Pages

Monday, May 3, 2010

34. Creation Stories

This is Chapter 34 from the revised online version of The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality. Here the reader is offered a few insights about the upcoming world.
Beyond the flowers of Sinai you see the House of Reflections. It contains diverse ideas from the Poet’s mind (good that you basked in the glowing warmth of Love before approaching this realm of ideas).

Each idea is contained in a poem that takes life eyes as you concentrate on it. The one directly related to your present status in the Garden is ‘The Conquest of Nature’. It consists of five holograms with separate subheadings.

The birth of Adam
There is commotion in the universe. Love rejoices while Beauty trembles. Lying unaware in the embrace of Life, Desire opens eyes and a new world comes into being. Life declares that since it struggled restless in the darkness of the earth for many eons, a door has at least opened in the dome of the sky.
The Devil’s refusal
God bids angels to bow down to the newly created Adam. Since the Devil was born of fire, he considers himself superior to human being. He refuses to obey and says to God, “This short-sighted ignoramus creature was born in your lap but it will grow old in my arms.”
The temptation of Adam
The Devil avenges his expulsion from heaven by tempting the first couple. “A life of passion and longing is better than eternal quiet,” he says. “Do you not know as yet that passion fizzles out if union is achieved?”
Adam speaks on coming out of Paradise
The human being comes out and says, “How good it is to fill life with passion and longing: to open the door of the cage on to a spacious garden. I would exchange certainty for doubt, for I have become a martyr of the quest.”
The Dawn of Resurrection
(Adam in the presence of God)
Adam addresses the Almighty. “You whose sun illumines the star of life,” he says. “With my heart You lit the candle of the sightless world. My skills have poured an ocean into a strait, my pickaxe makes milk flow from the heart of stone. Venus is my captive, the moon worships me. Although his sorcery deluded me, excuse my fault, forgive my sin: the world could not have been subdued otherwise, for pride could not be taken prisoner without the halter of humility. Reason catches artful nature in a net and thus Ahriman, born of fire, bows down before the creature of dust.”
Adam’s address to the Almighty on the Dawn of Resurrection sounds like it is coming from you – the words printed in this book are like stones mentioned by him while your soul is hacking them to allow streams of life flow out of them and become this Garden – and that should not be surprising since Adam on the Dawn of Resurrection is most likely to be the new humanity, and that is represented by you.

The Garden is suddenly filled with the fragrance of the rose and you are told that a houri wanted to experience the world. She turned into the morning breeze, grow out of the branch like a bud, which then became a flower and withered after a time. Fragrance is all that is left of her now and it tells you that Time shall be less of a mystery for the new human being.

As you listen to the Song of Time, you notice that its five stanzas make a strange parallel to the five episode of the Creation Story you saw just now. The parallels require some effort to be drawn but once you draw the parallels they help you experience Time at five levels.

Stanza 1
Everything in the world seems to be pegged on the wall of Time, which itself appears to be nothing as you look at it but turns out to be your soul when you look within: the primary description of your life is the span of time you get to spend in the world. The birth of Adam – Time as yourself?
Stanza 2
Time paints its pictures with blood: Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, European colonialism and the greatest catastrophes of history appear like sparks shed by the flame of Time, which turns out to be a burning fire as well as the garden of Paradise. The Devil’s refusal – Time as a sign of God?
Stanza 3
Time appears to be passing but is also eternity and stays still: tomorrow can be seen in today except that the human eye cannot behold the effect of wine in the wine. Hence Time turns out to be the formless attribute by which you define Divine Life and, as you know, is also your soul. The temptation of Adam – Time as Truth?
Stanza 4
You are pitted against Time: while you propose your designs it disposes destiny beyond the spell of limited reasoning. You are free to choose only because the highest choice will merely take you to another dimension of Time but never possibly beyond it. You are the secret of Time just as it is yours: a secret that your soul hides as well as reveals. Adam speaks on coming out of Paradise – Relativity of Time?
Stanza 5
Time is the traveler that seeks you as its destination. You are the fruit of its labors – you are a song of thousand melodies but one heart and that heart alone is big enough to contain the ocean of Time as if it were a storm rising of your own tide. The Dawn of Resurrection and Adam in the presence of God – Time as your reward?

Sunday, May 2, 2010

33. Flowers of Sinai

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.