Rumi Poem

Bismillahi 'r-rahmani 'r-raheem

Who is the Sheik?

Who is the Sheik?
The infinite elixir.Who is the Sheik?
The very sea of eternity.
Fire is always terrified by water.
When was water ever afraid of being set aflame?

Know that while the eyes of the egoless Sheik are asleep,
his heart is awake.
Our eyes are awake
while our heart is sunk in slumber;
the true, egoless Sheik's eyes are asleep
but his heart is in contemplation of the
opening of the door of divine grace.
While he dwells with us
in some place on the earth,
he is traversing over
the seventh sphere of heaven like Saturn.

Immediate intuition or intuitive knowledge in relation to the egoless Sheik
is what thought is to us.
Thought is of the past and future.
When it is emancipated from these two,
the difficulty is solved.
The spirit beholds the wine in the grape,
the spirit beholds 'thing' in "no-thing'.
It beholds every conditioned thing as unconditioned.
The spirit beholds the genuine coin
and the alloyed before it is discovered in the mine.
In hot July the egoless sees December;
in the sunbeams he see the shade.
In the heart of the grape
he sees the wine.
In his egoless state,
he sees the object.
When you see two of them meet together as friends,
they are one and at the same time
they are six hundred thousand.
Their numbers are in the likeness of waves.

An egoless Sheik is as the lion,
and people's hearts are his jungle.
Like hope and fear,
he enters into the heart
not hidden from him are the secrets of the world.

The book of the egoless Sheik
is not composed of ink and letters
it is naught
but a heart white as snow.
What is the Sheik's provision?
Footmarks.
The Sheik stalks the game like a hunter
he sees the musk-deer's track
and follows the footprints.
For a time the track of the deer
is the proper clue for him;
afterwards it is the navel
(musk-gland) of the deer that is his guide.
When he has given thanks for having
been favoured with knowledge of
the track and has traversed the way,
of necessity by means of that track
he arrives at a goal.
To go one stage
guided by the scent of the musk-gland
is better than going a hundred stages
following the track and roaming about.

The heart that is the rising-place of the moonbeams of divine light
is the opening of the doors of reality
for the egoless.
To us it is a wall,
to them it is a door.
To us a stone,
to them a pearl.
What we see plainly in the mirror
the egoless sees more than that
in a brick.

Choose an egoless Sheik
for without a him
this journey is exceeding full of woe, fear and danger.
Without an escort
you are bewildered
even on a road you have travelled many times before.
Do not then travel alone
on a Way
that you have not seen at all.
Do not turn your head
away from the guide.
Fool,
if his shadow
--protection--
be not over you,
then the cry of the ego will keep you
wandering about
with your head in a whirl.
The ego will entice you
away from the Way
and cast you into destruction.
There have been on this Way
many craftier than you
who have perished miserably.
Be not a friend to your ego
since it leads you astray
from the Way of God.
Nothing in the world will break or mortify your ego
like the egoless protection
of the Sheik.

- Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi