among us there is oneness."
A fire fell into the Christian youth's heart, and he tore off his sash. He said, "I am a slave of a people like this, who have such kindliness toward each other. I've never seen such kindliness among the folk of any religion."
The youth's father and relatives all came together and began to blame him: "Are you going to destroy your own religion because of spells cast by the Sufis?"
He said, "If you saw what I see, you would fall in love with them a hundred times more than I." (153-54)
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Someone became a plaintiff in a case. They wanted a witness. He took ten Sufis. The judge said, "I want another witness."
He said, "Your honor, Call in to witness two witnesses, men [2:282]---I have brought ten."
He said, "These ten are all one witness, and if you bring a hundred thousand Sufis, they'll all be one." (272-73)
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He asked, "Is variegation that sometimes we are busy with acts of obedience, and sometimes busy with food and drink? The former would be the discipline of the Soul, and the latter the nurturing of the Soul."
He said, "Didn't the prophets and saints have that? However, both in the state of obedience and in the state of eating the prophets and saints were nurturing the Spirit, not the Soul. In war, retreating is counted like charging---there's no contradiction. But don't fancy yourself as equal to them. If you were equal to them in acts and worship, you would be equal to them in states and unveiling. (163)
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This world is bad---but, only for someone who does not know what this world is. When he knows what this world is, then for him there is no "this world."
He asks, "What is this world?"
He says, "Other than the afterworld?"
He says, "What is the afterworld?"
He says, "Tomorrow."
He says, "What is tomorrow?"
Expression is terribly narrow. Language is narrow. All these struggles are so that you may be released from language, for it is narrow. They go into the world of the attributes, the pure attributes of the Real. Strange, what the theologians say! "The attributes are the same as the Essence, or other than the Essence." They agree on this. No, they don't, because the world is variegated. One-colored words don't come out.
He was asking about that dervish who went on a pilgramage to the sage, Sana'i, and came back. "What did that variegated one say?"
The dervish threw down his head.
He said, "The worldlings are variegated---unless there be someone who is pure from these variegations and little by little goes toward his own house. In him there's none. Otherwise, the world is extremely variegated---that Jew, that Christian, that infidel." (125-26)
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The Messenger of God---God bless him and give him peace---said, " When someone devotes himself purely to God for forty days, the springs of wisdom will come forth from his heart to his tongues." He was explaining this to his Companions. One of them busied himself with worship for forty days. Afterwards, he complained to Muhammad: "O Messenger of God! The companion so-and-so underwent states. His glance and his words acquired a different color. In explaining about him you said, 'When someone devotes himself purely...' I went and spent forty days and strived as much as I could. God does not burden a Soul to save Its capacity [2:286]. And your words are not contradicted."
The Messenger answered, "I said devotes himself purely. The stipulation is pure devotion. It should be purely for the sake of God, not for any other wish or purpose. You worshipped out of craving that those marvelous words should appear from you, just as you saw that they appeared from that companion, and you wished for that." (187-88)
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Forty days doesn't give benefit to everyone. It wants a man who is prepared, whose preparedness has been perfected, so that forty days may be the key that opens his heart. Otherwise, a hundred thousand days will have no benefit. (706)
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They said, "You have given all the scholars a bad name with this sama."
I said, "Didn't you know that without them, good and bad and unbeliever and Muslim do not become manifest?"
He says, "You reached God by dancing."
He said, "You try dancing too, you'll reach God. Two strides and he arrived. (214)
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The dance of the men of God is subtle and weightless. You'd say they're a leaf floating on top of the water. Inside, like a mountain and a hundred thousand mountains---but outside, like straw. (623)
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There was a sama. The minstrel was subtle and sweet-voiced and the Sufis limpid-hearted, but it just didn't take. The shaykh said, "Look and see if there are any others amidst us Sufis."
They looked and said, "There's no one."
He told them to search the shoes. They said, "Yes, there are some strange shoes."
He said, "Put those shoes outside the khanaqah."
They put them outside, and immediately the sama took hold. (180)
From the book, Me and Rumi © 2004 William C. Chittick
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