Away with accidents and false appearance,
Thou must be essence all, and colourless.
And again,—
Man! wouldst thou look on God, in heaven or while yet here,
Thy heart must first of all become a mirror clear.[[193]]
Jelaleddin Rumi describes the emancipation of the soul from intellectual distinctions—the laws of finite thought, the fluctuations of hope and fear, the consciousness of personality,—under the image of night. This has been the favourite and appropriate symbol of all the family of mystics, from Dionysius, with his ‘Divine Darkness,’ to John of the Cross, in his De Nocte Obscurâ, and on to Novalis, in his Hymnen an die Nacht. In the following vigorous passage, Night is equivalent to the state of self-abandonment and self-transcendence:—
Every night God frees the host of spirits—
Makes them clear as tablets smooth and spotless—
Frees them every night from fleshy prison.
Then the soul is neither slave nor master,