Jámí advocates, as others have done before him, the destruction of self in order to gain knowledge of Very Being, "Until He mingles Himself with thy soul, and thine own individual existence passes out of thy sight." The poet also discusses the question of matter being maya— I delusion, the ceaseless round of "Accidents," the I ever coming and vanishing media for the revelations of the Beloved.
The Lawá'ih should be studied in conjunction with Mahmud Shabistari's Gulshan-i-Raz[3] or "The Mystic Rose Garden." The main teaching of both these books is that the indwelling of God I in the soul can only take place when that soul realises that self is a delusion, that things of this I world are but phantom-pictures coming and going, as it were, upon the surface of a mirror:
Go, sweep out the chamber of your heart,
Make it ready to be the dwelling-place of the Beloved.
When you depart out, He will enter in,
In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauty.[4]
The phenomenal world to the Súfí was nothing more than an ever-recurring process of genesis and end: union with the Divine, annihilation of that process. The Lawá'ih is deeply spiritual throughout, and full of an almost pathetic pity for those who delight in worldly pleasures and find no joy in contemplating Union with the Beloved.
Jámí, after having spent considerable care on his Lawá'ih, and after his reader has made a strenuous effort to catch a momentary glimpse of his visionary meaning, concludes:
Jámí, leave polishing of phrases, cease
Writing and chanting fables, hold thy peace;
Dream not that "Truth" can be revealed by words:
From this fond dream, O dreamer, find release!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
How long wilt thou keep clanging like a bell?
Thou'lt never come to hold the pearl of "Truth"
Till thou art made all ear, as is the shell.
And here we see the great mystical poet sitting, like a little child listening to a tale that is told, quelled into reverential silence by the greatness of the theme. It is in silence, in the quiet places of our hearts, rather than on the housetops of much controversy, that we can hear the sweet call of the Beloved and forget the clanging of the world in the Great Peace which He alone can give.
IV. THE STORY OF YÚSUF AND ZULAIKHA.
Yúsuf and Zulaikha, like Salámán and Absál, belongs to the series of poems known as the Haft Aurang. Jámí heralds his poem with a good deal of laudacious singing on the Prophet, Beauty, Love, and concludes by remarking that the loves of Majnún and Laila "have had their day," and makes this excuse for weaving another love poem on another theme. But this scheme was scarcely original, Firdawsí and Ansari having previously composed poems on a similar subject. However, the tongue of the critic is surely silenced by these humble lines: