Though all numbers have one for their starting point,
Nevertheless you never come to the end of them.
Forasmuch as Not being in itself is pure,

Therein is reflected The hidden treasure.'

Read the tradition I was a hidden treasure,'

That you may see clearly this concealed mystery. 140 Not being is the mirror, the world the reflection, and man

Is as the reflected eye of The unseen Person.

You are that reflected eye, and He the light of the eye,

In that eye His eye sees His own eye.2

The world is a man and man is a world: 3

There is no clearer explanation than this.
When you look well into the root of this matter,
He is at once seer, seeing eye, and thing seen.
The holy tradition has declared this,
And, without eye or ear,' demonstrated it.
145 Know the world is a mirror from head to foot,"
In every atom are a hundred blazing suns.

1

Alluding to the tradition, David inquired, saying, O Lord, why hast Thou created mankind? God said, I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to become known, and I created the world in order to be known.'

2

Compare a somewhat similar passage in the Khandogya Upanishad, VIII., 7-12, quoted in Max Müller's Hibbert Lectures, 318-321. Man,' says Lahiji, is the eye of the world, whereby God sees his own works.' Compare Hegel. M. Müller, Hibbert Lectures, 20.

'Man, being the epitome of all the Divine names and qualities, is the microcosm, and the world is 'the great man,' because it bears to man, 'the eye of the world,' the relation of a man to one of his members. L. Compare George Herbert ::'Man is one world, and hath another to attend him.'

4 66 "My servant draws nigh to me by pious works till I love him, and when I love him, I am his eye, his ear, his tongue, his foot, his hand, and by me he sees, hears, talks, walks, and tastes." L.

5

Through this process of reflection every atom is potentially a mirror of any and all the Divine names and qualities, and when any atom puts off its limitation and phenomenal character it becomes "the All." L.

In its members a gnat is like an elephant,

In its qualities a drop of rain is like the Nile.

The heart of a barley-corn equals a hundred harvests,
A world dwells in the heart of a millet seed.

150 In the wing of a gnat is the ocean of life,'

In the pupil of the eye a heaven.

What though the corn grain of the heart' be small,

It is a station for the Lord of both worlds to dwell therein.
Therein are gathered the two worlds,

Sometimes Iblis and sometimes Adam."

Behold the world mingled together,

Angels with demons, Satan with the archangel.

All mingled like unto seed and fruit,

Infidel with faithful, and faithful with infidel.

155 Together are gathered, in the point of the present,*
All cycles and seasons, day, month, and year.
World without beginning is world without end,

The mission of Jesus falls with the creation of Adam.5
From every point in this concatenated circle

A thousand forms are drawn ;

Every point as it revolves in a circle

Is now a centre, now a circling circumference."

1 I.e., absolute Being. L.

The heart's core,-the drop of black blood in the heart, supposed by Muhammadans to be the principle of life. L.

Adam is a manifestation of the Divine beauty, jamal, and Iblis of Divine majesty and wrath, jalal. L.

The last event in Divine history coincides in point of time with the first. All things, whatever the times of their manifestations, are present together in God. There is no time in God.

L.

There is one great circle of emanations down to man, and back to God, and smaller circles caused by each particular emanation having a course of its own, e.g., universal reason revolves in all particular reasons. Each link is potentially all, and hence destruction of one is destruction of all. L.

If you take one atom link from its place

The entire universe falls to ruin.

160 The whole in a dizzy whirl, and yet no single part Placing foot beyond the limit of contingency,

Phenomenal being' holding each one in bondage,

Each is in despair at its particularization from the Whole.
You may say each is ever travelling and yet restrained,
Each is ever being unclothed and clothed upon;2

Each is alway in motion, yet ever at rest,

Never beginning and never ending.

Each ever cognizant of his own essence, and for that cause

Ever pressing his way towards the throne on high.

165 Beneath the veil of each atom is hidden

The heart-ravishing beauty of the Beloved's face!

RULE I.3

You have heard thus much of the universe,

Come, say what you have seen of the universe.

What know you of form or of substance?

What is the next world, and what is this world?
Say what is Simurg, and what mount Kaf,*
What heaven and hell, and hades' what?

1 Ta'ayyun, phenomenalization or emanation, evidentiation. See note on couplet 273 and couplet 484.

This is an allusion to Koran, Sura L. 14: "Yet are they in doubt (or being clothed with, labas), a new creation." Each atom non-existent in itself is being every moment clothed with a fresh phenomenal efflux from Absolute Being, and again stripped of it. When it strips off the phenomenal it is united with the Absolute, and when it again puts it on, it is held back from union and "travaileth

in bondage." L.

These rules are an elaboration of the thesis that knowledge of the Truth is to be attained not by sense and reason but by illumination. L.

4

Simurg, a fabulous bird, said to dwell on Mount Kaf, or Caucasus,-the type of Supreme Being and plurality in Unity.

Al'araf or Barzakh, the partition, veil, or "barrier" between death and the resurrection, or between this world and the next, a hades or purgatory, in which the dead are examined by Munkir and Nakir.-Sale, Koran, Prelim. Disc. 55, and Sura XXIII. 102.

Ꭰ

What is that world which is not seen,

One day whereof equals a year of this world? 170 That world, in fine, is not what you see.

Have you not heard the text, 'What ye see not?'
Come, show me what is Jabulca,2

What that city whose name is Jabulsa.

Consider the East along with the West,

For this world contains no more than one of each.3
Come and hear the meaning of 'like unto them ;'*
Hear it from Ibn Abbas, and then know yourself!
You are asleep, and this vision of yours is a dream,
All that you see thereby is an illusion.

175 On the morn of the last day, when you shall awake,
You will know all this to be the baseless fabric of fancy.
When the illusion of seeing double is removed,

Earth and heavens will become transfigured.
When the true Sun displays his face to you

There remains not the light of Venus, moon or sun.

Falls one beam of His on the hard rock,

It is torn to pieces like wool of divers colours."
Know now is the time that you have power to act:

What profit is there in knowing, when you are powerless?'

1 Koran, Sura LXIX. 38.

2 Sale, Prelim. Disc. 83, explains these as the celestial and terrestrial Jerusalem, Lahiji as the worlds of ideals, and of disembodied spirits. He says one of them lies in the east, the other in the west. See Gal. iv. 26, and Deutsch, Islam. p. 101.

3 Sense tells us nothing of the unseen worlds.

L.

* See Slane's Ibn Khallikan, i. 89, note. The saying referred to is, "If I explained you the verse, 'God created seven heavens and earths like unto them' ye would stone me, or call me unbeliever." See Koran, Sura LXV. 12.

to

The Father of lights.-James i. 17.

On that day the mountains shall become like carded wool of divers colours.'Koran, Sura CI. 4.

'Man by reason of the universality of his nature, i.e. his comprehending in him self all the divers names and attributes of "The Truth," is capable of apprehending Divine Epiphanies, and attaining to knowledge of "The Truth," and should set himself to do this while his powers are in their prime. L.

180 How shall I tell the tale of states' of heart'

To you, O man, with head downcast and feet in the mire?

The world is yours and yet you remain indigent.
Has man ever seen one so pitiable as you are?
Like captives you are confined to one spot,
Binding your feet with your own helpless hand.
You sit like women in the street of ill fortune,
You take no shame to yourself for your ignorance.
The valiant of the world are rolling in carnage;
You, with head wrapped up, put not forth your foot.
185 How read you the text, "old woman's creed,'
That you hold ignorance to be lawful for you ?
Whereas "women are wanting in intellect and faith,"2
Why should men choose their road?

If you are a man, come forth and pass on,
Whatever hinders you, pass aside by it.

Tarry not day or night at the halting places,3

Linger not behind your fellow travellers and camels.

Like The Friend of God,' go seek "The Truth,

Turn night into day and day into night."

190 Stars with moon and most brilliant sun

Represent sense, imagination and brilliant reason."

Turn your face from all these, O pilgrim,
Say alway, 'I love not them that set.'

4

1 I.e. ecstatic states in which Divine Epiphanies and visions are displayed to the heart. L.

2 There is another tradition, an old woman's creed is yours." Lahiji says it is mere bondage, taklid, mechanical religion, cant. Compare 1 Tim. iv. 7, old. wives' fables.'

Compare Hafiz, Ode I.

"And when the night overshadowed him, Abraham saw a star and he said, 'This is my Lord;' but when it set, he said, 'I like not gods which set.' And when he saw the moon rising, he said, 'This is my Lord;' but when he saw it set, he said, 'Verily, if my Lord direct me not, I shall become one of them that go astray.'"Koran, Sura VI. 77.

Relax not your efforts at any season. L.

• Hiss i mushtarak, the koine aisthesis of Aristotle.