“all this is reality: whence, then, comes the form?”
A form that frees you from form,
a sleeper that awakens everyone who is asleep.
...
In short, the King cherished him fondly,
and in that Sun he was melting away like the moon.
The melting away of lovers is growth:
like the moon, he has a fresh face while he is melting away.^86
Although the narrative underscores his death, it also describes the prince’s
dissolution in the divine, describing the renewed and perpetual death of divine
ecstasy.
He said,“The King beheads every one once,
I am sacrificed anew by the King at every instant.
I am poor in gold, but rich in heads:
my head has a hundred heads to take its place.”^87
After another narrative interlude, the frame story returns as the second
brother attends the funeral of the eldest alone, as the youngest brother is ill.
The King espied him, he said with a purpose,
“Who is this?–for he is of that sea, and he too is afish.”
Then the announcer said,“He is a son of the same father:
this brother is younger than that brother.”
The King greeted him affectionately, saying,“You are a keepsake”;
and by this enquiry made him too his prey.
In consequence of the kindness shown by the King,
that wretched man, roasted, found in his body a soul other than the soul.
He felt within his heart a sublime emotion
which the Sufidoes not experience during a hundredchilas.^88
Court-yard and wall and mountain woven of stone
seemed to split open before him like a laughing pomegranate.
One by one, the atoms were momently opening their doors to him, like tents, in a
hundred diverse ways.
(^86) Rumi, 1934 : 512 (4589–4592, 4596–4597). (^87) Rumi, 1934 : 512 (4602–4603).
(^88) Chilais Sufitraining in material renunciation.
The Ambivalent Image 217