Second Volume
This Mesnevi experienced a delay. Just as it takes time for blood to become milk, fortune must give birth to a child before the blood transforms into sweet milk. Understand this well. Hak Ziyası Hüsamettin, reining in from the heights of the heavens, began anew with the Masnavi. The Truth’s miraj had departed, and therefore its spring was absent, so blossoms did not open.
Upon returning from the sea to the shore, the Mesnevi poem’s dancer also corrected itself and began to play. With the Mesnevi, which polishes souls, we commenced on the fifteenth day of Receb. The date of this exchange was (Hijri) 662. A nightingale flew from here, returned, and then came back again. It became ‘naturalized’ to understand these meanings. May this abode of nature be the sultan’s arm; may this door remain open to the people eternally.
The calamity of this door is the desire for annihilation (heba). Otherwise, sherbet drinks are always consumed here. Cap that mouth and see that realm. That realm’s blindfold is the throat and mouth. O mouth, you are essentially a flame of Hell! O world, you already resemble a limbo! Baki’s light lies beyond the lowly world. Pure milk lies behind rivers of blood. Ride there without age; then your milk turns to blood.
Prophet Adam. With one step into the pleasures of the self, he departed from the corner of Paradise, and the chain that kept him from it passed around his neck. The angel fled from Satan as if fleeing from him. How many tears he shed for a single loaf of bread! Although the transgression he committed was only a hair’s breadth, those two hairs were lost in both eyes. Had Adam consulted with reason regarding this matter, he would not have recounted regrets.
Because when a mind joins another mind, it prevents bad deeds and bad words. But if the self befriends another self, the minor intellect becomes useless and ineffective. When you fall into despair from solitude, seek the shadow of a sun-like beloved. Go quickly and find an ally of Allah. If you do so, Allah will be your friend. He who sits in seclusion and closes his eyes has also learned this from a friend.
Seek seclusion from the outward world, not from the inward. A fur coat is useful in winter, not in spring. When reason joins another reason, light increases, and the path becomes clear. But if the self rejoices with another self and laughs, darkness increases, and the path is hidden.
O hunter, your friend is in your eye. Catch him from debris. Do not sweep dust onto him with a tongue broom. Do not bring dust to the eye as a gift. For the believer is the mirror of the believer, so that his face may be freed from cloudiness. In times of sadness, a friend is the mirror of the soul. Do not cloud the mirror’s face with breath. Hold back your breath in every breath so that it does not teach you your face from yourself. Are you less than earth? Even earth, when it finds its beloved, attains thousands of flowers from a spring face.
But when your eye sees a disloyal friend, it draws its head and face under a quilt. “Association with a bad friend is entanglement in calamity.” Since he has come, it behooves me to sleep. Let me sleep and be among the People of the Cave. That imprisonment in that distress is better than the Oceanus. The watchfulness of the People of the Cave was servitude to the Oceanus. But their sleep protected their honor and dignity.
Sleeping with knowledge is wakefulness. Woe to the awake person who sits with ignorance! When crows pitch their tents in autumn, nightingales hide and are silent. For when there is no rose garden, the nightingale falls silent. The disappearance of the sun extinguishes vigilance. O sun! You are abandoning this rose garden to illuminate the underworld. But the sun of gnosis does not go from one place to another; that sun is inexhaustible. Its dawn is nothing other than reason and soul. Especially that world’s perfect sun, whose business it is to illuminate the universe day and night, never disappears.
If you are Alexander, come to the east. Then wherever you go, you will be illuminated and strong! Then wherever you arrive, that place will be the East; truths will become passionately attached to your West. Your sense of bat-like feeling runs towards the West, and your pearl-scattering feeling flows toward the East. O rider! The path of feelings is the way of donkeys.
O one who mixes with donkeys, shame on you! There are five other senses besides these five senses. Those senses are like red gold; these are like copper. How can those who have skill in recognition take a copper sense as a golden sense in that market? The body’s sense eats the food of darkness, while the soul’s sense feeds on a sunbeam.
O one who gathers and collects his senses and takes them to the unseen realm! Bring forth your hand from your sleeve like Moses. O you whose attributes are the sun of gnosis! This worldly sun is bound by an attribute. But you become both a sun and a sea sometimes. Sometimes you become Mount Qaf, sometimes a Simurgh (mythical bird). Yet in reality, you are neither this nor that. O one far from delusions, o one progressing from afar!
The soul is friendly with intellect and reason. What business does the soul have with Arabic or Turkish? O naqsh (pattern), formless one! All these patterns and forms have both admired you as a semblance and praised you as the One. Sometimes it makes the semblance into the Unifier, sometimes the forms obstruct the path of the Unifier. Sometimes it calls you Abu al-Hasan with intoxication, sometimes “O young man, beautiful with fresh and soft body.” At times, it destroys its own form to exalt the Beloved.
The mockery of the eye’s sense is withdrawal (itizal). The eye of reason has attained union; it is Sunni. He who follows itizal is captivated by sense. But he shows himself as Sunni out of misguidance. One who remains in sense is a Mu’tazili. If he says, “I am Sunni,” it is from ignorance. One who emerges from sense is Sunni. The seeing eye is the pleasing eye of reason. If the animal sense saw a sultan, even an ox and donkey would see Allah. Unless you have a feeling other than animal feeling, outside of desires and passions.
How could the children of Adam be honored and share a secret with an animal through a common sense? Until you are freed from form, you cannot fit into Allah in form, or you can say that you do not fit. The discussion of fitting or not fitting into form is for one who has become completely immersed and freed from form. If you are blind, there is no obligation. Otherwise, proceed; patience is the key to salvation. The medicine of patience burns away the veils of the eyes and cleaves open hearts and souls. When the mirror of the heart becomes pure and clean, you see forms free from water and earth.
You also observe the naqsh (pattern) and the craftsman. You see the tapestry and the one who lays it out. The dream of my beloved is like Khalil to me. Its form is an idol, but its meaning breaks idols. Praise be to Allah that when it becomes manifest, the soul sees its own dream from the dream of that one. The soil at the door of his gate has exposed my heart. May the earth of him who exalts your earth be upon your head!
I said: If I am beautiful, I accept this beauty as His grace. If not, then even ugliness smiles at me! The remedy is to look at myself and put myself in order. Let’s see if I am worthy of Him or not? He is beautiful; he loves beauty. How does a fresh young man choose an old one? He cleanses them; who do they belong to? They are for the purified.
It is known that the beautiful love the beautiful, and desire the beautiful. Know that beauty attracts beauty. “Purify, purify, it is for the purified.” The entire world and everything says, ‘This attracts.’ Hot things draw hot things, cold things draw cold things. Those without essence attract those without essence, becoming intoxicated with the non-existent from the non-existent. Those who are people of Hell attract those who are people of Hell. Those who belong to light only desire those who belong to light. If you close your eye, you will fall into a sorrow and pain as if your soul is being torn. Your eye cannot be separated from the light of day.
If you grieve even with your eyes open, know that it is because both eyes of your heart are closed. The eye of the heart seeks a radiance that does not fit in comparison. Those two eternal lights cause you sorrow through their separation. Protect them! Since they call me, let me see if I am worthy of them, or if I am ugly.
If a beautiful person follows an ugly one, it is mocking him. How can I see my face? What color am I, like daylight or nighttime? For quite some time, I have been searching for my form but cannot find it anywhere. Finally, I said: Why was a mirror created? What is its use? Is it not so that everyone may know himself and who he is? A mirror made of iron is for forms. The mirror of the soul’s face is very expensive, very valuable. The mirror of the soul is only the face of the beloved. That beloved’s face, from that realm.
I said: O heart, seek a universal mirror. Go to the sea; do not waste time with streams! The soul came to its vicinity in distress. Maryam was distressed on a date palm. When the eye of my heart appeared, that blind eye disappeared; the eye of my heart became itself. I saw you as a universal mirror eternally. Then I saw my form in your two eyes and said
“Let go of delusion; it is from your imagination.” The form spoke to me from my eye: “We are one, you are me, and I am you.” How can the imagination, which does not have lasting existence, find a path within the truths in the enlightened eye?
If you see your form from someone other than me, know that it is an illusion and reject it! For he who sees through another’s eyes is coating his eye with nonexistence, making what is nonexistent appear to be existent. He tastes wine from the depiction of Satan.
His eye is a house of illusion and nothingness. He sees existences as non-existences, becoming intoxicated with the non-existent from other non-existent ones. My eye has been adorned by Allah’s adornment; it is a house of existence, not a house of illusion. If even a single hair exists in your eye, the imagination will appear like a ruby and a jade. When you completely pass beyond imagination, you can distinguish the jade.
O one who recognizes jade, listen to a story so that you may differentiate the manifest from the comparison.