The Light of Wisdom – From Rumi's Masnavi: The Lion and the Creatures, Part 2 of 2

“The wind’s invisible; a world without, we see. Our bodies are the waves or drops of that vast sea. Whatever means our bodies seek to grasp, anon, A billow drives it far; no sooner seen than gone. Until our hearts perceive the Giver of all good, The swiftly-flying bolt shot far from over the flood, They hold their coursers to be lost; and out of spite, They push their roadsters hastily, as thoughts invite.”

“The sense of color-seeing’s not from light distinct. So, too, the sudden rainbow of our mind’s instinct. From sunlight, and the like, all outer colors rise; The inward tints that mark our minds, from God’s sunrise. The light that lights the eye’s the light that’s in the heart. Eye’s light is but derived from what illumes that part. The light that lights the heart’s the light that comes of God, Which lies beyond the reach of sense and reason, clod!”

“Our griefs and sorrows were by God first introduced, That joy to sense apparent thence should be reduced. Occult things, thus, by converse, grow apparent, all. Since God has no converse, apparent He can’t fall. Sight first saw light, and then the colors saw. […]”

“Form and ideal, gnat and lion, word and sense, Sound of the voice and thought, learn thou by dissidence, The words and sounds take rise from exercise of thought. The sea of thought is where? Of this thou know naught.”