The Secret Rose Garden · 14 of 18

Part XI: The Self

THE GAMBLE OF THE SELF REAL prayer can only be yours When you have staked and gambled yourself away And your essence is pure. Then "a joy of the eyes" are your prayers And no separation remains, For knower and known are one and the same.

Insight

'Real prayer can only be yours when you have staked and gambled yourself away and your essence is pure. Then a joy of the eyes are your prayers and no separation remains, for knower and known are one and the same.' This is one of Shabistarī's most precise definitions of contemplative prayer. Prayer becomes real only after the self that was praying has been gambled — risked entirely, lost. What remains prays without distance. The line 'knower and known are one and the same' is structurally identical to the Upaniṣadic 'tat tvam asi' (that thou art) and to Eckhart's 'the eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.' Three traditions, one recognition.Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8.7; Eckhart, Sermon 12; the gambling-self image is from Persian Sufi qalandar literature.

TRANSCEND SELF RISE above time and space, Pass by the world, and be to yourself your own world.

SELFLESSNESS IN the empty heart, void of self Can be heard the echoing cry, "I am the Truth." Thus is man one with the Eternal, Travelling, travel and traveller have become one.