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Muslim / Sufi 14th Century	About Shah Nematollah Vali Timeline (1330 - 1431)
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English version by Peter Lamborn Wilson & Nasrollah Pourjavady Original Language Persian/Farsi	I beheld my essence. What I saw
Commentary by Ivan M. Granger Themes   Fire   Heart   Light   Lover and Beloved   Water   Recommended Books The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson / Translated by Nasrollah Pourjavady Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty, Edited by Alan Jacobs	I beheld my essence. What I saw Was like the very light of the eye itself: How wonderful that a single Essence should Refract itself like a light, a single source Into a million essences and hues. The being of the lover and Beloved Are the same, for where is Love without A lover and Beloved to be found? Behold His Essence by His Light, that you May be yourself the seer and the Seen. I have wandered through the essences And found that His Reality makes up The essence of all beings. To ourselves We manifest ourselves; were it not so There could be no relationship between The One and many. Now then, go beyond Relation, go beyond the going-beyond Till there remains no body, soul or being. "All that is must perish save His face" And in His Being ours is burned to ash. At last I see that vision of Him requires A subject and an object: I and He. And yet the Essence is the same, sometimes A wave upon the sea, sometimes the sea; Sometimes the eye, sometimes the object of The eye. Whoever sees this ocean knows Our essence as we know it in ourself. We are the waves and yet in essence we Are not different from the sea: Reality Is one but shows itself as two: subject And object, two in manifestation But not in Essence: only one Existence Though countless its attributes. The mystery Is still too deep for all to understand, For all to grasp: the supraformal Essence Is the Beloved and the formal self The lover -- but if you switch the terms around The statement still remains unchanged and true. Or if you say the cup and wine are one That too is true, as true as if you claim That cup is cup and wine is wine; or if You say that one is us, the other Him. Regard these different levels of the truth As "relatively absolute" and find The subtle occult truth. Then... WA SALAAM! The relativity of intellect Results in statements which must contradict Each other on the level of the mind And yet beyond the mind both are correct. Sometimes I am Mahmud, sometimes Ayaz Sometimes I glorify myself, sometimes I sing the other: lover and Beloved. So from time to time I change and play Both roles, and then a third one: Love itself. Thus spoke Mustafa, beloved of God: Go, search for the one who has enslaved your heart Within your heart. There find the satisfaction Of your soul at last. Seek Ne'matollah, find All that you seek -- and all that you require Will then be found in me, as you desire.     -- from The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry, Translated by Peter Lamborn Wilson / Translated by Nasrollah Pourjavady Amazon.com
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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

Today's poem is a striking meditation on the fluid nature of relating to God as both separate from oneself -- "I" and "Thou" -- yet also recognizing how that duality naturally flows into the nondualistic realization of God as one's very nature.

A wave upon the sea, sometimes the sea;
...
We are the waves and yet in essence we
Are not different from the sea: Reality
Is one but shows itself as two: subject
And object, two in manifestation
But not in Essence: only one Existence
Though countless its attributes.

How the intellect must summersault and dance about to conceive of this truth! To speak of it the masters shift about, playing games of perspective until the students understand:

I sing the other: lover and Beloved.
So from time to time I change and play
Both roles, and then a third one: Love itself.

God is the Beloved, yes, but also the lover seeking the Beloved. And God is the love joining the lover and the Beloved. And all three eventually melt into each other, and they are all God. Then... WA SALAAM!

Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
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