“Interpret Your Own Self”

Sunrise March 28

Some weeks before attending the Radical Love event at the Garrison Institute, I was already well into Alan Williams’ Rumi: Spiritual Verses, his translation of Book 1 of the Masnavi. Soon after returning from the Institute and while completing that book, a particularly compelling passage called out: “Interpret your own self” (3758). Williams’ notes tell that this line is “almost identical” to 1088b. So looking back, I find, sure enough, a green sticky marker there pointing to #1088 in the way that I use for the few passages that jump off the page shouting: “Pay attention here!” So what might “Interpret your own self” mean and why is it so important? 

     I believe that this act of interpreting leads me further in the journey of knowing myself and thus connects with the awe-inspiring hadith: “to know oneself is to know one’s Lord.” This challenge continues to provide a bridge between authoritative text and personal construction of meaning.  Samples of previous explorations of the hadith include blogs from 2017: Sept 20, Sept 23, Nov 1, & Dec 16. When I look back at Chittick’s Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi, I find this hadith frequently cited (see his listing on p. 357) and particularly in #58 (p. 69) that traces through Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad toward today: “He who knows his soul knows his Lord.”

     I’d probably been prepped for Rumi’s “Interpret your own self” by simultaneously reading Jawid Mojaddedi’s Beyond Dogma: Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories, followed by William Chittick’s Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul. For example, from Beyond Dogma, I feel reassured in my sense that, properly approached with sufficient humility, it’s not too presumptuous to read and interpret Rumi’s Masnavi as direction, as a personal invitation to each individual, for moving closer to the Presence. In short, Rumi guides a person toward knowing him/herself in the way that knows one’s Lord.

     Mojaddedi discusses this ultimate access as coming through “contemporary Friends of God.” In other words, access to the Divine is not locked away in some remote revelation, in an almost indecipherable language where those saints who communicated with God are so unreachably far above us that we just have to follow recipes. Instead, Mojaddedi explains Rumi’s “assertions about the comparable loftiness of contemporary Friends of God, and especially the leading Friend of God of every era”:

“The priority of this concern for Rumi would also account for his emphasis on the shared potential of all people to reach the lofty level reached by Prophets and Friends of God, if they fulfill their mystical potential. . . Rumi’s predilection was to emphasize the closeness of all humanity to the divine…” (pp. 39-41)

This reminds me of Chittick’s calling the “human soul a potential intellect” (Science of the Cosmos, p. 127) and asserting “the only created thing that is omniscient in any real sense is the fully actualized intellect, the radiance of God’s own Selfhood” (p. 128; cf all of Chapter 6 on this potential).

     Mojaddedi elaborates on the basis for our means “to interpret”: “the most distinctive characteristic of [Rumi’s] mysticism is his celebration of the continual communication of God with His creation.” He provides a footnote: “I have decided to use the term ‘communication’ in preference to alternatives such as ‘inspiration’ or ‘revelation.’ The term ‘wahy’ is notoriously difficult to translate and has taken on two dimensions of meaning in relation to Prophets …” (footnote 5, p. 185). Mojaddedi further discusses the difference (and overlap?) between ‘verbal expression’ and ‘internal/non-verbal promptings’ and ‘inspirations.’ This discussion continues with lines from Rumi’s Masnavi as Mojaddedi says that Rumi “describes the Friend of God’s knowledge in the following terms:

The Tablet that’s Preserved was his director— / From what is that ‘preserved’? From any error.
Not through stars, magic or one’s dreams at night,/ But wahy-i haqq and He knows best what’s right!
Sufis may call it mere ‘heart-inspiration,’/ To hide it from the general population.
It’s ‘inspiration of the heart,’ since He/  Is manifest there—it’s thus error-free.
Believer, through God’s light you now can see;/ From error you have full immunity!”
(Mojaddedi in Beyond Dogma, p. 65, translating from Book 4 of the Masnavi, lines 1852-1856. In his more recently published Book 4, Mojaddedi translates wahy-i haqq as “God’s own words,” p. 112.)

So how does the direction to “Interpret your own self” play itself out? I’m finding that “the path of attraction,” as it applies specifically to listening for which readings stir the beating of my heart, is leading me back to the writing left by the guide whose hand I took. It happened like this: I noted my response (an “internal/non-verbal prompting” perhaps) to a comment Omid made in the Radical Love Institute about angel wings on donkeys. He told me it came from Rumi’s Fihi, translated by Thackston in Signs of the Unseen, somewhere in the middle of the 246 pages. I’d already begun reading in this book and, upon returning home, scanned to see if I could find the passage. Didn’t work; so, more properly directed, I started at page one and read forward, finding (pp. 111-112) the angel-feather-on-donkey-tail passage, and kept going. I noticed along the way that Thackston frequently referenced Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisa’i and felt another point of attraction, this time to the Kisa'i text. But, as often happens on a travel, while considering getting a copy of Kisa'i, I felt drawn to other collections of similar tales already on our shelves (Ibn al’Arabi’s Bezels of Wisdom, Attar’s Memorials of God’s Friends, Heschel’s The Prophets) but these were not lighting up. Instead, I was caught by a book with which I hadn’t connected in earlier attempts--our Sidi’s Stories of the Prophets ( by Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rifa'i as-Shadhuli). It had not especially resonated when I’d tried it a few years earlier. Now it rings like a bell or maybe like the lovely chimes on our porch.

Rumi, Radical Love, & I/You (part A)

Garrison Institute grounds and building, March 15

     Last weekend, my beloved wife Belqis and I, along with twenty others, participated in an event at the Garrison Institute, north of NYC, on the topic of Rumi and Radical Love, led by Seemi Ghazi and Omid Safi. Omid recently published a book titled Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. Of the 219 passages translated by Safi, 55 (about a fourth) are from Rumi. Attar has the second most with 26 poems, and then another 41 authors/sources contribute also to this wonderful collection on the mysterious theme of radical love. The volume and diversity suggest we may be in pursuit of something elusive, not surprising in the spiritual journey. I believe that while this path is perplexing, humbling, even overwhelming at times, this apparent multiplicity is One and is designed to guide each to integrity with his or her fit (fitra, see p. 29, Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul). Remember: “my beloved…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). 

     The multitude of texts appears even more puzzling when almost all of these writers tell that love can never be contained in words. And yet our reach toward, our tremendous thirst for the elixir of life yearns into the beyond, looking for any help we can get. We need the teachings and models to guide us, to break the spell cast by all the fake stuff masquerading under the label love. We long to be thrust forward into the transformational living of passionate engagement with beloveds, with our world, and even, especially, with the Divine. In Omid’s introduction to Radical Love, he tells us:

“In a metaphor that changes how we think about love and spirit, [Ahmad] Ghazali talks about the Spirit crossing over from the realm of nonexistence toward the realm of existence. When it gets to the very threshold of existence, love is already there awaiting the Spirit. In other words, love is preexisting, pre-eternal. This is consistent with the teachings of many mystics who see love not as merely another divine quality, but the divine quality par excellence, even perhaps equal to the being of God.” (p. xxx)

That’s radical. Love. I went to the weekend workshop hoping to move past the printed word, wanting to move closer to the embodied word, longing to track with greater certainty into the mystic.

     The most powerful feature emerging for me from the weekend comes in what Coleman Barks calls “glance” (The Glance: Songs of Soul-Meeting, 1999). Fittingly, my mind muddles here and I can’t remember whether Seemi and Omid used that word or another—maybe “glimpse” or “gaze.” My mental blur is apropos because when we wander after love, especially in search of radical love, we’re moved into fields of wonder where bewilderment clues proximity. 

     Since we’re moving out beyond words, getting the right one doesn’t matter much; what we want is experience of the phenomena, the phenomenal. While I don’t recall which word Seemi used that Friday night, my being knows the feeling that came with her voice, even when she spoke or sang in an unfamiliar language. The body joins these vibrations honing in on relationship felt in our ritual ceremony. With Seemi’s voice and being, we were held in sacred space where we may connect horizontally and vertically. 

     When we’re in the eye-to-eye connection of the glance/gaze, we’re also in a unity of vibration; of course, unfortunately, most daily eye contact fails to attain this level. And then, strangely or not, if we really want more of the glance, of the access to radical love, guess what we need! Words—but ones like Rumi’s. Rich in poetry, story, and revelation. Not ones turned plastic and manipulative as even can be done to the word love. To build our capacity to engage significantly with radical love we’ll almost certainly have to construct “realized knowledge” on top of “transmitted knowledge.” (For elaboration on this, see William Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul.) The transmitted knowledge that we need comes from revelation and authentic models; the realized kind is earned through experience and polishing of the heart to discern and know the True.

     While all this may sound daunting, and it should and it is, we are given loving opportunities, like the glance. Omid talked of three exemplary moments in life: 1) the birth of a firstborn (repeatable with some variation in subsequent childbirth, each extraordinary as is the unique gift of the one born), 2) the (first) falling-in-love, and 3) the eye to eye electric connection with one’s guide. I know each of those three+ with the differential coloring as fits with each individual’s journey.

     My personal experience of the first model named by Omid flooded with mercy. I was mostly unprepared, as first-time expectant fathers often are, having missed out on the nine-month inner mystery given to mothers-to-be. The miracle of birth of our child transformed the integrity of love. The previous meaning of this un-name-able center of life was stripped and replaced by the awesome. The second child brought in darker shades of love, qualities I’d likely been unable to bear without the grace of the first.

     Experiences with the falling-in-love model (repeatable with considerable variation) have offered another kind of mystery. The phenomena now seems to me suspect, mysteriously luring a person into deep waters, perhaps a set-up for heart-break and thereby an opportunity to surrender selfish illusion (“luv”) for self-giving-up care-for-another, “love.” Perhaps it’s a hint of the annihilation that goes with divine-love. The term “radical love” might be the care-taker that moves us along this pathway. Omid says in his introduction to Radical Love (“fiery, fierce, and alchemical”): “… it is by merging with the cosmic current of love that we are led back Home” (p. xxi, xxiii).

Dome of our meeting room for Radical Love

More on the “Hardened Heart”

Some veils over vision are beautiful but freezing--

Last time, that strange notion of the “hardened heart” showed up, closing in from the shadows. This somewhat scary sight prompted a Google search, and in about a minute I found that the topic can be connected to over a hundred scriptures in the Bible and another hundred-plus in the Qur’an. As often happens, a semi-attended mysterious notion remains in a half-conscious way, rather impatiently awaiting and prompting further understanding. So it’s not surprising that while re-reading Book I of Rumi’s Mathnawi certain passages lit up.

“Without the touchstone, with the naked eye,/ you’ll never know false gold from precious gold!” (couplet 300, Alan Williams’ translation, Spiritual Verses)

        Isn’t Rumi saying that our normal vision (and cognition?) cannot find the hidden treasure? Everyday eyesight is not sufficient to discern the spiritual pathway. Instead, the touchstone, the clean heart, knows true from false (see Psalm 51:10); but this knowing is often lost due to veiling—the “hardening of the heart.” Rumi’s next couplet adds:

“If God should place a touchstone in your heart/ you’ll then tell doubt and certainty apart” (Jawid Mojaddedi, trans. Rumi, The Masnavi Book One)

Like Rumi, we’re in a world easily overwhelmed because

“False pretenders just distort what’s right” (Mojaddedi, couplet 322), and  “God’s way bewilders those who are traveling it” (Mojaddedi, couplet 313).

So certainty looks unlikely if not impossible—and yet “None but a man who’s tasted truth will do” (Mojaddedi, 277).  Mojaddedi’s note on this line says:

“Mystical knowledge is often described by Sufis as ‘tasting the truth,’ indicating that it is an immediate, experiential form of knowledge which gives greater certainty than theoretical knowledge.” (p. 246)

The talisman and the treasure are elaborated by Nicholson, especially in a note he adds to a related passage:

“The body resembles a talisman of clay guarding a hidden treasure of light, i.e the Divine spark and spiritual essence of Man. When the charm is broken, ‘his speech is light and his works are light and he moves in light’, and God alone dwells in his heart.” [p. 43, Commentary on Book I)

Nicholson’s note concerns couplet 434 in which Rumi begins quoting from Qur’an 2: 125. Nicholson translates Rumi’s lines: 

“Clean My house, ye twain, is an explanation of (such) purity: it (the purified heart) is a treasure of (Divine) light, though its talisman is of the earth.”

Rumi offers further clarification on the way the heart becomes “hardened” and veiled from discerning the treasure, from seeing with the light of God.

“Desire and anger make men go cross-eyed,/ for they distort the spirit from uprightness./ When craving comes, then virtue is concealed;/ a hundred veils divide the heart and sight.” (Williams, couplets 334-5)

Just in case we underestimate how difficult it is for us to escape the veils and to realize the hidden treasure, Rumi weaves together several very strong stories. In one of them the king’s advisor demands that the king cut off part of his own (the advisor’s) nose and ears. Rumi is trying to shock us into recognizing our endangered condition due to the high risk for losing our sense of the Divine and not even being aware of how much we have lost. From Nicholson’s translation (available at http://www.masnavi.net/1/50/eng/1/400/ ) beginning with couplet 439:

آن وزیرک از حسد بودش نژاد ** تا به باطل گوش و بینی باد داد

That petty vizier had his origin from envy, so that for vanity he gave to the wind (sacrificed) his ears and nose,

هر کسی کاو از حسد بینی کند ** خویشتن بی‌‌گوش و بی‌‌بینی کند

Any one who from envy mutilates his nose makes himself without ear and without nose (unable to apprehend spiritual things).

بینی آن باشد که او بویی برد ** بوی او را جانب کویی برد

The nose is that which catches a scent, and which the scent leads towards an abode (of spiritual truth).

       I’m pretty sure the world around us right now has plenty of bad things going on. Perhaps it always does. The historical mystery series by Sharan Newman that I’m now reading tells how dark the world was back in times of the crusades. So a big challenge inevitably comes for us in how to look at bad things. Unless we really purify the mirror of our hearts, we’re at serious risk for making things even worse and for further endangering our souls.

“How many an evil that you see in others/ is your own nature which you see in them!” (Williams, couplet 1328)

        We have models for how to cope with the dark world. The prophets denounced idol worship, cleansed the temple, resisted injustice; and yet I’m certain their hearts were filled with compassion, not with anger, lust, or hatred. Guidance and hope come from Rumi’s retelling of the hare’s success against the lion. The community surprised at being delivered from the oppression ask how the victory came about:

“‘Retell it so the story will  be healing,

     retell it as a dressing for our souls.

But tell! From that oppressor’s violence

     our souls have got a hundred thousand wounds.’

[and the hare responds] ‘it was God’s help…

He gave me power and gave my heart the light;

     my heart’s light gave my hands and feet their strength…

In time and in the course of things, God gives

    this help to doubtful ones and visionaries.’” 

(Williams, couplets 1372-1377)