Seyyid-i Ecel, one night, said to Delkak, “Why did you so hastily marry a prostitute? You should have told me. We would have found you a virtuous girl.” Delkak replied, “I married nine virtuous, pure women, and all of them became prostitutes. I have wasted away from my troubles. So, I married this utterly useless prostitute. Let us see what will become of this one.” He said, “I have tested intelligence many times. From now on, I will seek a field and scatter the seeds of madness there!”
Someone said, “I am looking for a wise man, so that I may consult with him; I have a difficulty, and I will tell it to him.” Upon hearing this, another said, “There is a man in our city who has thrown himself into madness; there is no one wise except him. Look, he is riding a stick, running around with the children. He is a man of judgment and prudence, a fiery soul.”
“He is a person whose rank is lofty as the sky, who showers down stars. His power and brilliance have become life for the Cherubim. He has concealed himself in this madness,” he said. But do not consider every madman as your soul. Do not prostrate yourself before a calf like Sāmiri. Even if a walī (friend of God) were to tell you hundreds of thousands of things about the unseen, hundreds of thousands of secrets openly, unless you have that understanding, that knowledge, you still cannot distinguish dung from aloeswood.
If the walī veils himself with madness, O blind one, how can you recognize him? If your eye of nearness is open, look and see that under every stone a spiritual man is hidden! The guide is present, in plain sight; every Moses is wrapped in a cloak. It is a walī who makes another walī famous. The walī bestows fortune upon whomever he wills. But when he dons madness, no one is wise enough to understand him. If a thief steals something from a blind man, can the blind ever find it? Even if the thief comes and attacks him, how can the blind know who the thief is? If a dog bites a blind pauper, how will the blind know which dog bit him?
In a neighborhood, a dog attacked a blind beggar like a lion of war. Even though the moon draws the dust of the poor as kohl to its eyes, the dog, in its rage, attacks the poor. The blind man, frightened by the dog’s bark, became helpless. He began to show respect to it: “O chief of hunters, O lion of the hunt, the hand is yours (the judgment is yours), spare me,” he began to say.
A certain judge, out of necessity, once adorned a donkey’s tail and gave it the title ‘noble’. Likewise, when the blind man was pressed, he said to the dog, “O lion, what will you gain by hunting someone as emaciated as me? Your friends are hunting wild asses in the desert, but you are hunting the blind in the neighborhood—what a shame! Your friends seek wild asses in the hunt, but you scheme in the street, seeking the blind.” A knowledgeable dog hunts wild asses; an ignorant dog attacks the blind. Even a dog, when it learns, is saved from savagery and hunts lawful animals in the forests.
Even a dog, when it becomes learned, becomes agile in battle. Even a dog, when it becomes an ʿārif (gnostic), becomes one of the Companions of the Cave (Aṣḥāb al-Kahf). Even a dog knows and recognizes who the hunters are. O Lord, what is that light that makes everything recognizable? The blind man’s inability to recognize is not because he lacks eyes; it is because he is drunk with ignorance.
The blind man is not more blind than this earth! Yet even this earth, by Allah’s grace, recognized its enemy! It saw the light of Moses, showed him favor, but recognized Qārūn and swallowed him up. It destroyed everyone who harbored selfhood, and understood Allah’s command, “O earth, swallow!” (Qur’an 23:18). Earth, water, and fiery sparks are unaware of everything with us, but with Allah they are aware of all things. We, on the contrary, are aware of everything except the Truth (al-Ḥaqq); we are unaware of the Threatener.
In summary, all of them feared and shrank from bearing Allah’s trust. But when they mixed with animals, this fear and striving became blindness and came to nothing! “All of us have become weary of this life, which is alive with people but dead with the Truth,” they said. When someone’s parents die, he becomes an orphan. For intimacy with the Truth, a sound heart (qalb-i salīm) is necessary! If a thief steals a cloth from a blind man, the blind man cries out without knowing.
But unless the thief says, “I stole your property, I am a cunning thief,” how can the blind know the thief? He has no light in his eyes! But if you hear his voice, seize him tightly, do not let go, and make him confess what he stole. To catch the thief, to press him and make him confess what he stole, is the greater struggle (jihād al-akbar). First, he stole the kohl of your eye. If you recover it, your eyes will again be filled with light. The cloth of wisdom, which is the lost property of the heart, is obtained from the people of the heart. The heart that is blind, its soul, its ear—
Even if it has eyes, it cannot find the tracks of the thief, Satan, nor seize him. Seek the ability to find Satan’s tracks, to catch the thief, from the people of the heart, not from stone or earth. For, compared to the people of the heart, the common folk are like stones or spinning tops, almost lifeless. The one seeking counsel came to the presence of that madman and said: “O father who shows himself as a child, tell me a secret.” The walī said: “Go, do not keep knocking at this ring. The door is closed. Today is not the day for secrets to be told; come another time. If there were a place for location in the realm of no-place (lā makān), I too would sit in a shop like the shaykhs and engage in trade.”
The muḥtasib (market inspector) passed by somewhere at midnight. He saw a man sleeping by the wall. “Hey, are you drunk? What did you drink? Tell me,” he said. The man replied, “I drank what was in the jug!” The muḥtasib asked, “Tell me, what is in the jug?” The man answered, “What I drank.” The muḥtasib said, “This is a cryptic answer. What did you drink, what is it?” The man replied, “It is what is hidden in the jug.” Thus, the question and answer continued in this manner.
The muḥtasib, like a donkey, became stuck in the mud. He said to him, “Come, let out a sigh.” While the drunkard was speaking, he said, “Hū, hū.” The muḥtasib said, “I told you to sigh (āh), not to say hū; you are saying hū.” The man replied, “I am joyful, but you are doubled over with sorrow. Sighing (āh) comes from pain, from sorrow and oppression. But this hū of the drunkards is from joy.” The muḥtasib said, “I do not know this or that, get up.
Stop selling maʿrifa (gnosis), leave off this noise.” The man said, “Go on, where are you and where am I?” The muḥtasib said, “Come on, get up, come to the dungeon.” The drunkard said, “O muḥtasib, leave me and go about your business. Can you take a pledge from a naked man? If I had the strength to walk, would I be lying here? I would go home. If I had sense and means, I would be at the shopfront like the shaykhs.”
The man who wanted to learn the state of that great man said, “O horseman who rides a stick as a horse, for a moment, turn your horse this way.” The man said, “Speak quickly, my horse is very unruly, very spirited. Be quick, lest it trample you. Ask whatever you wish, ask plainly,” and he turned his stick that way. The man could not find the opportunity to express the secret in his heart. He gave up and mocked the walī. He said, “I want to marry one of the women who sit in this street. Which one is suitable for a man like me?”
The walī said, “There are three kinds of women in the world. Two are nothing but trouble and hardship, one is a pure treasure. If you marry her, she will be entirely yours. The second is half yours, half apart from you. The third will never belong to you at all. Now you have heard. Go now, I am leaving. Do not linger, lest my horse trample you. If you fall, you will not rise again!” The shaykh drove his stick and joined the children again.
The young man called after him again, “Come, at least explain this in detail. Who are these three kinds of women you mentioned? Tell me!” The shaykh again turned his stick toward him and said, “A virgin will be entirely yours, and you will be free from sorrow. The one who is half yours is a widow. But the one who will never be yours is a woman who has children. If she has children from her first husband, her love and all her memories go there. Go now, lest my horse trample you.
Go away, or the hoof of my unruly horse will crush you! The shaykh again made noise and drove his stick, calling the children to him. The man called again: “O great king, I have one more question, come!” The shaykh again turned that way and said, “Speak quickly, what is it? I cannot stay long, for a child has taken my ball from the square!” The man said, “O King, with all this intelligence and propriety, what is this madness, what is this business? It is astonishing! When you speak, you are beyond the Universal Intellect (ʿAql-i Kull); you are a sun, so how do you hide yourself in madness?” The shaykh said: “These ruffians decided to make me the judge (qāḍī) of this city. I refused, it was impossible. There is no one as learned and virtuous as you. The sharia (sacred law) does not permit us to make anyone less than you our chief, they said. Forced by this, I pretended to be mad; Allah’s mercy is slow to reach madness, but I was truly wasting away. But in reality, I am still what I was before. My intellect is a treasure, I am a ruin. I am mad—if I show the treasure! The madman is he who is not mad; the madman is he who, seeing this guard, does not enter his house. My knowledge is an essence, not an accident.
This precious knowledge is not for attaining a goal. I am a mine of sugar, I am sugarcane; both I grow from it, and I eat it. If someone hears a piece of knowledge and does not like or accept it, but cries out, that knowledge is imitative knowledge, acquired by learning (it has not become part of him). For livelihood is acquired, not for enlightening the heart; this knowledge, like its seeker, is base worldly knowledge.
Some people want to learn knowledge to be seen by the elite and the common, not to be delivered from this world. Such a person is like a mouse; he gnaws everywhere but is heedless of the lights of union. Since the light cannot find a way to the open plain, this dark hole is a pleasant dwelling for him. But if Allah grants him the wings of intellect, he is saved from being a mouse and flies like birds.
If he does not seek wings, he remains underground, despairing of finding a way to the constellation of Simāk. The knowledge that is spoken is lifeless; it is enamored of the faces of buyers. At the time of debate and discussion, that knowledge appears great, but if it has no buyer, it dies away. But my customer is Allah. He exalts me, He buys.
The blood-money for my blood is the beauty of Allah, the Lord of Majesty. I am eating my own blood-money; this is a lawful gain for me. Leave these bankrupt buyers. What can a handful of earth buy? Do not eat earth, do not buy earth, do not seek earth. For the face of one who eats earth is always pale. Eat heart, and always remain young. Let your complexion turn crimson from manifestation!” O Lord, this beneficence is not our doing. Your grace is the guide to hidden grace.
O You who hold the hands of the fallen, hold our hand. Take us, lift the veil, do not tear our veil. Save us from this filthy nafs (lower self). For the knife has reached our bone. O King without crown or throne, who can untie this strong bond from the likes of us wretches? O loving Allah who bestows love, who can open such a strong lock but Your bounty? We renounce ourselves and turn our faces to You.
For You are closer to us than we are to ourselves. This dua (supplication) too is by Your teaching, by Your grace. Otherwise, how could a rose garden grow in a bathhouse? The understanding and intellect caught between blood and intestines conveys nothing but Your generosity. The luminous wave of this spiritual light, which comes from two pieces of fat, strikes the heavens. From this tongue, which is a piece of flesh, the river of wisdom flows like a stream.
It flows through the holes called ears and reaches the vineyard of the soul, whose fruit is intellect and understanding. The main road to the vineyard of souls is the road of understanding. The gardens and orchards of the world are but its branches. The origin and source of these beauties is that. Now, recite at once the verse, “In the gardens beneath which rivers flow.” (Qur’an 2:25, 3:15, etc.)