Fakhruddin 'Iraqi - DIVINE FLASHES - selected reading

Selections from the DIVINE FLASHES of Fakhruddin 'Iraqi - translated by William Chittick & Peter Lamborn Wilson - read by Charlie Mehrhoff.

Divine Flashes - Fakhruddin 'Iraqi - translated by William Chittick & Peter Lamborn Wilson : Paulist Press, New York 1982 

Transcript

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Before we come to the page, before the first word is ever written down, or read, or listened to, there is a longing to connect. My name is Charlie Merhoff, your host here at Before the Page, a podcast featuring poetry, parable, fiction, and non words to echo our longing. We have arrived at our thirty-fourth episode of Before the Page. Today we are going to feature the words of Fak Rudin Iraqi, Persian Sufi master and poet. Iraqi lived in the 1200s, common era, contemporary with Ibn al Arabi Rumi and Sadrudin Kunawe. You will hear selections from the 1982 Paulist Press Edition of Iraqi's Alamaat Divine Flashes, translated by William Chiddick and Peter Lamborne Wilson. Love lies hid in Power's Pavilion, unique in the perfection of unneedfulness. The very veils of its essence are its attributes, but these attributes are enfolded in its essence. Its majesty yearns for its own beauty, yet its beauty is embodied in its majesty. Without cease love loves itself, pays no heed to other than itself. Each moment it raises the veil from some darling's face, each breath it begins a lover's melody. Love plays its lute behind the screen. Where is a lover to listen to its tune? With every breath a new song, each split second a new string plucked. The world has spilled love secret. When could music ever hold its tongue? Every atom babbles the mystery. Listen yourself, for I am no tattle tale. Now and now with every tongue love whispers its secrets to its own ears. Now and now with every ear it hears the murmuring of its own tongue. In every blink of every eye it shows forth its loveliness to its own sight. At every wink here and there it reveals its existence to its own contemplation. Listen to me and I shall describe it. It speaks to me in the silence of this one, then through the words of that one speaking. It whispers to me through an eyebrow raised at the message of an eye winking. And do you know what words it breathes into my ear? It says I am love. In heaven and earth I have no place. I am the wondrous phoenix whose spore cannot be traced. With eyebrow, bow and arrow winks I hunt both worlds, and yet my weapons cannot be found. Like the sun I brighten each atom's cheek, I cannot be pinpointed, I am too manifest. I speak with every tongue, listen with all ears, but marvel at this, my ears and tongue are erased, since in all the world only I exist, above and below no likeness of me can be found. Lover and beloved are derived from love. But love upon its mighty throne is purified of all antification, and the sanctuary of its reality too holy to be touched by inwardness or outwardness. Thus, that it might manifest its perfection, a perfection identical both with its own essence and its own attributes. It showed itself to itself in the looking glass of lover and beloved. It displayed its own loveliness to its own eyes and became viewer and viewed. The names lover and beloved, the attributes of seeker and sought then appeared. When love revealed the outward to the inward, it made the lover's fame. When it embellished the inward with the outward, it made known the beloved's name. And here Iraki goes into an Atar poem. Other than that essence not one atom existed. When it manifested itself these others came to life. O thou whose outward is lover, whose inward is beloved. Who has ever seen sought become seeker? And Hiraki slips back into his own prose. By means of beloved, love became the mirror of lover, that it might study itself in that glass by means of lover. It became the mirror of beloved, that it might behold therein its names and attributes. To the eye of true witness no more than one is to be seen. But since this one face shows itself in two mirrors, each mirror will display a different face. And Iraki uses here another poem by Atar. But one face multiply the mirrors, make it many. No other shows its face, for each thing that exists is the same as the one. Come into manifestation. And throughout the divine flashes, Iraqi frequently resorts to his own poetry. In those days before he trace of the two worlds, no other yet imprinted on the tablet of existence, I, the beloved and love lived together in the corner of an uninhabited cell. But suddenly love, the unsettled, flung back the curtain from the whole show to display its perfection as the beloved before the entity of the world. And when its ray of loveliness appeared at once the world came into being, at once the world borrowed sight from love's beauty, saw the loveliness of its face, and at once went raving mad, borrowed sugar from love's lips, and tasting it at once began to speak. One needs thy light to see thee. The sun shines in the moon's mirror, but the moon contains a naught of the sun's essence. Just so in love's essence there is naught but he, nor is there aught of his essence in anything other than he. As sunlight is attributed to the moon, so is the beloved's form ascribed to the lover. But in truth, each image painted on the canvas of existence is the form of the artist himself. Eternal ocean spews forth new waves. Waves we call them, but there is only the sea. Jealous the beloved demands that the lover love but him need but him. So jealous is he all others are destroyed. He must himself act every part. Necessarily he makes himself identical with all things, for the lover, what else is left to love or to need? And no one loves so hugely as he loves himself. Know now who you are. Don't dream this thread is double ply, root and branch are but one. Look close, all is he, but he is manifest through me. All me, no doubt but through him. The sun shines and a mirror dreams itself the sun. How then should it not begin to love itself? For self love is in the nature of things, and in truth the mirror's itness is the sun itself, since manifestation belongs to it alone. The glass is but a vessel for its light. Love's sun appeared, I hid myself within it. The light you see now is my shining. It is he who loves himself in you. What else could it mean to say that none loves God but God, that none sees God but God, that none invokes God but God? Now it is clear that saying of Mustafa, O God, give me the joy of my hearing and sight. It is as if he prayed, give me enjoyment of thee, for thou art my hearing and sight, and thou art the best of inheritors. Thou remainest and the reality of my hearing and sight remain, but their form will vanish. Holy, holy veils hide his reality, so none but God knows who he is. Take what you want for God is there. Say what you will about him, for he embraces all. Pardon me this innovation revealing such secrets. Remember, he himself spoke the truth, he himself listened, he himself showed himself, he himself saw. Juniad said once for thirty years now I've been conversing with God, yet people seem to think I am talking to them. Through the ears of Moses he heard himself speak with the flame tongue of the bush. He speaks, he listens, you and I are but pretexts. In each mirror, each moment the beloved shows a different face, a different shape. Each instant reflections change to suit the mirror. Image follows image in harmony with the situation. In each mirror, each moment a new face reveals his beauty. Now he is Adam and now he appears in the robes of Eve. Thus he never twice shows the same face, never in two mirrors does one form appear. Abu Talib al Makai says he never shines through one shape twice, nor manifests as one form in two places. His loveliness owns a hundred thousand faces, gaze upon a different fair one in every atom, for he needs must show to every separate moat a different aspect of his beauty. One is the fountain head of all numbers. Each split second wells up a new perplexity. To further illustrate the perplexity, Iraqi employs a poem from Sahib ibn Abad. The glass grows clear. The wine grows clear. One resembles another, all is confused, as if there were wine and no cup or cup and no wine. The end of the affair, the lover sees the beloved as his own mirror, and himself as the mirror of the beloved. Without cease gazing into the purity of the friend's face, he sees the universe imaged in his own reality, and if he once looks back into the chamber of his heart, he finds there like a blazing sun the sweet face of his heart thief. Love courses through all things. No, it is all things. How deny it when nothing else exists? What has appeared, if not for love would not have been. All has appeared from love through love and love courses through it. No, all of it is love. Love is the lover's essence, nor could this essence cease to be. However his attachment may flit from beloved to beloved. Shift, transfer your heart where you will. Love belongs but to the first beloved. Love where you may you will have loved him. Turn your face whatever way it turns toward him, even if you know it or not. Everyone drawn to a beloved must be subject to him. All are subject to thee, but know it not. The poet means to say whether they know thee or not, all creatures of the world now and forever without end but toward thee. All love for someone else is but a whiff of thy perfume. None else can be loved. How can a beggar become a sultan? Bah, how can a fly become Solomon? How can this beggar become the Sultan when he already is the Sultan? Bizarre, bizarre and rare indeed. Since one is the same as the other, how can this become that? You fear either the veil or the lifting of the veil, but here you are safe from both, for a veil cannot be imagined save between two things, and here there can be but one. Here there can be no fear of the unveiling, which terrifies only him who dreads burning in splendor's radiance. But how can he who is flame be eaten by fire? One are Kaba and synagogue for the non existent, and for the shadow heaven and hell are one. When dawn rides forth in the wine star's light, then equal at last are the sober and the drunk. The beloved hid his face with seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, that the lover might grow used to seeing him behind the screen of creation. But when at last the sight is accustomed to this trick, and love rattles the chains of odor, then one by one with love's succor and the strength of desire, the lover may tear away those veils, the splendorous rays of majesty will sear away all fantasies of otherness, till the lover sits upon love's very throne. He will become all and what he takes he'll take with his hand from him. What he gives he'll give from him to him. Everywhere veiled by your own face, you are hidden from the world in your very manifestation. Look where I will I see your face alone. In all these idols I see only you, jealous lest you be recognized at every instant you dress your beauty in a different cloak. And we will close this reading from Iraqi's Divine Flashes with some words regarding shadows. Ah the desert is drowned in sun. No shadow could venture here for even a second. What a marvel. When the sun shines the shadow vanishes, but without sun no shadow at all. Each thing has an essence, and the shadow's essence is the object which casts it. As this object moves, so moves the shadow. While the hand moves, the shadow must follow. Since the shadow gains its substance from the hand, it has none of itself. That which derives existence from something else, how can we say it truly exists? It has a name, yes. But is not that existence which subsists through God? Well thank you. Thank you all so very much for listening to this episode of Before the Page. If you wish to reach out, go to before the page at gmail.com. It's spelled just how it sounds, before the page at gmail.com. Until the next, be blessed.