Describing the Indescribable
I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty and wish to see you with a hundred eyes. My heart has burned with passion and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold. I am ashamed to call this love human and afraid of God to call it divine. Your fragrant breath like the morning breeze has come to the stillness of the garden. You have breathed new life into me. I have become your sunshine and also your shadow. My soul is screaming in ecstasy. Every fibre of my being is in love with you. Your effulgence has lit a fire in my heart and you have made radiant for me the earth and sky.
The Love Poems of Rumi, translated by D. Chopra
These lines from the Persian mystic Jalal ud-din Rumi, attempting to describe the inner beauty of his own Master, serve to remind us of our immediate goal: to come face to face with our Master inside. Maharaj Sawan Singh talks about this experience in Philosophy of the Masters Vol I, and refers to Hafiz’s similar attempts to describe the radiance of the inner Master:
We are wonder-struck to hear descriptions of the beautiful physical form of the Master, but if we manifest him within, we will find him a thousandfold more beautiful. Hafiz, addressing the Lord, says:
O Beloved, I have heard many a tale
about your wondrous beauty;
But now that I have beheld you within, I see that you are really
a thousand times more wonderful than the tales depict you.…
Hafiz has attempted to portray this inner vision, but how can one describe what is indescribable? He says:
The whole night his refulgence filled my heart with light.
What a bold thief he is to come in the darkness,
But with what an aura of radiance he comes!
The mystic poetry of Hafiz and Rumi is nothing more than an attempt to describe the indescribable.
Rumi attempts to describe the greatness of his Master, Shams-e-Tabriz, in the following words:
O infinite love, O divine manifestation, you are both stay and refuge; an epithet equal to you have not heard. We are iron filings and your love is the magnet; you are the source of all questing.… Be silent, brother, dismiss learning and culture …
Mystical Poems of Rumi 2, translated by A. J. Arberry
Note how Rumi puts learning and culture into perspective. In this world they are held in high esteem, but for a seeker on the spiritual path they are in fact obstacles. The problem with adding more and more to our store of knowledge and experience is that the eventual, inevitable taking away of all these additions becomes greater and greater as well. The trick is not to become attached to all this learning.
The Master tells us that we spend too much of our time on trivial things. If we examine our actions in any 24-hour period, it will look like an exercise in futility. We should know better than to waste our time in this way. If someone is ignorant of the true purpose of life, you can hardly blame him for leading a life of futility, but we have no such excuse, because for us the Master has lifted the veil.
Yet we act on a daily basis as if nothing has happened to reveal to us the truth of our existence. Part of this is to do with completing our karma – unless we act from ignorance we would not do certain things that we have to do in order to complete our karmic interaction with other people. Nevertheless, we should endeavour to become ever more conscious, through meditation and living at the eye centre, so that even while acting out our karmas we can be an observer as well as an actor.
Those around us can of course misunderstand this distancing of ourselves from everyday events, and we can be accused of making light of a serious situation, or even of not being happy enough when everyone around us is shrieking with delight. Emotionally jumping up and down in ecstasy or distress is how most people react to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ news, but we, with time, can learn to see this so-called good and bad as just ‘what is’ – or, if we’ve really grasped the truth, God’s will, or the Lord’s grace. How could it be otherwise?
There is no doubt about it: it is not easy to live in this world. This is something that Rumi well understood:
The world was no festival for me; I beheld its ugliness, that [pallid] wanton puts rouge on her face.…
Unlucky and heavy of soul is he who seeks fortune from her.
… Come to our aid, Beloved, amongst the heavy-hearted, you who brought us into this wheel out of non-existence.
Mystical Poems of Rumi 2, translated by A. J. Arberry
He makes the point that the world appears attractive only through the deceptive effects of superficial cosmetics, but without the Master’s help our mind cannot see through these charms. We are functioning on the mind’s autopilot, which repeatedly pulls us back to the creation. The Master has shown us how to flick the switch over to give control instead to the soul, which takes us to the eye centre and beyond at every opportunity. So are we going to flick that switch and enjoy the bliss of the inner worlds, or are we going to be satisfied with the thrills and spills of the material world? It’s our choice.
The Masters refer to the ‘mistakes’ we make, the bad judgement calls, rather than to ‘sin’. There is more or less a constant struggle with one or more of our five enemies – lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego. But for a satsangi, the only real ‘sin’ is what Maharaj Charan Singh, quoting Jesus Christ, referred to as sinning against the Holy Ghost – turning your back on meditation. He even said that this would not be forgiven.
This is very serious: the all-forgiving Lord is displeased when we turn our face away from him. “But I don’t turn my face away from him!” we cry. Don’t we? Aren’t we generally facing away from him and just occasionally turning towards him when it suits us, when we cannot cope with life? If that is what it takes for him to get our attention, he may shower us with crises. Better to remember him at all times, for without meditation we are up the creek without a paddle. Meditation is actually the paddle that propels us towards our goal, steering us around – or maybe through – obstacles.
Difficulties will not disappear but they will become bearable when we remember the Lord and our purpose here. Rumi says:
Every day I bear a burden, and I bear this calamity for a purpose: I bear the discomfort of cold and December’s snow in hope of spring…. I bear the arrogance of every stonehearted stranger for the sake of a friend, of one long-suffering; For the sake of his ruby I dig out mountain and mine; for the sake of that rose-laden one I endure a thorn. For the sake of those two intoxicating eyes of his, like the intoxicated I endure crop sickness.
Mystical Poems of Rumi 2, translated by A.J. Arberry
Elsewhere he says:
Rise, lovers, that we may go towards heaven; we have seen this world, so let us go to that world. No, no, for though these two gardens are beautiful and fair, let us pass beyond these two, and go to that Gardener.… Let us journey from this street of mourning to the wedding feast, let us go from this saffron face to the face of the Judas tree blossom.… There is no escape from pain, since we are in exile.… It is a road full of tribulation, but love is the guide, giving us instruction how we should go thereon.
Mystical Poems of Rumi 2, translated by A. J. Arberry
He says that we have seen all that this world has to offer and found it wanting, so let us set out for the inner world. The gardens are indeed beautiful, but let us go to be with the Creator (the Gardener), not the creation. This world is a place of death and sorrow, so he urges us to go to the realms of pure joy. In this world, pain and suffering are inevitable, but fortunately we have a spiritual guide who counsels us every step of the way.
We have been told it is our expectations that cause us pain and suffering. At the highest level, the path of Sant Mat is the journey of the soul from the darkness of illusion to the brightness of reunion with the Lord. At a more mundane level there is another journey: the journey of the mind from high expectations to low expectations and, finally, no expectations.
We are also told that we should reflect rather than react – we should not over-react to negative or positive stimuli but just keep our equanimity.
Maharaj Charan Singh writes in Quest for Light:
Nobody ever does us any good or bad thing, nor can any person offer us insult or bestow honour on us. The Master moves the strings from inside and makes people behave towards us according to our karmas. All insults or loving attention come to us as a result of our own actions – sometimes from a previous life and sometimes from the present life. So do not take too much to heart the behaviour of other people towards you.
He continues:
Cease from men and look above thee. Love the Lord … let not your pleasure and worry depend on the attitude of others.
Inevitably, he finishes with the words, “Attend to your meditation regularly.”
Life may be extremely demanding and challenging at times but, thank God, like Hafiz, we have a Master to accompany us on life’s journey. Hafiz says:
When the face of God appears before your eye,
Then you may be sure that you have true vision.
In Search of Hafiz, translated by A. J. Alston
Ultimately, we do not need to attempt to describe the indescribable. All we need to do is what our Master has asked us to do: our meditation. When a satsangi once asked a friend who had recently attended a satsang with the Master what had been said, the reply was simply: “He said to meditate!” Although it is indescribable, it is achievable.