Chapter III: The Teaching of the "lawá'ih."

The _Lawá'ih_, or "Flashes of Light," is a theological treatise based on Súfíism, and is a book of immense importance to the student of Mysticism. It will afford him a very interesting and striking parallel to Neo-Platonism (Plotinus in particular), and also to some of the Buddhistic teachings. As I have treated the subject of Súfíism, or Persian Mysticism, elsewhere,[2] I need add but few words to this particular volume of Súfí lore.

The keynote to the _Lawá'ih_ is to be found in Jámí's preface. He describes the work as "Explanatory of the intuitions and verities displayed on the pages of the hearts and minds of men of insight and divine knowledge." After a request to his readers to refrain from "cavilling and animadversion," he continues, this time in verse:

Believe me, I am naught--yea, less than naught.
By naught and less than naught what can be taught?

I tell the mysteries of truth, but know
Naught save the telling to this task I brought.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
With men of light I sought these pearls to string,
The drift of mystics' sayings forth to bring.

The _Lawá'ih_, expounds some very beautiful and very ennobling truths. In "Flash II." Jámí pleads for the love of One and the abandonment of all little earthly loves that distract the attention of the lover for his Beloved--precisely the same theme as that expressed in _Salámán and Absál_. The poet loudly condemns "Hell-born vanity" and the accumulation of worldly wisdom, even all learning except "The lore of God." It would be a strange theme for a poet to so persistently choose were not Jámí a mystic. With the "Inner light" of the true mystic he sets aside the things of the world as being unsatisfactory. He does not, however, merely pull down the fading, ever vanishing vanities of the world, but with the strong clear voice of the poet-prophet, he sings:

The fleeting phantoms you admire to-day
Will soon at Heaven's behest be swept away.
O give your heart to Him who never fails,
Who, ever with you, and will ever stay.

Jámí advocates, as others have done before him, the destruction of self in order to gain knowledge of Very Being, "Until He mingles Himself with thy soul, and thine own individual existence passes out of thy sight." The poet also discusses the question of matter being _maya_-- I delusion, the ceaseless round of "Accidents," the I ever coming and vanishing media for the revelations of the Beloved.

The _Lawá'ih_ should be studied in conjunction with Mahmud Shabistari's _Gulshan-i-Raz_[3] or "The Mystic Rose Garden." The main teaching of both these books is that the indwelling of God I in the soul can only take place when that soul realises that self is a delusion, that things of this I world are but phantom-pictures coming and going, as it were, upon the surface of a mirror:

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.[4]

The phenomenal world to the Súfí was nothing more than an ever-recurring process of genesis and end: union with the Divine, annihilation of that process. The _Lawá'ih_ is deeply spiritual throughout, and full of an almost pathetic pity for those who delight in worldly pleasures and find no joy in contemplating Union with the Beloved.

Jámí, after having spent considerable care on his _Lawá'ih_, and after his reader has made a strenuous effort to catch a momentary glimpse of his visionary meaning, concludes:

Jámí, leave polishing of phrases, cease
Writing and chanting fables, hold thy peace;
Dream not that "Truth" can be revealed by words:
From this fond dream, O dreamer, find release!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
How long wilt thou keep clanging like a bell?
Thou'lt never come to hold the pearl of "Truth"
Till thou art made all ear, as is the shell.

And here we see the great mystical poet sitting, like a little child listening to a tale that is told, quelled into reverential silence by the greatness of the theme. It is in silence, in the quiet places of our hearts, rather than on the housetops of much controversy, that we can hear the sweet call of the Beloved and forget the clanging of the world in the Great Peace which He alone can give.