QUESTION V.

395 Who then is he who attains to the secret of unity?
Who is the understanding one that is a knower?*

ANSWER V.

That man attains to the secret of unity
Who is not detained at the stages on the road.
But the knower is he that knows Very Being,
He that witnesses Absolute Being.*
He recognises no being but Very Being,
And being such as his own he gambles clean away.
Your being is naught but thorns and weeds,*
Cast it all clean away from you.
400 Go sweep out the chamber of your heart,
Make it ready to be the dwelling-place of the Beloved.
When you depart out, He will enter in,
In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauty.
The man who is loved for his ‘pious works,*
Whom the pains of ‘negation’* purify as a room that is swept,
He finds an abode in a ‘laudable station,’
He finds a portion in ‘what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.’*
But while the stain of his own being remains on him,
The knowledge of the knower assumes not the form of experience.*
405 Until you cast away obstacles from before you,
The light enters not the chamber of your heart.
As there are four obstacles in this world,
So also the modes of purification from them are four:*
First, purification from filthiness of the flesh;
Second, from sin and evil “whispers of the tempter;”*
The third is the purification from bad habits,
Which make men as beasts of the field;
The fourth is the purification of the secret,*
For at this point the pilgrim's journeyings cease.
410 Whoso is cleansed with these purifications,
Verily he is fit to commune with God.
Until you utterly gamble away yourself,*
How can your prayer be true prayer?*
When your essence is pure from all stain,*
Then it is that your prayers are ‘a joy of the eyes,’*
There remains then no distinction,
Knower and known are one and the same.