And enduring alway of its own self.

A man who relies on farsighted reason,

Has much bewilderment before him.

From farsightedness of reason arise two excrescences: The first philosophy, the second ‘indeation''

Reason cannot endure the shining light of That countenance,

Go! to behold it seek another eye.

Since the two eyes of philosophy are squinting,
They are impotent to behold the unity of God,
From blindness arose the heresy of Assimilation,"
From single eyedness the perception of God's incom-
parability. 3

From the same cause came that false and pagan
Metempsychosis,*

Since it had its origin from defective sight.

Like as he is without part in perfection
The man who follows the road of schism,
So formalists have ophthalmia in both eyes,

1 Halul descending, descent of the Spirit, Mensch-werdung Gottes (Hammer) Indeatro (Tholuck Ssufismus 146). The sect called Haluliah held that God had descended into individual men. See Sale's Koran. Prelim discourse, 125, Malcolm's Persia, ii. 271.

2 Tashbih, assimilation. The Tashbiah "Assimilators" "attach to God improper attributes, since they connect, creation partly with an elementary principle, and partly with accidents' Dabistan (translated by Shea,) ii. 351.

* Tanzih, declaring God to be without an equal.

* Tanasukh, transmigration of souls.

For they see naught but the exteriors of externals. The scholastic theologian who has no perception of very unity,'

Is in utter darkness through mental slavery;

Whatever he says about unity, more or less,

He has first set before him as a mote in his own eye. The Divine essence is freed from where, how, and why,

God is exalted above what men say of Him.

1 Tauhid, belief in God's unity, acknowledging that all things are One. See Answer VII and Hafiz (Brockhaus' Edition) Ode 465.

6

Hafiz, when preaching unity, with unitarian pen

Blot out and cancel every page that tells of spirits and men.'

In the Dabistan, Chapter IX, is given a list of the principal technical terms of the Muhammadan faith with their exoteric or ordinary meanings, and with the esoteric meanings given to them by Miyan Bayazid, a Punjabi Sufi. The work of Tauhid is said to be "To annihilate self in the absolute Truth, and to become eternal in the Absolute, and to be made one with the One, and to abstain from evil.",

QUESTION II.

What sort of thought is the condition of my path? Wherefore is it sometimes a duty, sometimes a sin?

ANSWER II.

To think on God's mercies is the condition of your path,'

But to think on the essence of God is grievous sin.
Thinking on the essence of God is vain;
Know it is impossible to reach a conclusion thereby.
Since His mighty works proceed from His essence,
His essence proceeds not from His works."

The whole universe is exposed to view by His light,But in what way is He exposed to view in the universe?

Let reason go, and abide in "The Truth."

The eye of a bat endures not the brightness of the

sun.

In that place where the light of "The Truth" is the evidence.

What room is there for talk of Gabriel ?3

1 Alluding to the Hadis 'Think on the mercies of God, not on the essence of God.'

? Aiat, texts, names of God, works or signs of God.

3 Gabriel was the "angel of revelation." See Koran Sura, ii 91.

Though the angels stand hard by the throne,
They reach not the station, 'I am with God!
Like as His light burns up the whole heavens,
So it burns up reason from head to foot.

Reason's light applied to the very light of lights,

Is as the eye of the head looking on the eye of the sun, the fount of light.

When the object seen is very near to the eye,

The eye is darkened so that it cannot see it.

This blackness of darkness,' if you know it, is the very light;

In the land of darkness is the well spring of life.
Since the darkened eye is not the giver of light,

Give up looking, for this is no place for looking.
What connection has the dust with the pure spirit
world?

Its perception is impotent to perceive it.

Blackness of face is not divorced from stability

1 See a passage of Dionysius quoted in Tholuck (Bluthensammlung aus der Morgenlandischen Mystik) p. 9. Then is he delivered from all things seeing or being seen, and dives down into the truly mystical darkness of ignorance, wherein he closes up all the intellectual apprehensions, and finds himself in the utterly impalpable and invisible, being entirely in Him who is beyond all, and in none else, either himself or another; being united as to his nobler part with the utterly unknown by the cessation of all knowing, and at the same time, in that very knowing nothing, knowing what transcends the mind of man" And Blosius (quoted in Vaughan i, 290) "The light is called dark from its excessive brightness."

In the two worlds; Allah is all wise.

1

Blackness of face in both worlds is poverty, '
Blackness is most precious, neither more nor less,
What shall I say? since this saying is fine,

'A light night in the midst of a dark day.'

On this holy place which is the light of revelation,
I have much to say, but not to say it is best.

ILLUSTRATION.

If you desire to behold the eye of the sun,
You must make use of another eye;

Since the eye of the head has not strength enough,
You may look on the brilliant sun in the water.2
Since its brightness shows less brightly therein,
You can bear to look on it for a longer space.
Not being3 is the mirror of absolute Being,

1 Referring to the Hadis 'Poverty is my peace.'

2 The practice of using mirrors to take observations of the sun is mentioned in the introduction to the Akhlak-i-Nasiri.

3 'adm privation of being, not being. The to me on of the Eleatics handed on to the Sufis through Plato, Plotinus and the Arabian philosophers. See Jami, Tuhfat-ul-Ihrar-Mokamat, 1:—

'In its cradle lay with suspended breath

The infant of creation in the sleep of not being.
The eyes of that Beauty seeing what was not
Beheld the non-existent as existent.

Though He beheld in His own perfections
The beauties of all things and their qualities,
Yet He desired that in another mirror
They might be displayed to His view.'

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