The Obelisk

I had come to Kufa on my way from Shiraz. There I saw a man, a mendicant on the street, sitting alone in the shade of a battered wall. His mouth was filled with rotting teeth and his eyes were white on white. He spoke, but his words were nonsense, a lunatic in conversation with his lunacy. As my shadow fell over him, he rushed forward and stood before me, barring my path. And his voice became suddenly clear and his blinded eyes fixed on me. I reached for some coins in my pocket but he grasped my arm, not allowing me to deliver them into his begging bowl. He said, “I have a riddle for you.”

I said, “What is your riddle?”

He recited these words:

She knows without knowledge. Unknown, she is knowing.
She speaks without language. Unspoken, she sings.
She moves without motion. She soars above knowledge.
Who is she?

Assuming this was more madness, I answered, “I don’t know.”

He said, “Know yourself as you are. What is the obelisk of self?

“You possess body and form. This is the foundation.

“You possess sense awareness, which is the sensual appetite and reflex. This is the column.

“You possess subterranean consciousness, which feeds upon sense, but is the gibbering, wordless, unknowing source of emotion. This is the topmost pyramid.

“You possess apparent consciousness, which are the thoughts you think at any moment. Here you will find the self you imagine yourself to be. This is the topmost stone.

“But above this is hyperborean consciousness, unknown from moment to moment. She is the crown of self, she is the simurgh atop the obelisk. She is glimpsed in dream and vision. She is epiphany. She is the blinding light on the road to Damascus. She is the vision of Gabriel to Ahmad. She is the atman. She is your true Self. She is not God, but a mirror of Him. She is not God, but the Soul, created in His image.

“The obelisk is her perch, her nest. From here she emerged from the egg and learns to fly. She is the way to detachment and contentment. She is the ineffable Self. And if she takes wing before the Earth reclaims the obelisk, she alights in Paradise. But if the obelisk is broken, she tumbles from its peak, she falls eternally from darkness into darkness."

When he finished speaking, he sat down again and placed his bowl beside him and took up speaking nonsense to himself where he’d left off.