Iqbal - Javid Nama

JAVID NAMA
Versified English Translation

by
Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

Translated from the Persian
with introduction and notes
ARTHUR J. ARBERRY

INTRODUCTION

The bare facts of the life and career of the author of the work here translated may be summarized in a few sentences; more extended biographies are not far to seek, and for the English-reading public A. Schimmel’s Gabriel’s Wing, Iqbal Singh’s The Passionate Pilgrim, and S. A. Vahid’s Iqbal, his Art and Thought, contain a wealth of detail and interpretation sufficient to satisfy the most exacting curiosity.

Muhammad Iqbal was born on February 22, 1873, at Sialkot, a populous centre of West Punjab near the borders of Jammu, of a family hailing originally from Kashmir. In 1895 he moved to Lahore to complete his formal studies, and there began to write. In 1905 on the advice of Sir Thomas Arnold, at that time teaching in Government College, he proceeded to England and for three years at Trinity College, Cambridge he applied his great energies chiefly to philosophy under McTaggart. Graduating from Cambridge in 1908, Iqbal qualified for the Bar in London and did post-graduate work in Germany before returning to India to teach in Lahore and to practise law; later he resigned his appointment at Government College and concentrated on his legal and political work. In 1924. he became a member of the Legislative Assembly of his native province, and in 1930 he was elected President of the Moslem League of India; meanwhile in 1922 a knighthood had been conferred upon him. Taking part in the London Round-Table Conference on India in 1931-32, he spent 1933 in Afghanistan as adviser on education. In 1934 his health began to decline, and on April 21, 1938, he died.

Throughout his extremely active life, in which he did so much to shape the destinies of the land of his birth and to mould the political future of the Moslem community (so that he has been called the spiritual founder of Pakistan), Iqbal maintained a steady and, towards the end, a torrential output of literature. Writing with equal facility in Urdu, Persian and English, and in his soaring range covering law, philosophy and religion as well as politics, it was as a poet that Iqbal made his greatest contribution to letters. On his death Rabindranath Tagore wrote: "The deatlh of Sir Muhammad Iqbal creates a void in literature that like a mortal wound will take a very long time to heal. India, whose place in the world is too narrow, can ill afford to miss a poet whose poetry had such universal value." Iqbal’s first publication, in 1901, was a treatise on economics in Urdu, the earliest to appear in that language; his last, issued posthumously under the title Armughan-i-Hijaz (‘Present from Hijaz’), contained his final collection of Persian and Urdu poems. The volume here translated, the Javid Namah, came out in 1932.

‘Iqbal’s magnum opus’, writes his biographer S. A. Vahid, ‘is the Javid Namah. Within a few years of its publication the poem became a classic, and. one great scholar proclaimed that the poem will rank with Firdausi’s Shah Namah, Rumi’s Mathnawi, Sa‘di’s Gulistan and the Diwan of Hafiz. Nor was this tribute an exaggeration, as subsequent criticism showed ... In judging a poem we have to consider two things: the style and the substance. So far as the style is concerned, Javid Namah belongs to the very first rank of Persian verse. It is unsurpassed in grandeur of expression, in beauty of diction and in richness of illustration. As regards theme, the poem deals with the everlasting conflict of the soul, and by telling the story of human struggle against sin, shows to mankind the path to glory and peace. In every line the poet makes us feel that he has something to say that is not only worth saying, but is also fitted to give us pleasure. Thus, as regards style as well as theme the poem is a masterpiece.’

The Javid-nama, having been frequently reissued in lithograph – the edition on which the present translation is based was published in 1946 at Hyderabad (Deccan) – was first translated, into Italian, by Professor Alessandro Bausani under the title II Poema Celeste (Rome, 1952). A version in German verse, Buch der Ewigkeit (Munich, 1957), has come from the pen of Professor Annemarie Schimmel. A French version, by E. Meyerovitch and Mohammed Mokri, has the title Le Livre de l’Éternité (Paris, 1962). In 1961 a translation in English verse was published in Lahore, The Pilgrimage of Eternity by Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad. The poem has thus reached a truly international public, and has already taken its rightful place amongst the modern classics of world literature.

Iqbal composed three long Persian poems in which he gave artistic expression to his highly characteristic philosophical ideas. The first of these, the Asrar-i Khudi, was published in 1915 and ‘on its first appearance took by storm the younger generation of Indian Moslems. "Iqbal," wrote one of them, "has come amongst us as a Messiah and has stirred the dead into life."’ So wrote R. A. Nicholson, whose prose version of this work, The Secrets of the Self (Macmillan, 1920), first introduced Iqbal’s writings to the western public. The second of the trilogy, the Rumuz-i Bekhudi came out in 1918, but it was not until 1953 that the first translation appeared, an English blank-verse rendering by the present writer entitled The Mysteries of Selflessness (John Murray).

As their titles indicate, the central theme of both these poems is the Self, or human ego, in its relationship to society, more specifically the Moslem community, and the place of the Moslem community in the world at large. In common with all sensitive Moslems in India and elsewhere, Iqbal was deeply pained by the contrast between Islam in the days of its greatest power, and the status of colonial tutelage – to use a mild euphemism – to which most Moslem countries had sunk in modern times. He saw the only hope of reversing the process of decline to reside in the regeneration of every individual Moslem, and the working together of these regenerated individuals in a united and purposeful Community of Believers, in God’s good time coextensive with the whole of humanity. ‘Thus the Kingdom of God on earth’, Iqbal wrote in a famous letter to R. A. Nicholson, ‘means the democracy of more or less unique individuals, presided over by the most unique individual possible on this earth.’ For a developed philosophical exposition of his doctrine of the Self, in its maturest form, the reader is recommended to consult Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (O.U.P., 1934), and especially chapter IV, ‘The Human Ego – his freedmon and in mortality’.

Both the Asrar-i Khudi and the Rumuz-i Bekhudi were composed in rhyming couplets, following a very long tradition in Persian didactic poetry going back a thousand years. The metre chosen by Iqbal for these poems is the ramal-i musaddas-i maqsur, the same as that employed by the greatest of Persian mystics, Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), in the greatest didactic poem in Persian literature, the Masnavi. I have summarized the early history of this verse-form in the preface to my Tales from the Masnavi (Allen & Unwin, 1961), which the reader may wish to consult. One noteworthy feature of the convention is that the poet lightens from time to time the weight of formal exposition by the introduction of illustrative anecdotes; to this tradition Iqbal also conformed. When, however, he came to compose the third of his trilogy, Iqbal varied the pattern strikingly; the Javid-nama is conceived as a narrative poem, or rather, a poetic drama, in which the didactic is put into the mouths of the dramatis personae. A further remarkable novelty is the interspersing of lyrics, in various metres and in the mono-rhyme characteristic of the Persian ghazal, the effect of which is a very great enhancement of the poetic tension of the whole.

The Javid-nama is a description of a spiritual journey made by the poet, from earth through the ‘spheres’ of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to beyond the ‘spheres’ and to the Presence of God. The antecedents of this heavenly adventure go back, within Islamic tradition, to the celebrated mi‘raj of the Prophet Mohammed, that famous legend of his Ascension the germs of which are to be traced in the Koran. In his journey through the seven heavens Mohammed, mounted upon the winged horse Buraq, had as his guide the archangel Gabriel; in the course of his ascent he is said to have encountered and conversed with earlier prophets, from Adam in the first heaven to Abraham in the seventh, before enjoying the supreme felicity of colloquy with God. The Prophet’s mi‘raj naturally formed a theme of meditation and – as part of the imitatio Prophetae – of emulation for many pious Moslems and mystics through the succeeding centuries, and so Iqbal did not lack for precedents and models when he came to adopt this very popular vehicle for the final expression of his doctrine of Moslem regeneration and self-realization. He nominated as his guide the poet to whose language, style and thought he felt himself rightly to be under a special obligation, the Sage of Rum, Jalal al-Din Rumi; whilst the personalities he encountered on his journey were drawn not from the hierarchy of the prophets, but from those who had played a leading part in the history of Islam, particularly in its later period.

Iqbal presents the translator with all the usual problems connected with translating poetry, and with further problems, still more difficult of solution, posed by his elusive style and idiosyncratic vocabulary. That this elusiveness was deliberate is proved by a remark he jotted down in a notebook dating from 1910, and published by his son Javid in 1961 : ‘Matthew Arnold is a very precise poet. I like, however, an element of obscurity and vagueness in poetry; since the vague and the obscure appear profound to the emotions.’ In choosing Persian as the medium for conveying his universal message, Iqbal was not adding materially to the difficulties of interpretation; rather the contrary, for Persian had been preferred by Indian Moslem poets for centuries over the local idioms, Persian being the court language of the Moghul Empire. (The rise of Urdu, and the consequent decline of the knowledge of Persian, in fact happened during Iqbal’s lifetime; his own genius did very much to enhance its status and mature its style.) But Persian is a language almost ideally suited to deliberate vagueness, on account both of its grammatical and syntactical simplicity, and of its rich and at the same time somewhat imprecise philosophical vocabulary. Or rather, imprecision is not the crux of the matter; the case is, that the terms available for was are capable of a variety of meanings, and Iqbal, like every original thinker, not infrequently attached to quite simple words and clichés his own private signification.

This last point has been well made by S. A. Vahid in his Iqbal, his Art and Thought. ‘The remarkable point about Iqbal’s poetry is the sense of "newness", and the main reason for this is that although Iqbal was not actually anti-traditionalist, he uses certain words and combination of words to express his visions which are entirely original. Some of these words are coined by him; others represent old words used in an entirely new sense ... He is also a superb phrase-maker and has wonderful felicity of phrasing by which language acquires meanings beyond those formally assigned by the lexicographer. These words and phrases act as the keystone for the entire arch of the poetic inspiration. As the removal of the keystone is sure to cause the downfall of the entire arch, so if we try to substitute something else for the master word or phrase, the whole artistic expression is marred. The use of those words and phrases give to Iqbal’s poetry not only a sense of "newness" found in very few Urdu and Persian poets, but also the quality of surprise which characterises all great poetry.’

It has been said that the ideal at which the translator should aim is to produce a version as near as possible to what his original would have written, had he been composing in the translator’s language and not his own. It so happens that in the case of the Javid-nama, we have been provided with material, though all too scanty, enabling us to test this theory; in his Reconstruction of Religious Thought, Iqbal has himself translated into English two passages from this poem. The first of these passages represents verses 2733-2736, which in Iqbal’s own version become:

The ‘I am’ which he seeketh,
Lieth beyond philosophy, beyond knowledge.
The plant which groweth only from the invisible soil of
the heart of man,
Groweth not from a mere heap of clay.

In the original Persian these lines read:

khvast ta az ab u gil ayad birun
khusha-yi k-az kisht-i dil ayad birun
anchi u juyad maqam-i kibriya-st
in maqam az ‘aql u hikmat ma-vara-st

The poet thus not only reversed the original order of the two couplets, but also changed the tense of the main clause, itself in apposition to the immediately preceding sentence and having the same verbal construction, from the past to the present; nor, as will be seen, were these the only liberties he took with himself – liberties which would surely be condemned in any ordinary translator.

Iqbal’s second self- translation is more extensive, representing lines 239 to 266 of the Javid-nama.

Art thou in the stage of ‘Life’, ‘death’, or ‘death- in- life’?
Invoke the aid of three witnesses to verify thy ‘Station’.
The first witness is thine own consciousness–
See thyself, then, with thine own light.
The second witness is the consciousness of another ego–
See thyself, then, with the light of an ego other than thee.
The third witness is God’s consciousness–
See thyself, then, with God’s light.
If thou standest unshaken in front of this light,
Consider thyself as living and eternal as He !
That man alone is real who dares—
Dares to see God face to face!
What is ‘Ascension’? Only a search for a witness
Who may finally confirm thy reality—
A witness whose confirmation alone makes thee eternal.
No one can stand unshaken in His Presence;
And he who can, verily, he is pure gold.
Art thou a mere particle of dust?
Tighten the knot of thy ego;
And hold fast to thy tiny being!
How glorious to burnish one’s ego
And to test its lustre in the presence of the Sun!
Re-chisel, then, thine ancient frame;
And build up a new being.
Such being is real being;
Or else thy ego is a mere ring of smoke!

The foregoing passage affords a very fair example of how close and how remote Iqbal was prepared to make his own version of himself; for comparison, in addition to the translation offered in the present volume, the reader may like to consider the verse–paraphrase by Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad.

Art thou alive or dead or dying fast?
Three witnesses should testify thy state.
The first as witness is the consciousness
Of self, to see thyself by thy own light.
The second is another’s consciousness
That thou may’st kindle thus to see thyself.
And thy third witness is God’s consciousness,
A light in which thou may’st see thyself.
Before the Lord’s effulgence if thou stand’st
Thou art alive like Him. For life is but
To reach thy destined end, that is to see
The Lord unveiled. One who believes
Shall never lose himself in Attributes
For Mustafa insisted on the Sight.
The night to heaven means a longing for
A witness who may testify thyself.
Unless it be confirmed by Him, our life
Is nothing but a play of tint and smell.
No one can stand against His beauty bright,
Except the one who has perfection reached.
O grain of sand! thy lustre do not lose,
Thy ego’s knot but tighten up. Thy gleam
Increase, then test thyself against the sun,
If thou canst thus reshape thyself and pass
The test, thou art alive and praised or else
The fire of life is smoke and naught beside.

Other specimens of English versions of selected passages from the Javid-nama may be inspected in the general literature, by now extensive, which has developed out of studies of Iqbal. As for the translation here offered, the aim has been to adhere as closely as possible to the meaning of the original Persian; passages not immediately comprehensible, by reason of out-of-the-way references or otherwise, have been clarified in brief notes. Appended to the Persian text is an ‘Address to Javid’, the poet’s son after whom the poem was named: this appendix does not form part of the whole work, and the present translator has followed the example of his predecessors and has omitted it.

PRELUDE IN HEAVEN
On the first day of creation Heaven rebukes Earth

Life out of the delight of absence and presence	115
fashioned forth this world of near and far;
so snapped asunder the thread of the moment
and mixed the hues of Time’s house of amazement.
On all sides, out of the joyous yearning for habitude
arose the cry: ‘I am one thing, you are another.’	120
The moon and the stars learned the way to walk,
a hundred lamps were kindled in the firmament.
In the azure heavens the sun pitched
its gold-cloth tent with its silver ropes,
raised its head over the rim of the first dawn	125
and drew to its breast the new-born world.
Man’s realm was a heap of earth, no more,
an empty wilderness, without a caravan;
not a river wrestled in any mountain,
not a cloud sprinkled on any desert,	130
no chanting of birds among the branches,
no leaping of deer amidst the meadow.
Sea and land lacked the spirit’s manifestations,
a curling vapour was the mantle of earth’s body;
the grasses, never having known the breeze of March,	135
still slumbered within the depths of earth.
The azure sky then chided the earth, saying:
‘I never saw anyone pass so miserable a life!
In all my breadth what creature is so blind as you?
What light is yours, save that drawn from my lamp?	140
Be earth high as Alvand, yet it is only earth,
it is not bright and eternal as the skies.
Either live with the apparatus of a heart- charmer,
or die of the shame and misery of worthlessness!’
Earth felt put to shame by heaven’s reproach,	145
desperate, heavy of heart, utterly annihilated,
fluttered before God in the agony of unlight.
Suddenly a voice echoed from beyond the skies:
‘O trusty one, as yet unaware of the trust,
be not sorrowful; look within thy own heart.	150
The days are bright of the tumult of life,
not through the light thou seest spread in all quarters.
Dawn’s light comes from the spotted sun,
the soul’s light is unsullied by the dust of time;
the soul’s light is upon a pathless journey,	155
roves farther than the rays of sun, and moon.
Thou hast washed from the soul’s tablet the image of hope,
yet the soul’s light manifests out of thy dust!
Man’s reason is making assault on the world,
but his love makes assault on the Infinite;	160
his thought knows the way without any guide,
his sight is more wakeful than Gabriel.
Earthy, yet in flight he is like an angel;
heaven is but an ancient inn upon his way;
he pricks into the very depths of the heavns	165
like the point of a needle into silk;
he washes the stains from the skirt of Being,
and without his glance, the world is blank and blind.
Though few his magnificats, and much blood he sheds,
yet he is as a spur in the flanks of doom.	170
His sight becomes keen through observing phenomena
so that he sees the Essence within the attributes.
Whoever falls in love with the beauty of Essence,
he is the master of all existing things.

SONG OF THE ANGELS

The lustre of a handful of earth one day shall outshine the creatures of light;	175
earth through the star of his destiny one day shall be transformed into heaven.
His imagination, which is nourished by the torrent of vicissitudes,
one day shall soar out of the whirlpool of the azure sky.
Consider one moment the meaning of Man; what thing do you ask of us?
Now he is pricking into nature, one day he will be modulated perfectly,	180
so perfectly modulated will this precious subject be that even the heart of God will bleed one day at the impact of it!

SONG OF THE ANGELS

The lustre of a handful of earth one day shall outshine the creatures of light;	175
earth through the star of his destiny one day shall be transformed into heaven.
His imagination, which is nourished by the torrent of vicissitudes,
one day shall soar out of the whirlpool of the azure sky.
Consider one moment the meaning of Man; what thing do you ask of us?
Now he is pricking into nature, one day he will be modulated perfectly,	180
so perfectly modulated will this precious subject be that even the heart of God will bleed one day at the impact of it!

PRELUDE ON EARTH
The Spirit of Rumi appears and explains the
mystery of the Ascension

Tumulutous love, indifferent to the city—
for in the city’s clangour its flame dies—
seeks solitude in desert and mountain-range	185
or on the shore of an unbounded sea.
I, who saw among my friends none to confide in,
rested a moment on the shore of the sea:
the sea, and the hour of the setting sun—
the blue water was a liquid ruby in the gloaming.	190
Sunset gives to the blind man the joy of sight,
sunset gives to evening the hue of dawn.
I held conversation with my heart;
I had many desires, many requests—
a thing of the moment, unsharing immortality,	195
a thing living, unsharing life itself,
thirsty, and yet far from the rim or the fountain,
involuntarily I chanted this song.

Ghazal

Open your lips, for abundant sugar-candy is my desire;
show your cheek, for the garden and rosebed are my desire.	200
In one hand a flask of wine, in the other the beloved’s tress—
such a dance in the midst of the maidan is my desire.
You said, ‘Torment me no more with your coquetry: begone!’
That saying of yours, ‘Torment me no more, ‘ is my desire.
O reason, become out of yearning a babbler of words confused;	205
O love, distracted subtleties are my desire.
This bread and water of heaven are fickle as a torrent;
I am a fish, , a leviathan-Oman is my desire.
My soul has grown aweary of Pharaoh and his tyranny;
that light in the breast of Moses, Imran’s son, is my desire.	210
Last night the Elder wandered about the city with a lantern
saying, ‘I am weary of demon and monster: man is my desire.’
My heart is sick of these feeble-spirited fellow-travellers;
the Lion of God and Rustam-i Dastan, are my desire.
I said, ‘The thing we quested after is never attained.’	215
He said, ‘The unattainable - that thing is my desire!’
The restless wave slept on the grey water,
the sun vanished, dark grew the horizon—
evening stole a portion of its capital
and a star stood like a witness above the roof.	220
The spirit of Rumi rent the veils asunder;
from behind a mountain mass he became visible,
his face shining like the sun in splendour,
his white hairs radiant as the season of youth—
a figure bright in a light immortal,	225
robed from head to foot in everlasting joy.
Upon his lips the hidden secret of Being
loosed from itself the chains of speech and sound:
his speech was as a suspended mirror,
knowledge commingled with an inward fire.	230
I asked him, ‘What is the existent, the non-existent?
What is the meaning of praiseworthy and unpraiseworthy?’
He said, ‘The existent is that which wills to appear:
manifestation is all the impulse of Being.
Life means to adorn oneself in one’s self,	235
to desire to bear witness to one’s own being;
the concourse on the day primordial arrayed
desired to bear witness to their own being.
Whether you be alive, or dead, or dying—
for this seek witness from three witnesses.	240
The first witness is self-consciousness,
to behold oneself in one’s own light;
the second witness is the consciousness of another,
to behold oneself in another’s light;
the third witness is the consciousness of God’s essence,	245
to behold oneself in the light of God’s essence.
If you remain fast before this light,
count yourself living and abiding as God!
Life is to attain one’s own station,
life is to see the Essence without a veil;	250
the true believer will not make do with Attributes—
the Prophet was not content save with the Essence.
What is Ascension? The desire for a witness,
an examination face-to-face of a witness—
a competent witness without whose confirmation	255
life to us is like colour and scent to a rose.
In that Presence no man remains firm,
or if he remains, he is of perfect assay.
Give not away one particle of the glow you have,
knot tightly together the glow within you;	260
fairer it is to increase one’s glow,
fairer it is to test oneself before the sun;
then chisel anew the crumbled form;
make proof of yourself; be a true being!
Only such an existent is praiseworthy,	265
otherwise the fire of life is mere smoke.’.
I asked again, ‘How shall one go before God?
How may one split the mountain of clay and water?
The Orderer and Creator is outside Order and Creation;
we - our throats are strangled by the noose of Fate.’	270
He said, ‘If you obtain the Authority
you can break through the heavens easily.
Wait till the day creation all is naked
and has washed from its skirt the dust of dimension;
then you will see neither waxing nor waning in its being,	275
you will see yourself as of it, and it of you.
Recall the subtlety Except with an authority
or die in the mire like an ant or a locust!
It was by way of birth, excellent man,
that you came into this dimensioned world;	280
by birth it is possible also to escape,
it is possible to loosen all fetters from oneself;
but such a birth is not of clay and water—
that is known to the man who has a living heart.
The first birth is by constraint, the second by choice;	285
the first is hidden in veils, the second is manifest;
the first happens with weeping, the second with laughter,
for the first is a seeking, the second a finding;
the first is to dwell and journey amidst creation,
the second is utterly outside all dimensions;	290
the first is in need of day and night,
the second-day and night are but its vehicle.
A child is born through the rending of the womb,
a man is born through the rending of the world;
the call to prayer signalizes both kinds of birth,	295
the first is uttered by the lips, the second of the very soul.
Whenever a watchful soul is born in a body
this ancient inn the world trembles to its foundations!’
I said, ‘I know not what manner of birth this is.’
He said, ‘It is one of the high estates of life.	300
Life plays at vanishing and then reappearing-
one role is constant, the other transitory;
now life dissolves itself in manifestation,
anon it concentrates itself in solitude.
Its manifestation shines with the light of the Attributes,	305
its solitude is lit up by the light of the Essence.
Reason draws life towards manifestation,
love draws life towards solitude.
Reason likewise hurls itself against the world
to shatter the talisman of water and clay;	310
every stone on the road becomes its preceptor,
lightning and cloud preach sermons to it.
Its eye is no stranger to the joy of seeing,
but it possesses not the drunkard’s boldness;
therefore, fearing the road, it gropes like a blind man,	315
softly, gently it creeps along, just like an ant.
So long as reason is involved with colour and scent
showly it proceeds upon the path to the Beloved;
its affairs achieve some order gradually—
I do not know when they will ever be completed!	320
Love knows nothing of months and years,
late and soon, near and far upon the road.
Reason drives a fissure through a mountain,
or else makes a circuit around it;
before love the mountain is like a straw,	325
the heart darts as swiftly as a fish.
Love means, to make assault upon the Infinite,
without seeing the grave to flee the world.
Love’s strength is not of air and earth and water,
its might derives not from toughness of sinew;	330
love conquered Khaibar on a loaf of barley,
love clove asunder the body of the moon,
broke Nimrod’s cranium without a blow,
without a battle shattered Pharaoh’s hosts.
Love in the soul is like sight it in the eye,	335
be it within the house or without the door;
love is at once both ashes and spark,
its work is loftier than religion and science.
Love is authority and manifest proof,
both worlds are subject to the seal - ring of love;	340
timeless it is, and yesterday and tomorrow spring from it,
placeless it is, and under and over spring from it;
when it supplicates God for selfhood
all the world becomes a mount, itself the rider.
Through love, the heart’s status becomes clearer;	345
through love, the draw of this ancient inn becomes void.
Lovers yield themselves up to God,
give interpretative reason as an offering.
Are you a lover? Proceed from direction to directionlessness;
make death a thing prohibited to yourself.	350
You who are like a dead man in the grave’s coffer,
resurrection is possible without the sound of the Trumpet!
You have in your throat melodies sweet and delicate;
how long will you croak like a frog in the mud?
Boldly ride upon space and time,	355
break free of the convolutions of this girdle;
sharpen your two eyes and your two ears—
whatever you see, digest by way of the understanding.
"The man who hears the voice of the ants
also hears from Time the secret of Fate."	360
Take from me the glance that burns the veil,
the glance that becomes not the eye’s prisoner.
"Man is but sight, the rest is mere skin;
true sight signifies seeing the Beloved.
Dissolve the whole body into sight—	365
go to gazing, go to gazing, go to gaze!"
Are you afraid of these nine heavens? Fear not;
are you afraid of the world’s immensity? Fear not.
Open wide your eyes upon Time and Space,
for these two are but a state of the soul.	370
Since first the gaze advanced on manifestation
the alternation of yesterday and tomorrow was born.
The seed lying in the soil’s house of darkness
a stranger to the vast expanse of the sky—
does it not know that in an ample space	375
it can display itself, branch by branch.
What is its substance? A delight in growing;
this substance is both its station and itself.
You who say that the body is the soul’s vehicle,
consider the soul’s secret; tangle not with the body.	380
It is not a vehicle, it is a state of the soul;
to call it its vehicle is a confusion of terms.
What is the soul? Rapture, joy, burning and anguish,
delight in mastering the revolving sphere.
What is the body? Habit of colour and scent,	385
habit of dwelling in the world’s dimensions.
Your near and far spring out of the senses;
what is Ascension? A revolution in sense,
a revolution in sense born of rapture and yearning;
rapture and yearning liberate from under and over.	390
This body is not the associate of the soul;
a handful of earth is no impediment to flight.’

ZARVAN: THE SPIRIT OF TIME AND SPACE, CONDUCTS THE TRAVELLER ON HIS JOURNEY TO THE SUPERNAL WORLD

My soul was convulsed by the words that he spoke,
every atom of my body trembled like quicksilver.
Suddenly I saw, between the West and the East,	395
heaven immersed in a single cloud of light;
out of that cloud an angel descended
having two faces, one like fire, one like smoke—
one dark as night, the other bright as a meteor,
the eyes of one watchful, the other’s eyes asleep.	400
The hues of his wings were of crimson and gold,
emerald and silver, azure and lapis-lazuli;
his temper had the fleetness even of a phantom,
he sped from earth to the Milky Way in an instant;
every moment he was seized by another desire,	405
to spread his wings in yet another sky.
He said, ‘I am Zarvan, I am the world-subduer,
alike hidden from sight and manifest am I.
Every plan is bound up with my determining;
voiced and voiceless-all alike are my prey.	410
Through me the bud swells upon the branch,
through me the birdie bewails in the nest;
through my flight the seed becomes a stalk,
through my effluence every parting turns to union.
I pronounce both reproach and exhortation;	415
I render athirst, that I may offer wine.
I am life, I am death, I am resurrection,
I am the Judgment, Hell, Heaven and Houri.
Man and angel are both in bondage to me,
this transitory world is my own child;	420
I am every rose that you pluck from the branch,
I am the matrix of every thing that you see.
This world is a prisoner in my talisman,
every moment it ages through my breath.
But he who has in his heart I have a time with God,	425
that doughty hero has broken my talisman;
if you wish that I should not be in the midst,
recite from the depths of your soul I have a time with God.’
I know not what it was that was in his glance,
it snatched away from my sight this ancient world;	430
either my sight opened on another world
or this same world took on another form.
I died in the universe of colour and scent,
I was born in a world without tumult and clamour;
my thread snapped from that ancient world,	435
a whole new world came into my hands.
My soul trembled at the loss of a world
until another world blossomed out of my dust;
my body became nimbler, my soul more adventurous.
the eye of my heart was keener and more wakeful;	440
veiled things became manifest uncurtained,
the melody of the stars reached my cars.

CHANT OF THE STARS

Your reason is the fruit of life, your love is creation’s mystery;
O form of dust, welcome to this side of the world of dimensions!
Venus and Moon and Jupiter are rivals on your account,	445
for one glance from you there’s a great jostle of manifestations.
On the road to the Beloved there are revelations ever fresh and new;
the man of true yearning and desire yields not his heart to the All.
Life is truth and purity, life is quickening and surging;
gallop from eternity to eternity; life is the Kingdom of God.	450
Unto the passion of minstrelsy give leave to clamour and riot,
give wine again to profligate and censor, wine pitcher on pitcher.
Syria and Iraq, India and Persia are accustomed to the sugarcane;
give to the sugar-cane’s habituate the bitterness of desire!
That it may enter upon battle with the high-billowed ocean	455
give to the heart of the rivulet the joy of the swift torrent.
The poor man is a fire, rulership and power imperial are straw;
a naked sword is ample enough for the august pomp of kings.
The drumming of the dervish, Alexander’s clamorous vanity—
the one is the rapture of Moses, the other the Samiri’s conjuring.	460
The one slays with a glance, the other slays with an army;
the one is all peace and amity, the other is all war and wrangling.
Both were conquerors of the world, both sought immortality,
the one by the guidance of violence, the other guided by love.
Bring the hammer-blow of the dervish, break the rampart of Alexander;	465
renew the ancient wont of Moses, break the glamour of wizardry!

THE SPHERE OF THE MOON

This earth and heaven are the Kingdom of God,
this moon and Pleiades are our patrimony;
whatever thing meets your gaze upon this road,
regard it with the eye of intimacy.	470
Go not about your own dwelling like a stranger—
you who are lost to yourself, be a little fearless!
This and that impose your command on their hearts;
if you say ‘Don’t do this, do that,’ they obey.
The world is nothing but idols of eye and ear;	475
its every morrow will die like yesterday.
Plunge like a madman into the desert of the Quest,
that is to say, be the Abraham of this idol-house!
When you have travelled all through earth and heaven,
when you have traversed this world and the other,	480
seek from God another seven heavens,
seek a hundred other times and spaces.
Self-lost to sink on the bank of the river of Paradise,
quit of the battle and buffetting of good and evil—
if our salvation be the cessation of searching,	485
better the grave than a heaven of colours and scents.
Traveller! the soul dies of dwelling at rest,
it becomes more alive by perpetual soaring.
Delightful it is to travel along with the stars,
delightful not to rest one moment on the journey.	490
When I had tramped through the vastness of space
that which was once above now appeared below me,
a dark earth loftier than the lamp of night,