The Wise Man and the Serpent

By Abdal Hakim Jackson | 2026-01-13T19:10:59.791349+00:00 | Topic: Iman

A Spiritual Discourse on Rumi's Masnawi

Opening Supplications

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى أَكْرَمِ الْأَنْبِيَاءِ وَالْمُرْسَلِينَ سَيِّدِنَا وَمَوْلَانَا وَحَبِيبِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ

وَعَلَى سَلَارِمَا حَضْرَتِي فَخْرٍ عَالَمْ مُحَمَّدٌ مُصْطَفَى صَلَوَاتٌ

Introduction

Inshallah, in this blessed place in Trebiz in Germany, we are going to be honored with the opportunity to dip into the ocean of the Masnawi, this great darya, this great extraordinary effusion of the soul of someone who is so closely linked to the inward as well as the outward greatness of Hazrati Fakhri Alam Sayyidina Muhammad (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) who is Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, and to attempt a brief dars of the Masnawi Sharif inshallah.

We will be looking at one of his well-known stories which is a story that, even though it comes to us from a distant century and a distant place, is something that cuts to the heart of what every one of us is about as a human being. We will see its relevance in due season, and this is from the second volume of the Masnawi, lines 1878 onwards to the end of the section.

The Story of the Wise Man and the Serpent

This is the story of the man, the noble man, the amir who saw somebody into whose mouth a snake had slid, and we will see the symbolism of this as we go along.

Bismillah - an intelligent man, a person of aql was riding along on a horse when he saw a snake going into the mouth of a man who was asleep. In some versions of the story, some of the commentaries, the man is asleep by the roadside underneath a tree and he sees this dreadful sight. The rider, the one who was on the horse, saw this terrible thing - the snake going into the man's mouth - and made haste to try and stop the snake doing it, but he didn't have a chance, he didn't have the fursat to do so, he was just too late.

Since he was well supplied with intelligence and intellect, he took out his stick, his mace, and struck the guy who was sleeping several times. So he's not able to move the snake, but he starts hitting the sleeper and the guy wakes up. He's being beaten by this stick by this soldier, this officer, and he's driven away and he finds a place underneath a tree. So he's chasing him and he's underneath the tree.

A lot of apples had dropped from the tree and were rotting, and he tells the man into whose belly the snake has gone: "You who are in the grip of pain, start eating these apples!" And he stuffs the man with apples. He pushes these rotten apples into the poor man's mouth, so many that they start to come out again and the man starts crying.

The man is starting to cry and to sob and saying, "I've not done anything wrong to you. You've not suffered any injury at my hands, so why are you doing this? Why have you pounced on me and woken me up with your unpleasant military stick and you're forcing me to eat these rotten apples? If you have some kind of - if you've got a bone to pick with me - if you've really got it in for me, some kind of ancient feud and challenge, then just take out your sword and stab me and shed my blood, just do away with me. How inauspicious, how ill-omened was that time when you first saw me. Happy certainly is that person who's never seen your face! I've done nothing, I have no guilt, no sin. I've not done anything good or anything outrageous. Even the people who have no belief would not regard this as being ethical or decent behavior."

"O Allah, O God, I beseech you - blood is pouring out of my mouth together with my words. O Allah, O God, I beseech you, give this man, this wicked soldier the retribution, give him his punishment!"

So every moment he's coming up with some new curse. He's completely outraged, being chased round and round the tree by this strange soldier who's hitting him and forcing him to eat these rotten apples, and he's cursing him.

The rider continues to beat him and says, "Keep running around in this field!" With the rider who is as quick as the wind and with the blows of the mace following him, he kept on running - he had no choice. And sometimes he'd stumble and fall down on his face. He was full of apples now and getting exhausted, and his whole body and his feet and his face became covered with a hundred thousand wounds.

For the rest of the day until the sunset, the rider keeps on chasing him round and round the tree, forcing him to eat these apples, until at last he starts to vomit and he throws it up. So all of the things that he'd been eating - all of the good things and the bad things - came up from him. He vomited it up, and at the end of it, of course, the snake comes out along with everything else that he's been eating.

The Symbolism: The Snake as the Lower Self

So that's the beginning of the story. As so often, Mevlana Rumi likes to hold our attention with humor, with a joke. It's an inherently absurd situation - there's this innocent guy wakes up because somebody has stopped and starts beating him up and forces him to eat these rotten apples, and at last the snake emerges.

So what is the symbolism here? Well, as you've probably guessed, the symbolism here is that the snake, the mar, is the ego, the lower self, and nafs al-ammāra bi'l-su' (النَّفْسُ الْأَمَّارَةُ بِالسُّوءِ)

Now the snake is a symbol that's used in Mevlana Rumi for that aspect of the lower self which is deceitful and sneaky and plays games. It's not really there in our Quranic account of the fall - it's not the snake that causes Eve to tempt Adam - but still, the snake is a symbol of the human possibilities that are represented in the self through animals, and others would be donkeys, lions, goats and so forth. There are certain animal qualities that are exemplified in animals that we find represented in our literature as particular virtues or vices or human types, personalities.

So the snake is one of the lowest because, of course, of all the creatures, the one that stays closest to the ard, to the dunya. It kind of slithers along. It doesn't have any possibility to rise above the ground and it wriggles, it squirms. It doesn't have any istiqamat or going straight.

The Quranic Reference to Human Nobility

One of the ways in which Mevlana develops this image is that when you see the snake that's within you - this black snake which is your lower possibility, the envy, the biliousness, the cruelty, the selfishness, the appetite - that part of you, the dark part, the part that stays close to the ground, the worst thing you can do when you've detected such an animal, such a reptile within yourself, is to feed it.

So often we find the image of one giving a snake milk to drink. This is quite common in the Masnawi and the Divan, and he says beware of feeding the lower self because if you do so then it might grow, and the snake when it becomes larger can turn into something like a dragon, ajdeha. It's as if the snake which is a kind of junior dragon, and when the dragon is there, there's very little that can be done and you're just completely in the grip of a nafs al-ammara and you're a kind of hard-hearted gangster egotist CEO who makes his money from asset stripping, torturer, whatever it might be.

Those lower Pharaonic possibilities within us are due to the fact that instead of trying to deal with the snake within, we've been nourishing it. And instead of doing so, we need to be starving it, not giving it what it wants. What it wants is to be gratified. Each time you say no to one of the ego's impulses, it becomes hungrier, it becomes weaker. Each time you say yes to one of the ego's impulses, it becomes a little bit stronger, a little bit bolder, and next time it's going to be harder for you to deal with it.

So that's the image that he's using, and Mevlana quite frequently talks about this snake that we have within us. In a famous series of verses where he really talks about the meaning of the nobility of Bani Adam, Allah says:

وَلَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِي آدَمَ

(Quran 17:70)

"And indeed We have honored the descendants of Adam" - Quran 17:70

Mevlana says yes, through the ruh that is within us, but the clay also contains that dunyawi possibility. This is the hadina who are nejdane - "we've guided him to the two paths" - as well as the angelic, there is the demonic. Human beings are uniquely amongst the orders of creation caught between those two possibilities.

So sometimes he uses images such as human beings are half honeybee and half snake. That is diagnosis of the human condition. We have the capacity to be diligent and to gain sweetness from creation and to produce nutrients to creation. We also have the possibility to be poisonous and to be base and to be slimy base entities in creation.

This is the line somewhere else in the book:

لَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِي آدَمَ نِيمْ زَنْبُورُ نِیمْ مَارُ شَدْ أَصْل

"We have enabled the descendants of Adam - half became honeybee, half became snake"

The Capacity for Free Will and Choice

And actually some kind of free will is important for Mevlana - this capacity that we have, however illusory, however theologically difficult, however nowadays scientifically difficult it might be. We do have this capacity to choose, and it is in this that our nobility consists - the fact that we are half of us is zanburi asal (the honeybee) and the other half is the maar (the snake).

We actually have the possibility of changing that balance. We have both within us, but because of this ennobling whose original sign is:

وَتَلَقَّى آدَمُ مِن رَّبِّهِ كَلِمَاتٍ فَتَابَ عَلَيْهِ

(Quran 2:37)

"And Adam received from his Lord [some] words, and He accepted his repentance" - Quran 2:37

We have the capacity through this mysterious, paradoxical, impossible thing called free will (ikhtiar) to discipline the snake, to starve it, and to nourish the honeybee so that that becomes our basic identity, so that that becomes our basic identity and is habitually what we are.

Because our definition of akhlaq (khuluq in the singular) is an established condition in the self from which noble actions proceed without any need for forethought. If you think before acting virtuously, you're not virtuous. It's only spontaneous virtuous actions that consist in which virtue consists.

So if you're going to be instinctively a person who always reaches for what's good in each situation, who always sees the best in every individual, who always detects the fragrance in any corner of God's earth rather than following the lower snake-like part of us which always looks for what is dark, what is disagreeable, what sheds negative light on other people and their intentions, then you become a honeybee. And just like the miracle of the bee that produces sweetness from just flowers and the earth of creation, you too can bring about this miraculous transformation.

The Fish Metaphor: Return to the Ocean

So yeah, another image that Mevlana uses is we are half snake, and he also uses the image of the mahi, the fish. He says human beings are like fish. This is a useful image, and what he means is that we have a natural abode a natural abode really is the ocean, and the ocean in Mevlana is always an image of the limitlessness of the divine mercy. That's our natural habitat. Taken out of it, we don't really flourish.

And the fish has in its deepest instinct and nature the desire to return to the water. Take a fish out of water and all it can think about - it's craving to return to the water. And thus is it with human beings. Take us away from what is holy, what is beautiful, what is virtuous, what is in line with the true nature of things, and we kind of flap about and gasp for breath and behave in a generally disagreeable way.

Why is it that we have those bad akhlaq? It is nothing other than the fish slapping itself around, damaging itself, damaging others even, because its sole thought is to get back into the ocean. That's why the fish does that. That's why human beings behave badly - because they're away from the ocean of holiness, they're away from the world of purity and the abode where there's no dimension (bilamikon), and therefore we behave in this strange and aberrant and unnatural way.

So fish is another nice image that Mevlana uses. So in some of his prose works, for instance the Fihi Ma Fihi, Mevlana says man is a mixture - like his recipe is that there is passion, shahwa within him, there's also aql, and this is usually translated as intellect, but in Mevlana aql means something a bit more than our contemporary understanding of intellect, which basically just means cerebral capacity. It means the ability to be wise and to detect the existence of the true nature of things and to find the golden mean and the true just balance in everything. It doesn't just mean the mind is some kind of computer.

So he goes on to say: he is half angel and half beast, half snake and half fish. His fish pulls him always towards the water, and his snake pulls him towards the dry land, because the snake doesn't deal with the water. And if you throw the snake into the water, that's not its natural habitat - that's where the snake will start thrashing around and will drown pretty quickly. The snake exists for the dry land and the fish exists for the water. We have both of those possibilities within us.

So whenever there is any disturbance within the human soul, whatever its outward explanation or manifestation it might be, it's because of this inner battle - the lower part of us saying, "Let's slither around on the dry land," and the higher part of us saying, "Hey guys, let's go back to the ocean," which is actually our true homeland.

The Ocean as Divine Source

The ocean is the original divine source, the context of the Rosy Ellast - the day of "Am I not your lord?" And the ocean is, again this is so common in Rumi, where you find treasures, because we look at the ocean, we see the surface, and if you're not a creature that dwells in the ocean and has experience of being in the ocean, you'll think, "Well, it's just ripples on the surface and not so interesting." But beneath the surface there are so many wonders - there are pearls and there is coral and there are amazingly beautiful things to be seen.

And thus is the true world, the real world, which normally we don't see beyond the surface of things. We are, even though we think we see things in three dimensions, in fact we only see as far as the surface of things. We don't see the metaphysics behind the metaphysics, but an infinitesimal distance behind the surface of things there is the true world, there is the malakut, there is the world of ma'ana,

The Ocean of Muhammad

So the ocean is the ocean of Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم), the ocean of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), the ocean of haqiqa, the ocean of the reality of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), the ocean of the reality of the human being, the ocean of the reality of the cosmos, the ocean of the reality of the divine names, the ocean of the reality of the divine attributes, the ocean of the reality of the divine essence.

So the ocean is the ocean of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), and the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is the ocean.

So the ocean is the ocean of the

There is no guarantee in studying kalam and tafsir and hadith and fiqh and aqidah and all of those things that you won't still be a donkey at the end of it. And actually, if you are a donkey who knows all of that stuff, you're much more dangerous, because people will assume that you're practicing those things and it's turned you into a donkey, and there's a lot of this in the world today. People are looking at the Muslim world, Muslim communities, and seeing this, that, and the other, and say, "Oh, it's because of all of that religious stuff they're doing!" That's very dangerous.

So that's why the Quran warns us against being like the community which had leaders that were like donkeys carrying scrolls. That's really a catastrophe.

And Imam Ghazali in his Kitab Dhamm al-Ghurur specifically warns us against the ulama - the ulama who are outwardly meticulous and punctilious in following their religion but actually full of rivalries, narrow-mindedness, suspiciousness, attacking, attacking, attacking, criticizing, criticizing, criticizing, which is all from the raw'anat in nafs, not from a genuine zeal for Allah's religion, but because of an insecurity, anger, envy, resentment that just makes them hypercritical.

The sign of the true scholar in the time of difficulty is that he tries to make things easy for people and he makes allowances for everybody, to the extent of what's a possible interpretation in some view of sharia. The sign of the scholar who is not responding with this spiritual wisdom to the crisis of the age and is still a donkey is that he's always looking for new things to forbid. Even though people are weak, he wants to find more things to forbid them, and that's a sign that the donkey is prevailing, because there's no wisdom there, there's no mercy, no compassion. The intellect's eye is not open. The donkey's eye is looking at everybody and just sees the people in the majlis, and all that it sees - that's wrong, that's wrong, she's wrong! That's the donkey.

And unfortunately, this is something that is common, and Mevlana, who had his own problems with some donkeys amongst the ulama of his day - most of the ulama of Konya loved him, of course he was the Friday imam of the Ala ad-Din mosque - but some of them weren't really happy with his kind of ecstatic and rather radical critique of a certain type of formulaic religion.

So here's this - this is an explanation of some external mainly kalam scholars. "I get he knows the attributes of every substance" - this kind of kalam differentiation - "but when he tries to explain his own substance, he's a donkey." He says, "I know everything that the sharia allows and disallows, but how is it, a woman ajuz, that you don't know whether you yourself are halal or haram?" He's got so many fatwas about this and that and the other being lawful or unlawful. He doesn't know whether he himself is halal or haram. "You know the value of everything in the market except your own value, and that's idiocy."

The essence of all religious knowledge is this - it all boils down to one thing: to know who you are going to be on the day of judgment. Ultimately it's about the self. It's not about your judgments of other people that it's going to be effective. Allah is the best of judges. He's not going to consult you at the judgment seat. It's between Allah and each individual soul. So pay attention to yourself, judge yourself, sort yourself out, because you are the one who is accountable for yourself to Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala, and the others will have their own separate reckoning.

So yes, lots of stuff about donkeys. He talks about the donkey of Jesus, for instance, that some people see Sayyidina Isa, Jesusalayhi salam, upon him be peace, with his donkey, and they're more interested in the noise and the apparent physical usefulness of the donkey than they are interested in Sayyidina Isa. They listen to the donkey's braying just because it's louder, and they're not listening to his sweet discourse. So that's another human aberration, and it is human nature, and we can't deny it.

If you open up a television nowadays at random, 999 times out of a thousand it's going to be something that caters to the kind of donkey within us, whether it be reality TV or stupid advertising or inappropriate images or whatever it is. It's the donkey that is what they're advertising for, and maybe once occasionally you'll see something that is about a higher possibility and dignity and sacrifice and charity, but not so often.

So let's not be complacent. The advertising people have done their research, and they know what we like, okay?

The Divine Pursuit and Human Response

So we get back to the Masnawi text. The donkey runs away from its master because it's just a stupid donkey. It doesn't know that it belongs to the master. The master is going to feed it, and the owner runs after the donkey because the owner wants to look after the donkey. And this is similar to the relationship between human beings and their creator. We run away from him because we're really stupid and we want to follow our egos. Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala is pursuing us not because he needs us, but because of his rahma. He seeks him not because he's going to profit from him or lose from him, but because he wants to look after him. In other words, he's afraid that a wolf or some other wild beast is going to rip him apart. That's why the owner wants to reclaim possession of the donkey.

"Whoever sees your face, the donkey owner is happy, felicitous. Whoever comes to your abode comes to your abode suddenly will be a person who rejoices."

So now he's speaking to the army officer who's been beating him up, and he's praising him: "O you whom the pure spirit has praised, how many stupid things I was saying back to you!" This is what human beings do when they complain about a teacher, whether it be a child complaining about the school teacher or a spiritual seeker doesn't really understand the nature of his guide and thinks that things are a bit rough or difficult, or the guide hasn't understood properly, or the human being protesting about aspects of God's religion or protesting about duties that he has to perform, or protesting about the weather, or protesting about any other misfortune that might befall him in this world.

That is the donkey complaining to the donkey owner on the basis of a misunderstanding of what the donkey owner intends. That, unfortunately, is the case of those who are not in the true sense in Islam - complete submission to their lord. That's how we as stupid donkeys should be when we return to our merciful lord rather than running away when the lord is trying to look after us, saying, "We don't want those apples, stop hitting us!" The reality is that the lord has a wisdom which we haven't understood.

The Importance of Love for the Teacher

So love for the teacher - love for the teacher is important, not just recognition that the teacher is a teacher, but love for the teacher, and this is an ongoing sunnah, and it is an essential part of our way in Islam. Because to follow the teacher is to follow the one who is following one who is following one (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam) who is following the founder.

In so far as he is a legitimate teacher, he is in the footsteps of the chosen one (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam). So something of the beauty of the Mustafa alayhi salallahu alayhi wa sallam, something of his authority, something of the prophetic charisma, something of the majesty of the holy prophet, something of the wisdom of the prophet with his sahaba ridwanallahi alayhim, has been inherited down the years to the present day and is there in the one who is sitting on the minbar, the one who is sitting in the place of authority and teaching, even if it be only fragmentary.

The prophetic light is so great that just experiencing some tiny spark or fraction of that is more important than anything else and is sufficient inshallah to illuminate your life. So that is why it is not just a question of obeying the teacher and accepting that the teacher sometimes is going to beat you when you don't do your homework, but actually loving the teacher, because what service could be greater than to cause somebody to vomit up a snake?

Well, the only service that is greater than that is to find somebody who can encourage one to get rid of one's lower self - the lower possibilities, the donkey, the snake, the scorpion, all of that. That's what we all desire in our happiest moments - the time when the spirit is at peace, not moments of agitated sensual happiness, but times of real serenity and reconnection with what we really are. That sa'ada, that happiness, only comes about because we are in a state of detachment from the lower self. We've said no to the cravings, we've turned off the devices, we've started to tune into and log on to the needs of others.

We start to go through the streets instead of instinctively noting the faults of others - "I wouldn't wear that, I wouldn't have bought that, that child looks ugly," whatever it is that the lower self, the donkey craves - instead to see the best in other people. "That child is beautiful, that person is modestly dressed, that person is being helpful," whatever it is. To scan, to use that radar so that the eye of the aql, the chashm-i aql is active, and to see the world in a different way.

It's the same old world with plenty of shadows, but to see it in that way - always to see the best in others - is part of this way which Mawlana is reminding us is the way of the Chosen One, because it's part of husn az-zann, having a good opinion and looking for Allah's signs.

One of the meanings of the commandment to look at Allah's signs and to look for Allah's signs, which is a fundamental commandment of the Holy Quran, is that in every situation you look to see where those signs might be. In other words, you see the best in every situation, you see what is holy in every situation. You don't look at a particular image in the world or listen to a particular sound or smell something, or whatever the sense experience might be, in order to see what in it is distant from the Lord, to see the shadows. No, you want to see the signs, and that is a key to faith. That is a way to enhancing one's inward life.

To the extent that we see Allah's signs, faith is increased. Allah says this in Al Imran:

إِنَّ فِي خَلْقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَٱخْتِلَٰفِ ٱلَّيْلِ وَٱلنَّهَارِ لَـَٔايَٰتٍ لِّأُو۟لِي ٱلْأَلْبَٰبِ

(Quran 3:190)

"Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding" - Quran 3:190

"In the way the heavens and the earth are created and the succession of night and day are signs for people of understanding."

So to the extent that we see those signs - not just the outward two-dimensional surface of the things, but our inner wisdom can intuit the meaning of those signs - even if we couldn't put it into words, we see the sunset or some other stereotypical wonder of nature and something happens within us. Maybe we could write a poem about it, but it probably wouldn't do justice to the magnificence of the moment.

That those situations are the forms of nourishment that cause the self to stop to be itself and to return to its true nature, and that is where the fish resumes its life in the sea and realizes that it was in the sea all along, because any idea that you could actually be out of the totality of the haqq is a kind of misunderstanding. Everything but distance is just a kind of human point of view, a subjective thought.

Qurb is the reality. Allah describes himself as Al-Qarib in the Quran, but never as Al-Ba'id. There are so many other oppositions - Al-Qabid, Al-Basit, Al-Rafi, Al-Khafid - many of the divine names are in pairs, but not this one, where he says:

وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ

(Quran 2:186)

"And when My servants ask you concerning Me - indeed I am near" - Quran 2:186

"When my slaves ask about me, say I am near." Not once in the Quran, "I am distant." He is not distant. He is closer to us than the jugular vein, but we are something else. We are distant, and that's as a result of our to open this donkey eye and not to see things with the true eye - the eye of the heart, which is that with which we were born.

So the love for the one who teaches us to open that eye so we can see everything in terms of whatever is most beautiful in a given situation - how wonderful that would be!

The Mystery of Divine Guidance

So we have this idea of this teacher who can be a surprise, because we don't really know ourselves and what's wrong with ourselves. The most mysterious thing we ever encounter is the self. We think we understand other people, but the self is weird. So probably we haven't understood other people. So on what basis do we judge them? Well, we do it anyway, but the self, this low mysterious thing with the snakes and the scorpions and the higher possibilities, the honey bee, is so mysterious that any successful treatment of it is also likely to be mysterious.

And that's why the believer, when he sees or she sees misfortunes in creation, says, "Maybe this is the blow of mercy. Maybe the sickness, this bereavement, this financial loss, is there because I need to have a particular snake ejected. I may not understand how that's happening. Maybe it's just a punishment." Allah will give us protection from Allah's punishment, but let us assume that the divine physician has not lost sight of us and our needs, and therefore every misfortune that we encounter we ought to be experiencing as and interpreting as a sign of the divine mercy - the blow that brings us to our knees.

Very often a real tawbah, which turns out to be the most precious and luminous moment in people's lives, is caused by some disaster - some traffic accident, some bereavement, some cancer diagnosis - immediately thumps that person into waking up, and it turns into a thumping that succeeded where nothing else could have succeeded.

So this is essential that we love these guides, and there's a hadith in which the Holy Prophet is reminding us of the importance of the guides, who are the heirs to the prophets, where he talks about the hadith that says that my Ummah is like Noah's Ark. And so he has this to say:

"I and my companions are like Noah's Ark. Whoever boards it or clings to it will find a spiritual opening. When you are with a spiritual teacher, you are very far from ugliness. Night and day you will travel in a ship protected by the spirit of that captain who is a bestower of spirits. You sleep in the ship and you still move on. Do not violate the commandments of the prophet of your time. Do not rely on your own abilities and your own chosen path. Even if you are a lion, if you travel the path without a guide, you will just be somebody who sees himself astray and ultimately disgraceful. Be careful, fly only with the wings of the guide, then you will see how his armies come to your assistance."

And the example of Al-Khidr is one case that the ulama will give. Khidr's instructions to Musa seemed strange to Sayyidina Musa alayhi salam, but there was a hidden wisdom that Musa, despite his prophetic perfection and his possession of the tablets of the law, had yet to discover.

The Alchemy of Souls

And so it is, for instance, with that extraordinary alchemy of souls that we find between Mevlana and Shams Tabriz, because if the strangest thing in the world, and that part of the world that presents a possible opening to the world of reality and the world of spirits is within ourselves - not in the stuff of matter, which is just a solid carapace, but within ourselves, because the ruh, which is from the

Final Reflections and Lessons

So the lesson of all of this really is to remember that in whatever circumstance we might find ourselves, we are never off the hook. We can never be on holiday from this fundamental human need to get rid of the snake within - at least acknowledge that we have it, and probably not just the seven deadly sins but a whole bunch of snakes within ourselves - to be aware that we are carrying that rubbish around within us.

And as Mevlana says, to get into a spiritual zone where we are with people and truly with them - in other words, we actually recognize their value, we recognize their humanity, we recognize their needs, and we find our happiness in spotting their needs and seeing if there's anything anybody could do for those people, or if all they need is, as the Holy Prophet says, a smiling face or some kind of positive human interaction, that we give them that form of nourishment in that situation.

And places like this are always important in our civilization, in that they represent a kind of laboratory where this takes place in an intensified form, where the adab and the quality of human relations are the subject of a very fine focus at the hands of the Sheikh, at the hands of his assistants. The dervishes are on the Safinat Nuh, they're traveling together in order to experience the joy of true human fellowship.

The happiness that the Sahabah had amongst themselves was partly due to the fact that they had been liberated from the suspiciousness and the tribalism and the false divisions imposed by the Jahiliyyah and found themselves Ibadullahi Ikhwanah, as Allah's servants, as brothers, which is a wonderful experience for any human being.

So happiness is what we all seek. Let us find true happiness in Mevlana's vision of recognizing the demon within and loving those, whoever they may be - even if they're not teachers, but anybody whose presence with us gives us opportunities not just to obey the snake but to open the eye of the heart. Let's be grateful for those people, because this is a way of mu'amala. Our religion is a way of engaging with others. It's only through engaging with others that we can hope to be transformed.

If we're on our own, we're on our own but with ourselves, which is usually pretty bad company.

Closing Supplication

So may Allah subhana wa ta'ala inshallah open our hearts and open the hearts of the Ummah to this teaching and to give us something of the reality as well as the words of the Masnavi of Mevlana of Rumi, and inshallah to make us people who are devoted to the text, regularly consult it, spread it inshallah, and internalize this meaning which is that we'll only find our true happiness and sa'ada inshallah in the daareen, in the dunya and the akhirah, through this idea of looking for others, looking out for others, looking after others, and putting the self number one last.

This is the sabil al-sa'ada.

بَارَكَ اللَّهُ فِيكُمْ وَعَفَا عَنكُمْ

وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ