(Western Australia, 2007)


Guidebook for the Sleeping

Only the king can renounce a kingdom
Only a beggar can renounce his cloak
Therefore, you must seek that which is not lost or gained,
But hidden in each joke

From the lips of the enlightened,
From the echoes of their mind
Come sweeping ways that frighten.

Like a barreling train the brain reacts to love
It casts mirrors upon itself to see scarred diamonds
Hiding in the rough, hiding in the rough

Like a fever, new waves spark psychic functions
The soul emerges swiftly, yet still ragged and human.

When the Friends share their wine, I still seem blind
To their thieving late nights on my doorstep.
We are sleeping upon a much busier street,
One wide enough for the hustle and bustle of love,
Blazing down each highway of the universe

People who do not feel the movement of love in life are broken
People who rise with its heat evolve into dancing bibles
Jesus was spinning words into a guidebook for the sleeping
He built an army for the soul to fight the root of weeping

In the space of a Master, words dissolve all meaning,
Time breaks down, and love shatters all sense of being

One who has not penetrated their mind cannot penetrate anything
Therefore they grow mute from the heat of the Master

When this level speaks, it reaches many planes
So do not confuse your evolution with two brains.
Absorb the scent of love and it will stain with time
Just as sadness soaks our veins in this age of crime

Yet, the wisest step beyond
This cliff of life and death,
They see past its pretensions.

The universe reveals itself infinitely,
But we have yet to find that out.
We are the sleeping, who wonder:

        "How is it with this love,
        I see your world and not you?"
            - Rumi 

There is no greater power than love. All strength comes with the awakening of love in the heart. ... If there is any protecting influence in the world, it is no other than love. In all aspects of life, wherever we find protection, its motive is always love, and no one can have trust in any protection, however great, except the protection that love offers. If a giant were to frighten a child, the child would say, 'I will tell my mother.' The strength and power of any man is too small in comparison with love's protection which the mother affords her child. Love can heal better than anything in the world.


Behind all this world of various names and forms there is one life, there is one spirit. This spirit which is the soul of all beings is attracted towards unity, and it is the absence of this spirit which keeps the world unhappy. To a person who has just had some unpleasantness with his brother or sister, his food is tasteless, the night without sleep, the heart restless, the soul under a cloud. This shows that we do not necessarily live on food; our soul lives on love, the love that we receive and the love that we give. The absence of this is our unhappiness, and the presence of it is all we need.


True life cannot be ours until unity is achieved. It is the work of religion to promote the spirit of unity, in the knowledge and love of God to whom all devotion belongs. Man often seeks for psychic, occult, and magnetic powers. This is not the purpose of religion; these developments come of themselves. Where there is life and love, there is magnetism; love itself is the healing power and the remedy for all pain.


The dark clouds brought romance between Thee, my Beloved, and me.


- Hazrat Inayat Khan, Bowl of Saki for October 15