The Words | 17. Word - Second Station | 235
(222-238)

Each, like Shahbaz Qalandar,11 stretches out a hundred hands to the Court of God, and assumes an imposing position of worship.

They make their small tassel-like twigs and branches dance, so both they and those that watch them express their fine pleasure and elevated delight.

They give voice as though touching the most sensitive strings and veins of the veils of love: "Ah! It is He!"

From it a meaning such as this comes to mind: they recall both the weeping caused by the pain of the fading of metaphorical loves, and a profoundly sorrowful moaning.

They make heard the melancholy songs of all lovers parted from their beloveds, like Sultan Mahmud.

They seem to have a duty of making the dead hear the pre-eternal songs and sorrowful voices, who no longer hear worldly voices and words.

The spirit understands from this that beings respond with glorification to the manifestation of the Glorious Maker's Names; they perform a graceful chant.

The heart reads the mystery of Divine unity from these trees, each like an embodied sign, from the elevated word-order of this miraculousness. That is, there is so wonderful an order, art, and wisdom in the manner of their creation, that if all the causes in existence had the power to act and choose, and they gathered together, they could not imitate them.

The soul, on seeing them, sees the whole earth as revolving in a clamorous tumult of separation, and seeks enduring pleasure. It receives the meaning: "You will find it in abandoning worship of this world."

The mind discovers from the chanting animals and trees and the vociferous plants and air, a most meaningful order of creation, embroidery of wisdom, and treasury of secrets.

The desirous soul receives such pleasure from the murmuring air and whispering leaves that it forgets all metaphorical pleasures, and through abandoning these, which endow it with life, wants to die in the pleasure of reality.

The imagination sees that appointed angels have entered these trees like bodies, from whose branches hang many flutes. It is as though an Eternal Monarch has clothed the angels in the trees for a splendid parade accompanied with the sounds of a thousand flutes. Thus the trees show themselves to be not lifeless, unconscious bodies, but highly conscious and meaningful.

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11.Shahbaz Qalandar was a famous hero who through the guidance of Shaykh Geylani took refuge at the Divine Court and rose to the degree of sainthood.

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The Words