This is Chapter 33 from the revised online version of The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality. 163 quatrains on the subject of love are spread out like tulips from the Mount Sinai where Moses saw the Divine illumination
Bright red tulips are spread out as far as you see. Each flower represents a quatrain – a poem of four lines. Each one has been planted here after being transported from Sinai, the mountain on which Moses witnessed the Divine Manifestation on a burning bush. Each one is numbered – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on.
As you concentrate on a tulip, it turns into a hologram with voice. The first red flower shows you the all-illuminating Sun as a mark of worship on the forehead of dawn as you hear the flower saying to you in a bell-like whisper, “The banquet of life is a martyr to the Divine Beauty. Hence love and courtesy is the very foundation of existence.”
You see waves of oceans, flowers growing on mountain tops, fairy meadows spread out far and wide, conquerors of the world marching on to their glorious graves while the legendary guide Khizr drinks eternity on the Fountain of Life. The whispering tulips relate every vision to the working of Love until the heart becomes the center of the universe as well as its boundaries – there are no boundaries of the universe except in its center and that is the human heart.
“This world is a handful of earth and the heart is the crop we get out of it,” says the eighth tulip. “This drop of blood is the only riddle of the world. Our eyes have acquired a double-vision or else the world of everyone is contained in their hearts.”
“Give up faith and become the slave of doubt if you wish to rule the realm of knowledge,” says the forty-eighth. “However, if you desire action, then fortify faith: seek one, see one and be one.”
Eternity spreads out like a tapestry as you advance amid the flowers of Sinai. Thousands of years of human civilization are passing before your vision when the 121st flower whispers, “But the story of my entire life can be summed up in these few words: I sculpted, I worshipped and I broke.”
The little red flowers are inside-out representations of the human heart: the secrets contained in the heart that may not be discerned by the sharpest mind are being revealed by these blabbering creatures. Here you witness the very process through which perceptions of God, angels, idols, truth, falsehood, reality and superstition are formed in the depth of human consciousness – and how a world of stone, vegetable, animals, planets and heavenly bodies beyond the range of vision and imagination springs from this consciousness. Beyond good and evil, you witness the universe acquiring life through Love.
The second last flower presents the difficulty due to which these secrets could not be revealed in a sustained dialogue and required this series of disjointed quatrains. It says, “The love of speech filled my heart with blood and set me off on my quest but when I opened my lips to speak of love, words veiled this secret in a thicker shroud.” The very last flower presents the solution as it whispers, “At last from subtle reason he has fled and has turned his self-sustained heart into blood through Love. What are you asking of the sky-soaring Iqbal? Our wise philosopher has lost his head.”
The total number of flowers was 163. Since it is a prime number, i.e. it cannot be divided except by itself or by 1, it represents your ego or soul, which is indivisible but can be absorbed in Unity, or Oneness. The progression on the single theme of Love has turned out to signify your remaking as the new Adam: the self is strengthened through love.
As you concentrate on a tulip, it turns into a hologram with voice. The first red flower shows you the all-illuminating Sun as a mark of worship on the forehead of dawn as you hear the flower saying to you in a bell-like whisper, “The banquet of life is a martyr to the Divine Beauty. Hence love and courtesy is the very foundation of existence.”
You see waves of oceans, flowers growing on mountain tops, fairy meadows spread out far and wide, conquerors of the world marching on to their glorious graves while the legendary guide Khizr drinks eternity on the Fountain of Life. The whispering tulips relate every vision to the working of Love until the heart becomes the center of the universe as well as its boundaries – there are no boundaries of the universe except in its center and that is the human heart.
“This world is a handful of earth and the heart is the crop we get out of it,” says the eighth tulip. “This drop of blood is the only riddle of the world. Our eyes have acquired a double-vision or else the world of everyone is contained in their hearts.”
“Give up faith and become the slave of doubt if you wish to rule the realm of knowledge,” says the forty-eighth. “However, if you desire action, then fortify faith: seek one, see one and be one.”
Eternity spreads out like a tapestry as you advance amid the flowers of Sinai. Thousands of years of human civilization are passing before your vision when the 121st flower whispers, “But the story of my entire life can be summed up in these few words: I sculpted, I worshipped and I broke.”
The little red flowers are inside-out representations of the human heart: the secrets contained in the heart that may not be discerned by the sharpest mind are being revealed by these blabbering creatures. Here you witness the very process through which perceptions of God, angels, idols, truth, falsehood, reality and superstition are formed in the depth of human consciousness – and how a world of stone, vegetable, animals, planets and heavenly bodies beyond the range of vision and imagination springs from this consciousness. Beyond good and evil, you witness the universe acquiring life through Love.
The second last flower presents the difficulty due to which these secrets could not be revealed in a sustained dialogue and required this series of disjointed quatrains. It says, “The love of speech filled my heart with blood and set me off on my quest but when I opened my lips to speak of love, words veiled this secret in a thicker shroud.” The very last flower presents the solution as it whispers, “At last from subtle reason he has fled and has turned his self-sustained heart into blood through Love. What are you asking of the sky-soaring Iqbal? Our wise philosopher has lost his head.”
The total number of flowers was 163. Since it is a prime number, i.e. it cannot be divided except by itself or by 1, it represents your ego or soul, which is indivisible but can be absorbed in Unity, or Oneness. The progression on the single theme of Love has turned out to signify your remaking as the new Adam: the self is strengthened through love.
its a very nice article. i like it.
ReplyDeletereally good post. one must need to post these sort of posts.
ReplyDelete