"And if, by the help of God, he findeth on this journey a trace of the traceless Friend, and inhaleth the fragrance of the long-lost Joseph from the heavenly messenger, he shall straightway step into The Valley of Love and be dissolved in the fire of love. In this city the heaven of ecstasy is upraised and the world-illuming sun of yearning shineth, and the fire of love is ablaze; and when the fire of love is ablaze, it burneth to ashes the harvest of reason.
Now is the traveler unaware of himself, and of aught besides himself. He seeth neither ignorance nor knowledge, neither doubt nor certitude; he knoweth not the morn of guidance from the night of error. He fleeth both from unbelief and faith, and deadly poison is a balm to him...
The steed of this Valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end. In this station the lover hath no thought save the Beloved, and seeketh no refuge save the Friend...
Love accepteth no existence and wisheth no life: He seeth life in death, and in shame seeketh glory. To merit the madness of love, man must abound in sanity; to merit the bonds of the Friend, he must be full of spirit...
The leviathan of love swalloweth the master of reason and destroyeth the lord of knowledge. He drinketh the seven seas, but his heart’s thirst is still unquenched, and he saith, “Is there yet any more?”
Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too;
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two. (Rumi)
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two. (Rumi)
Wherefore must the veils of the satanic self be burned away at the fire of love, that the spirit may be purified and cleansed and thus may know the station of the Lord of the Worlds..."
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3 comments:
This is where I begin to get confused.
In our search for God, should we really allow our fire of love to "burneth to ashes the harvest of reason"? This just doesn't make sense to me.
and it doesn't seem in line with something that comes later, "To merit the madness of love, man must abound in sanity; to merit the bonds of the Friend, he must be full of spirit..." because aren't sanity and reason connected?
Your explanation, Nikhil, makes sense to me in terms of the line "In this station the lover hath no thought save the Beloved, and seeketh no refuge save the Friend..."
I think that's the main idea, that we somehow reach a state where we are so burning with our love for God that that love subsumes all else.
Also, I think when he says that the fire of love "burneth to ashes the harvest of reason", he does not mean to say that this is what SHOULD happen - but rather that this is what happens in this valley of love. That often people go through a stage where they are so consumed with love/longing for God that it becomes far greater than the sense of reason in them. But this is not the end point - it is just the 2nd valley :)
This burning love, however, is important, he says, for it burns away all notion of self/ego, and puts God on the highest pedestal in the seeker's sight.
But there is probably more here that I'm missing - we should ask V about this :)
Ok, that makes much more sense... that he's not meaning to say we ought to loose all reason, but that this may be one of the valleys and not the end point, learning that balance between intense love of God and maintaining reason.
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