Non-being is the mirror of Absolute Being.
There, the radiance of Reality is reflected
And grasps its reflection in a second.
Unity is manifest in plurality
Just as, when you count one, it becomes many.
All numbers begin by one,
Yet you can never find their end.
Since Non-being is pure in itself
It is in it that the “hidden treasure” is reflected.
Read the Hadith “1 was a hidden treasure”
So you can enter this boundless mystery.
Non-being is the mirror; the world is the reflection,
Man the reflected eye of the Invisible Person.
You are this reflected eye; He is the light of the eye.
And in this eye, His eye sees His own eye.
The world is a man and a man is a world.
When you dive into the abyss of this mystery
You are at once the seer; the eye that sees, and what is seen.
The sacred tradition has affirmed it
And demonstrated it “without eyes or ear"-
Know, then, the entire universe is a mirror.
In each atom nest a hundred flaming suns:
Cleave the heart of single drop of water-
A hundred pure oceans will gush out.
Examine a single grain of dust —
A thousand Adams will arise.
In its limbs, a fly is like an elephant;
In its qualities, a drop of rain is like the Nile.
The entire universe is hidden
In the heart of a millet grain;
The heart of a barleycorn
1s richer than a hundred harvests.
In the wing of a fly
Streams the ocean of Life;
In the pupil of the eye
An endless heaven opens.
However tiny the grain of the heart may be,
The Lord of all the world has made his dwelling there.
There the two worlds have been made one:
The Tempter manifests God's terrible majesty,
And Adam His divine beauty.
Contemplate the world as it is,
Angels interweave with devils, Satan with Gabriel,
Everything is assembled like a seed and its fruit —
The unbeliever with the believer; the loyal with the disloyal.
Everything is united on the diamond-point of the present —
The cycles and seasons, the day, the month, the year;
The world without beginning and the world without end.
The mission of Jesus coincides with the creation of Adam:
From each point of this always-revolving circle
Thousands of forms are born.
In its turning, every point is
Sometimes a center, sometimes a circumference.
If you were to remove one atom from its place,
The entire universe would crumble in ruin.
The All is a vertiginous whirlwind, yet no part of it
Find itself beyond the limits of contingency,
For Emanation keeps everything in dependence.
Everything is desperate
From being separated from the All;
Everything travels ceaselessly and yet stays in its place;
Everything is always in movement and yet always at peace —
Never beginning, and never ending.
Everything knows its essence and this is why
Everything is always racing toward the Throne.
Under the veil of every atom is hidden
The ravishing beauty of the face of the Beloved!
Perfume of the desert : inspirations from Sufi wisdom
