Tuesday, 30 December 2025

MAN OF GOD

 

                MAN OF GOD       

            The universe as we know it is the creation of God whose attributes are too many to be numbered. All men of all religions and faiths, beliefs and disbeliefs, are His children. There is , however,  a difference between men and men.. Some men get absorbed in the temptations of the world and forget  God most of the time.

            Man is never a self-ruler. He is never independent of God’s assistance. In sickness and misfortune, he has to direct his mind towards God for necessary help to regain normalcy. Those men who are devoted to God are substantially men of God and have specific qualities.

            Quoted below is a  bunch of poetic lines in which the Persian mystic and  poet Jalal al- Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273) says that a man who transcends discursive knowledge and attains to Divine knowledge is the ‘Man of God,’ and the perfect man. Such a man assimilates God himself but does not lose his own individuality.

            The English version the of Persian lines that follow is by the writer and translator R.A.Nicholson (1868-1945).

“The man of God is drunken without wine,

The man  of God is full without meet     

The man of God is distraught and bewildered,

The man of God has no food or sleep.

The man of God is a king ‘neath dervish cloak,

The man of God is a treasure in a ruin.

The man of God is not of air and earth,

The man of God is not of fire and water.

The man of God is a boundless sea,

The man of God rains pearls without a cloud.

The man of God hath hundred moons and skies,

The man of God hath hundred suns.

The man of God is made wise by the Truth,

The man of God is not learned from book.

The man of God is beyond infidelity and religion.

To the man of God right and wrong are alike.

The man of God has ridden away from from Not-being.

The man of God is gloriously attended.

The man of God is concealed, Shamsi Din,

The man of God do thou seek and find.

                      -------

Note: Shamsi means “of the sun, sunny, or solar”. The friend of Rumi was also called Shams.

                                                *******

G.R.Kanwal

30 December 2025

No comments:

Post a Comment