The Rose Garden of Secrets

The Gift
The That Moon
Whose face shone like the sun
Seeing I had cast all hope away
Filled a goblet of Divine Knowledge
And, passing to me, bade me drink
Saying, ‘With this wine
Tasteless and odourless
Wash away the writing
On the tablet of thy being.’

Intoxicated from the pure draught
Which I had drained to the dregs
In the bared dust I fell.
Since then, I know not if I exist or not,
But I am not sober
Neither am I ill or drunken.
Sometimes like His eye, I am full of joy
Or like his curly beard, I am waving;
Sometimes, Alas! From habit of nature
I am lying on a dust heap.
Sometimes at a glance from Him,
I am back in the Rose Garden.
_{M. Shabistari, The Rose Garden of Secrets, translated by F. Lederer}

Spirituality cannot be described in words. However, metaphors, symbols and visual images can reach or touch us in a way that day-to-day language can’t. The poem on the opposite page was written as part of a spiritual thesis by a Persian Sufi, Shabistari, in the thirteenth century. As will be explained, Shabistari’s poem uses particular Sufi metaphors, such as ‘wine’, the ‘wine seller’ and the ‘rose garden’ to convey the experience of discipleship, which is as relevant today as it was when it was first written.

Shabistari begins by referring to the beauty of the essential nature of the Master’s moon-like being:

The That Moon whose face
Shone like the sun

He is “that” moon, the one and only, the incomparable one “whose face shone like the sun.” In the first couplet, Shabistari describes how his Master affected his life, an experience many of us can relate to. When we first came to the path, the Master appeared in our lives like a shining light, lifting us from the gloominess of the world and dispersing the darkness of ignorance. We may recall that sense of discovery, of finding something that had been lost to us for aeons.

The first couplet also uncovers another truth. ‘Thatness’ can be seen as a reference to the Lord’s eternal mercy, which he shows by sending his sons and daughters into the world to retrieve those souls who wish to return home. These perfect Masters come to connect our soul to the Lord through the sound current or Shabd. We come to understand that the Lord’s mercy is not a one-off event, fixed with the arrival of a particular mystic, but constant, with Masters coming and going like waves surging back and forth through eternity.

The Master’s face shines like the sun. He is both a particle of the Lord and the Lord himself – the source of life as is our sun in the sky. This is the God-man, the being who is both fully human and fully Lord – a tremendous paradox which we find impossible to grasp. However, as humans we have the opportunity to merge with the Lord, and it is in merging with him that our humanity is fully realized.

In the poem, the disciple has been earnestly seeking the Lord but, not finding him, has eventually “cast all hope away”. He has few options left. He might try to live by a stoical sense of duty; he might become clinically depressed; or he might live by the code ‘eat, drink and be merry’, burying the soul’s stifled longings in activities which provide distraction. At this point, however, when the disciple was desperate in his search for the Lord, the Master entered his life and:

Filled a goblet of Divine Knowledge
And, passing to me, bade me drink

This image of a friend pouring a drink at a companionable table reminds us of the personal nature of the guru-disciple relationship. The Master is both universal and personal, so our experiences as initiates are both universal and personal.

The goblet that has been filled and passed to the disciple – and by extension to us – symbolizes the gift of Nam. This is the gift to which the writer refers in the title. Nam is our opportunity to begin the journey back to the Lord, and to do so we must contact the Shabd and “wash away the writing on the tablet of [our] being”. This is a very beautiful expression of the dynamic activity of the Shabd, which Shabistari refers to as wine. Our minds have been shaped by millions of experiences over countless lives. The faculty holding this bundle together is the ego. If we are to become one with the Lord, the ego, the untrue bit of us, has to go.

Actually, the word ‘ego’ doesn’t really do justice to the power of ahankar, this sense of I-ness and mine-ness. Rumi called the ego ‘the commanding self’, which describes the belief of the ego that it is the doer. Maharaj Charan Singh referred to the ego as “the veil of darkness” that stands between us and the Lord and which can only be removed when the mind attaches itself to the inner Shabd.

The next stanza describes the ecstasy experienced by the disciple as a result of drinking the nectar in the goblet:

Intoxicated from the pure draught
Which I had drained to the dregs
In the bared dust I fell.
Since then, I know not if I exist or not,
But I am not sober
Neither am I ill or drunken.

The disciple has performed his spiritual practice with such diligence that he is experiencing what Maharaj Charan Singh called the “unalloyed bliss” of the Shabd. The power of this is such that the disciple has lost all sense of his own identity; in effect, he is going through the process of self-annihilation. Despite his progress, the disciple has not reached the end point of his spiritual journey and, so is subject to swings of emotion and difficulties along the way:

Sometimes, like His eye, I am full of joy
Or like His curly beard, I am waving;
Sometimes, Alas, From habit of nature
I am lying on a dust heap.

The disciple’s moods can be understood in terms of his relationship with his Master. Sometimes he is in a joyous state because even though he is physically and, as yet, spiritually separate from the Master, he takes joy in his yearning to be reunited. This state is, however, new to him, and he hasn’t developed the capacity to sustain it. Hence, old habits take over, his attention becomes scattered and he experiences a different type of separation from that of yearning. Now he is feeling isolated from his Master, perhaps even detached. Yet he finds this very state of detachment unsettling. He knows that without the Master prominent in his life, he is reduced to “lying on a dust heap”.

This is the universal experience of all disciples. Maharaj Charan Singh confirmed that we go through many phases in our meditation, including the vacuum periods when we feel dry and uninterested. The ups and downs will continue until we are fully merged with the Shabd through concentrated practice. This is why it is so important to make simran and meditation a habit so that eventually the habit will become stronger than the distractions and we will be able to sit regardless of how we are feeling. Maharaj Sawan Singh used to say, “If you can’t bring your success to me, bring your failures.”

As Maharaj Charan Singh explained in Die to Live:

Assure me that you have at least been giving your time to meditation. Whether you have achieved any results or not is a different question, but you bring me at least your failures, because that means you have been attempting to meditate, you have been doing your best.

Our precious time is something we can give to our Master. If he becomes, through meditation, the “still point of our turning world” then, as the poet writes:

Sometimes at a glance from Him,
I am back in the Rose Garden.

The glance could be outward, from the physical form of the Master, or it could come from within, stimulating a sense of renewed effort and zeal in our spiritual practice. Whichever form it takes, the effect is blissful. In the poem, a glance from his Master takes the disciple back to the Rose Garden. In Sufi literature, this symbolizes a perfect state of consciousness. The disciple has returned home. The poem began with reference to the separation between the disciple and the Master, conveyed in part by reference to the beauty of his physical form, “The That Moon”. It ends with their union in the Rose Garden.

It is impossible to praise the Supreme Lord adequately. The perfect Master is his manifestation and it is therefore also impossible to give him praise that is his due. He is like the Lord, beyond the reach of thought and imagination. Logic and reasoning are cripples. They are powerless to approach him. He cannot be seen, heard or described. Book after book can be written and the whole of one’s life may be spent in writing, but still one would not be able to pen down even one letter relating to his personality.

  You are beyond inference, imagination,
  probabilities or intellect.
  You are beyond what I have seen, heard or read.
  The book has finished and life has drawn to a close.
  We are still only at the first letter.
_{Maharaj Sawan Singh, Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. V}