That pear tree is existence’s tree, so
While up there new things look so old below:
Once up there you’ll see bushes full of thorns
And lots of snakes and angry scorpions.
You’ll see for free when back on solid ground
A world with rose-cheeked beauties all around.
Story about that filthy-acting woman who said to her husband: ‘Those illusions appear to you from the top of the pear tree, for it shows such things to the human eye. Come down from the top of the pear tree so those illusions go away.’ And if anyone says that what that man saw was not an illusion, the answer is that it is a parable not an analogy. For a parable this amount is enough, for if he had not gone to the top of the pear tree he would never have seen those things, whether real or imaginary.
A woman sought her lover’s warm embrace3545
Before her cuckold husband’s foolish face.
She told her husband, ‘Lucky man, I’ll be
In search of fruit to pick upon that tree.’
Once she’d climbed up, she wept and kept her stare
Fixed on her husband from her perch up there,
Screaming: ‘Are you a male whore? Tell me who
Is that vile queer who has just mounted you?
Beneath you’re like a woman who is swooning.
Have you been always queer? What are you doing?’
Her husband said, ‘Your head’s afflicted! No,3550
There’s no one else in this whole field below.’
The woman asked, ‘Hiding beneath that hat,
Who is that stretched on top of you like that?’
‘Wife, come down from the tree!’ her husband said,
‘You’re acting senile and you’ve lost your head.’
Once she came down, her husband went up there.
She grabbed her lover in the open air
For an embrace. Her husband shouted, ‘Who
Is that ape-like man, whore, who’s mounting you?’
‘There’s no one else down here near to my presence.3555
Your head has been afflicted. Don’t talk nonsense!’
He then repeated to her what he’d said.
She claimed, ‘It must be that pear tree instead—
While I was perched on it, I similarly
Saw such things, cuckold, so mistakenly.
Come down to see that there is nothing here.
That pear tree makes illusions all appear.’
Joking is teaching, so pay close attention—
Don’t look at just the joke’s form of expression.
To jesters every serious thing’s hilarious,3560
But to the wise hilarious jokes are serious.
Lazy men seek the pear tree that is near;
The other pear tree’s a long way from here.
Get off the pear tree that has made you dizzy
And left your vision spinning fast and giddy.
The tree here’s self-existence’s big ‘I,’
So it distorts the vision of each eye.
Descend the pear tree, then your speech and sight
Your thought, too, will flee its distortion’s plight.
You’ll see this has become a tree of fortune,3565
With its branch reaching to the seventh heaven.
Once you descend and thus abandon it,
God, through His mercy, starts transforming it—
You’ve come down with humility, and so
True vision is what God will now bestow.
(If vision were so easy to acquire,
Why did the blest Mohammad once desire
This gift from God: ‘Show me how parts appear
To You, all parts found high and low down here’?)
Then afterwards return to that pear treē3570
Now it’s been changed, made verdant by his ‘Be! ’*
You’ve moved your load to Moses with this push,
So that tree’s similar to his burning bush.
The fire makes it become so green and lovely;
Each of its branches says, ‘I am God ’ loudly.
In its shade all your needs are met for free;
This is the working of God’s alchemy.
Your self and being are now permissible,
Since there God’s attributes are visible.
That crooked tree’s now straight and not awry;3575
It’s God-revealing, roots firm, branch to sky .*
The remainder of the story about Moses.
Through revelation a new message said:
‘Abandon crookedness, be straight * instead!’
The body’s Moses’s rod—the command
Came down to him: ‘Throw it down from your hand,
To see its merit and its mystery,
Then pick it up again by His decree.’
Before being thrown it was mere wood, and when
He picked it up it was mere wood again.
For lambs’ sakes it shook down leaves previously,3580
Then it made helpless those who wouldn’t see.
Now ruler over Pharaoh’s men instead,
It made their water blood and beat each head.
Famine and death were all their fields produced,
Due to the locusts that were introduced,
Till Moses selflessly was moved to prayer
Once he had seen the end of their affair:
‘Why all this strife? Why make them impotent?
These men will not want their own betterment.’
‘Follow Noah!’ was the Great Lord’s reply,3585
‘Don’t look just at the ends shown to your eye.
Ignore that! You’re a summoner to the way.
Deliver! * This is not in vain. Obey!
The least good in this is that your persistence
Will show their stubborn evil and resistance;
God’s guidance and His leading some astray
Will be made clear to all the sects this way.
Existence’s aim’s that it’s manifested;
By guidance and misleading, it gets tested.’
The Devil keeps misleading you and hiding;3590
The master of the path persists in guiding.
When that command for harsh ends went ahead
The Nile turned into blood, from blue to red.
The Pharaoh came himself, appearing humble,
Pleading to Moses while he was bent double:
‘Don’t do what we did, sultan! Not the same.
We won’t give an excuse. We’ve too much shame.
With every fibre I’ll accept your order.
Don’t be too hard on me; I’m used to honour.
Move your lips, trusted one, now in your mercy,3595
So they will shut my mouth which was so fiery.’
Moses said, ‘Lord, he is deceiving me,
Though I am Your deceiver actually.
Shall I heed him or give deception too,
So that branch-puller learns the root’s with you?
The root of each deception after all
Is here: all things’ roots are celestial.’
God said, ‘That cur’s not worth it. You can throw
A bone to him from distance: let him know
By shaking your rod, so the earth gives back3600
What locusts had removed and men now lack—
Those locusts will turn black immediately;
God’s power to change will then be clear to see.
For I’ve no need for means to exercise
My power; those means’ role is just to disguise,
So that the drug absorbs minds of physicians
And so astrologers look to the heavens,
And so false traders moved by greed, those who
Start trade at dawn, scared buyers might be few,
Without a wash—they don’t obey as well—3605
Craving food they become the fuel for hell.
The vulgar souls are eaten as they eat
Like lambs that graze on hay and happily bleat—
While that lamb grazes, butchers gleefully say:
“For us it grazes where it wants today”:
When you consume you do the work of hell,
Fattening yourself up for its sake so well.
Do your own work—eat wisdom’s daily bread,
So your majestic heart expands instead.
Bodily eating blocks this eating, men.3610
Soul are the merchants, bodies highwaymen.
The merchant’s candle lights up when the robber
Is burned like firewood and no more a bother.
You are that wisdom, but the rest restrain
And hide. Don’t lose yourself. Don’t strive in vain.
All lust is like hashish and wine inside,
Veiling wisdom, leaving men stupefied.
Wine’s stupor’s not the sole one of the wise;
Whatever’s lustful closes ears and eyes.
Satan did not drink wine, yet he was vile,3615
Intoxicated on pride and on denial.
The drunk is he who sees what isn’t here—
As if pure gold, copper, and iron appear.
O Moses, this talk never will dry up.
Move your lips so the plants will all rise up.’
He did this and that moment all the ground
Turned green with crops and flowers all around.
Those people then jumped on the food, for they
Had all seen famine, starving till that day.
For several days they ate till full from feasts,3620
Those close, the other humans and their beasts.
But once they’d eaten their fill, then those men,
No longer feeling need, rebelled again.
The self’s like Pharaoh—don’t give it relief
Or it will then recall its unbelief.
The self will not improve without fire’s heat:
Only once iron’s red do blacksmiths beat.
The body won’t move if not hungry, friend;
You’re beating iron that’s cold, so in the end
Its weeping and its wailing desperately3625
Do not mean it takes faith’s vow earnestly.
Like Pharaoh, during famine it has needs;
It bows its head to Moses and it pleads,
But when its needs are met, it then rebels—
The donkey shakes its load off, kicks and yells.
It soon forgets, once its condition’s better,
Its previous sighs and pleas. It won’t remember.
A man lives many years in the same town.
His eyes close once his eyelids both slide down
In sleep—he dreams about another place,3630
Forgetting his own home town’s every trace,
Though he should think, ‘I’m from here. This new city
Is not my home town, so my stay’s just temporary.’
He thinks he’s always been right there instead
As if it’s where he had been born and bred.
If the soul won’t recall its home, where it
Was born and lived, don’t be surprised one bit.
Since, just like sleep, this world will cover up,
As clouds will cover stars when you look up.
It’s stepped in many cities we could mention3635
And their dust hasn’t left from its perception,
And it’s not striven hard to fully see
What happened, for the heart’s own purity,
So that heart might stick up in view its head
To see the start and ending up ahead.
The modes and stages of the creation of Man from the beginning.
First he came to the mineral realm, and then
Moved onwards to the plant’s stage, and again
Lived at that stage till many years had passed
And he could not recall his mineral past.
Then he left that to be an animal3640
Without recalling being a plant at all,
Besides this pull towards them he can feel
In spring when herbs smell sweet, which hints it’s real,
Like what pulls babies to their mothers’ chests,
Though they don’t know why they’re drawn to those breasts,
Like what disciples feel fill up inside
Drawing them to the Sufi Master’s side.
The Universal Intellect’s the source
Of this: the shadow trails its source of course.
The shadow fades in him eventually3645
And he attains the strong pull’s mystery.
How can another branch’s shadow shake
If this tree doesn’t move. That’s a mistake.
Then the Creator leads him gradually
From animal rank to humanity.
He moves from realm to realm thus, state to state;
Now he’s intelligent, informed, and great.
His previous intellects he can’t remember
And from his present one he’ll transform further,
So he’ll escape this one that’s full of greed,3650
See many other marvellous ones, once freed.
Though, like the sleeper, he forgets his past,
That self-forgetfulness can’t surely last.
He’ll be led back to wakefulness again
And he will mock his present standing then:
‘Why did I feel great while asleep—how could
I have forgotten those states that are good?
How did I not know such grief and afflictions
Are due to sleep’s effects, its false perceptions?’
The world is like the sleeper’s dream for sure;3655
The sleeper thinks it’s real and will endure
Till death’s hour should approach him suddenly
And he’s freed from the dark and trickery.
He’ll laugh aloud at his past sorrows once
He sees his everlasting residence.
What you see while asleep, the good and wicked,
Will be made clear when you are resurrected.
What you did in this world’s sleep will be shown
At your awakening’s time, when all is known,
So you won’t reckon that the bad deed once,3660
While sleeping, won’t have any consequence.
On that day, it will turn to tears instead,
Oppressor of the captives, so feel dread!
And count as happiness when you awake
The tears and sorrow now and every ache:
You who’ve torn Joseph’s cloak will rise from sleep
As a wolf, though your slumber is now deep.
Your dispositions have turned wolf-like and
In anger they tear off your leg and hand.
After death, blood still seeks retaliation—3665
Don’t think: ‘Once dead, I’ll flee all tribulation.’
Retaliation we see here’s not serious;
Next to the one there it’s a game that’s frivolous.
God called this world ‘a game’ for these same reasons:
Its retribution’s game-like next to that one’s.
This one is used to stop war and dissension;
That one’s castration, this one’s circumcision.
Explaining that the people in hell are hungry and moan to God: ‘Make our daily portions bigger and quickly send provisions to us for we cannot endure any more.’
This discourse could continue in this way:
‘Moses, just let those donkeys graze on hay,
So they get fattened by that, then remember3670
That we have howling wolves who feel much anger:
We’re certain of our own wolves’ howls, and we
Will make those donkeys their food easily.
Your sweet-breathed alchemy desired to make
These donkeys human—that was a mistake.
You tried hard with a generous invitati
on,
But it was not these donkeys’ destined ration.
Let them be covered by the quilt of bounty,
So heedless sleep will carry them off quickly,
And when they rise from sleep another day3675
The cupbearer will then have gone away.
Their disobedience kept you in confusion,
So they’ll taste sorrow during retribution.
Our justice will in this way come to view
And give each vile and hideous thing its due,
Since that king whom they couldn’t clearly see
Was with them in their lives, though secretly.’
Wisdom oversees your own body too,
Although it’s something that you cannot view:
To its perception you are manifest;3680
It sees you still, then move, and it will test.
If the Creator of that intellect
Is also with you, why should you reject
This fact? A man acts badly, leaving wisdom
And afterwards his intellect will blame him—
You’re heedless of your intellect, but it
Did not forget you: when it blames you, it
Is present; if it were away instead,
Could it have blamed and slapped you on the head?
And if your self had really not been heedless,3685
How should you have displayed such fervent madness?
Your astrolabe’s your intellect and you:
Being’s sun’s nearness is traced by these two.
Your intellect’s too close for me to write;
It’s not in front, nor left, nor to the right.
How should the king not be near just the same,
Though mental search can’t find ways to this aim.
The movement in the finger’s not the kind
That comes from left, right, from front or behind.
In sleep and death it leaves the finger, then3690
At waking’s hour it joins with it again.
How does it reach your finger? You are clueless,
Although without it then your finger’s useless.
The pupil of your eye and light for visions—
Where is their source beyond the six directions?
Creation’s world has measurable directions;
The world of God’s command has no dimensions.
When His command’s world has no sides or border,
Then think how far beyond is the Commander!
The Knower and the wisdom were beyond it,3695
Wider than minds, more spiritual than spirit.
With Him all creatures have a real connection
And that connection is beyond description.
The Masnavi, Book Four Page 27