Iblis, leader of the people of separation, appears
The company of the radiant of heart is for a breath or two, that breath or two is the substance of being and not being;
it made love more tumultuous, and then passed, endowed reason with vision, and then passed.
I closed my eyes to hold it still within me, to transport it from my eyes to my heart.
Suddenly I saw the world had become dark, become dark from space even to spacelessness.
In that night a flame appeared from the midst of which an old man leaped forth
wrapped in a cloak of antimony grey, his body immersed in wreathing smoke.
Rumi said, ‘The Leader of the People of Separation! How all a fire, and what a cup of blood!
Ancient, seldom smiling, of few words, his eyes scanning the soul within the body,
drunkard and mullah, philosopher and Sufi, in practice like a toiling ascetic,
his nature alien to the joy of union, his asceticism the abandonment of eternal beauty;
since it was not easy to break away from beauty, he made a beginning with spurning adoration.
Gaze a little at his visitations, gaze at his difficulties, his tenacity
still absorbed in the battle of good and evil, he has seen a hundred prophets, and is an infidel yet.’
My soul in my body quivered for his agony; a sigh of anguish broke from his lips.
With eyes half closed he turned to me and said; ‘Who besides me has so gloried in action?
I have become so involved in labour that even on the sabbath I am rarely at rest,
I have no angels, no servants attending me; my revelation is without benefit of prophets.
I have brought neither Traditions nor Book; I have robbed theologians of their sweet soul.
None ever spun finer than they the thread of religion. yet in the end they left the Ka‘bah a heap of bricks.
My religion has no such foundation; in the faith of Iblis there are no schisms and sects.
Ignorant one, I have given up prostration, I have turned the organ of good and evil.
Do not take me for one who denies God’s existence; open your eyes on my inner self, overlook my exterior.
If I say, “He is not”, that would be foolishness, for when one has seen, one cannot say, “He is not”.
Under the veil of “No” I murmured “Yes”; what I have spoken is better than what I never said.
To share in the pain and suffering of Adam I did not forgo the fury of the Beloved.
Flames sprang forth from my sown field; man out of predestination achieved free will.
I displayed my own hideousness and have given you the joy of leaving or choosing.
Deliver me now from my fire; resolve, O man, the knot of my toil.
You who have fallen into my noose and given to Satan the leave to disobey,
live in the world with true manly zeal; as you pity me, live a stranger to me
proudly disregarding my sting and my honey, so that my scroll may not become blacker still.
In the world the huntsman lives on his prey; whilst you are my prey, I draw out my arrows.
He who soars aloft is secure from falling: if the quarry is cunning, the huntsman will fail.’
‘Give up this cult of separation’, I said to him. ‘The most hateful of things to God is divorce.’
He said, ‘The fire of separation is the stuff of life; how sweet the intoxication of the day of separation!
The very name of union comes not to my lips; if I seek union, neither He remains nor I.’
The word ‘union’ made him out of himself; the burning agony was renewed in his heart.
He wallowed awhile in his own fumes, he became lost again in his own fumes;
out of those fumes whirling a lament rose high; how blessed the soul that can feel anguish!