Crack the Nut

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi resided in Konya, Turkey, during the 13th century (1207-1273). His Master was Shams al-Din of Tabriz (Shams), a famous saint. Shams al-Din of Tabriz met Rumi in a startling fashion. Rumi, at the time, was a traditional mystic scholar. Shams is said to have taken Rumi’s books, a representation of his intellectual brilliance, and thrown them into a well to show him how he needed to live what he had been reading and writing. The subsequent interchanges between them sometimes lasted for hours, and sometimes, even days. Rumi’s students became jealous forcing Shams to leave. When Shams returned, the intimate hours of spiritual conversation began again. While the legend varies, it is said that Shams was murdered. Many of Rumi’s quatrains in Divan-i-Shams-i Tabriz, which were written out of love and longing for his Master, describe his inner journey, and ultimately his intimate reunion with his Master.

Rumi says:

Don’t forget the nut, being so proud of the shell,
The body has its inward ways,
the five senses. They crack open,
and the Friend is revealed.
Crack open the Friend, you become
the All-One.
_{Unseen Rain: Quatrains of Rumi}

Who would ever think that a nut is proud of its shell? And yet, we who are spiritual beings going through a human experience tend to think that we are really the shell, the covering, or the body. We are unaware of our true value, our divine heritage, our soul. We become engrossed in the body, its desires, its feeding and clothing, completely unaware of what is inside us, just as apparently the nut is unaware that its value is at its core, the nut or kernel within it and not its covering or shell.

The body has its inward ways,

As the Masters repeatedly explain, we have a way out of this material plane. There is a door, a gateway at the eye centre. This is sometimes called the tenth gate. It is possible for us to journey inward with the mind. The saints tell us that the eye centre is the seat of the mind and soul knotted together. The mind, enslaved by the senses, has been dragging the soul through the mire of Pind for many eons, but, with the help of a living Master, the mind can concentrate at the eye centre and open that inner passage to the inner planes of existence, ultimately finding its true destination at its source. We are fortunate that we are in the human form where this doorway resides, so that we can go in and find our Lord and our true home.

the five senses. They crack open,
and the Friend is revealed.

Rumi is saying in this poem that when we have complete concentration and one-pointed attention on the Master, we will find him within in his Radiant Form.

Crack open the Friend, you become
the All-One.

Just as we crack open the shell and find the nut, when we delve deeply into the Master – when, in essence, we merge into him on the spiritual planes within – we find that he is really the “All-One”, the Sat Purush, God himself.

This is the real wonder of the path, that the Word has become flesh, that God has come down to our level in human form and walks among us as a human being. It is when we find him within, however, that we discover – the saints tell us – that he is one with God. By merging into him we are merging ourselves into God, achieving God-realization, which is the highest purpose of human existence.

This is the road map of this path, the whole series of steps in a nutshell. But the journey of the soul is a long one, a difficult process, and Rumi describes it as sometimes seeming endless. The poem continues:

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings. Move within,
but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

As Baba Ji has often said, the Master is in charge of our spiritual progress. We keep asking, like the little kid in the back seat of the car on a long journey, are we there yet? Rumi says, don’t ask. Keep going, because doing our simran and our meditation is all we can do. Do it with love and devotion, do it with faith and hope, not with fear. Do it with determination until it becomes a habit; just do it. We have our simran, the five holy names, and the instructions given to us at the time of initiation. By following the Master’s instructions, we ultimately arrive at our destination, which is union with the Beloved.

The next verse describes a night of meditation that results in that inner union. The soul is being compared to a bird. Shams is said to have been known as the Winged One because of his spiritual abilities.

I circle your nest tonight,
around and around until morning

In this illustration, the nest is the eye centre, the home or roost of Rumi’s Master, Shams of Tabriz, and the circling is simran or his soul concentrated in love and devotion for his Master as he heads for the nest. Rumi knows he can find his Master when he enters the eye centre. However, it takes a very long time to concentrate the attention completely, and Rumi says his soul is circling that nest all night, “around and around until morning.”

when a breath of air says, Now,

“Air” is listed among descriptions for the Shabd or sound current in The Treasury of Mystic Terms. So Rumi is saying that the sound current, the “breath of air” itself chooses the time for this union, which the Masters say is a natural occurrence when concentration is complete. Rumi continues:

and the Friend holds up like a goblet
some anonymous skull.

For Rumi, the “Friend” is Shams al-Din of Tabriz. For us, it is our Master. It is common in Persian mystic poetry to refer to the Master as the Friend or Beloved. It is also common to describe the intoxication of divine love as wine.

In the book Sarmad: Martyr to Love Divine, there is a chapter “In the Wine Shop” that explains the allusion of Persian mystics to the image of the wine, the wine seller, and the wine shop to divine intoxication, the Master, and the eye centre:

I bid thee drink no other wine
but this, the everlasting fount:
A fortune of delight to count,
in this brief hour of the world is thine.

Give not this precious heart of thine
save to the Loved One’s lock, to bind:
Scatter not life upon the wind,
nor live one moment without wine.

In Rumi’s verse, quoted previously, he says the Friend is holding up “some anonymous skull”, like a goblet. How often have we heard that we have to give up our head, our ego, to pay the full price and enjoy union with the Beloved? Our ego, is the obstacle between us and the inner Master. We pay the full price when we merge fully into the Beloved. Here is a graphic image of Rumi, no longer conscious of himself, only experiencing his Master and about to unite with him in the intoxication of divine love. Can there be a more intimate, more compelling image of the reward for complete surrender to the Beloved?