Distinguishing ego from true self

(Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi)

Man's duality

Man is called a rational animal; therefore, he is two things. What feeds his animality in this world is passion and desire; but the food for his essential part is knowledge, wisdom and the vision of God. Man's animal nature avoids the Real, and his human nature flies from this world. One of you is an unbeliever, and another of you is a believer. (Koran 64:2). There are two personae in conflict in this being. "With whom shall luck be? Whom shall fortune favor?"
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 59)

The body senses are wavering and blurry, but there is a clear fire inside, a flame like Abraham, that is Alpha and Omega. Human beings seem to be derived, evolved, from this planet, but essentially humanity is the origin of the world.

Remember this: A tiny gnat's outward form flies around and around in pain and wanting, while the gnat's inward nature includes the entire galactic whirling of the universe!
(The Essential Rumi, p. 259)

So man is in form a branch of the world, but in attribute the world's foundation. Know this! His outward is made dizzy by a gnat, but his inward encompasses the seven heavens... Whenever you come upon a form, you stop and say "I am this." By God, you are not that! How can you be that? You are that unique one, happy, beautiful, and intoxicated with yourself. You are your own bird, prey, and snare, your own seat of honor, carpet, and roof.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, pp. 64-65)

The Ego

This ego is hell, and hell is a dragon not diminished by oceans of water. It drinks down the seven seas, yet the heat of that manburner does not become less. It makes a morsel out of a world and gulps it down. Its belly keeps shouting: Is there any more?
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, pp. 89-90)

God then answers, "As I have said, your animal soul is an enemy to you and to me: take not my enemy and your enemy for your friends." (Koran 60:1)
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 63)

The True Self

Just as this brass astrolabe is a mirror of the heavens, the human being ... is an astrolabe of God. When God makes a person to know himself, through the astrolabe of that person's own being he can witness the manifestation of God and His unqualified beauty moment by moment and glimmer by glimmer. That beauty is never absent from this "mirror."
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 11)

Who knows his soul knows his Lord.
(Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 59)

Inner War

This mention of Moses has become a shackle on men's minds -- they think these stories happened long ago... Moses and Pharoah are in your own existence -- you must seek these two adversaries in yourself.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 274)

... the intellect and the ego, are very necessary for the manifestation of good and evil. Day and night in this abode of dust these two necessary beings are in war and altercation. The {ego} always desires the necessities of the household -- reputation, bread, food, and position... The ego sometimes displays humility and sometimes seeks leadership to remedy its plight.

The Intellect, indeed, knows nothing of these thoughts; its mind contains naught but longing for God.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 165)

The intellect is luminous and seeks the good. How then can the dark ego vanquish it? The ego is in its own bodily home, and your intellect is a stranger; At its doorstep, a dog is an awesome lion.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 35)

Now some men have followed the intellect to such an extent that they have become totally angels and sheer light. They are the prophets and saints...

In some men sensuality has dominated their intellects, so that they have totally assumed the properties of animals.

And some men have remained struggling. They are that group who feel inside themselves a suffering, a pain, a distress, a longing. They are not satisfied with their lives. These are the believers. The saints are waiting to bring the believers into their own houses and make them like themselves. And the satans are also waiting to drag them down toward themselves to the lowest of the low (Koran 95:5).
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 86)

The Hidden Treasure revealed

... man is the goal of creation. He has come into this world to display those Attributes of God that are reflected within himself, or in other words, to play his own part in revealing the Hidden Treasure. At the same time he is being tested: Does he remember the Covenant of Alast? Does he understand and acknowledge that he is displaying God's Treasure, not his own? The idea of the Covenant thus combines the purely metaphysical perspective of the manifestation and theophany of God's Attributes with the more religious and moral perspective of man's awareness and responsibility of his duties toward his Creator.
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, Commentary by William C. Chittick, p. 69)

He said, "I was a Hidden Treasure." Listen! Do not lose touch with your own substance, make yourself manifest!
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 48)

God tells us, "Just as I wanted to manifest My Treasure, so I wanted to manifest your ability to recognize that Treasure..."
(The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, pp. 48-49)

©1999 by Deb Platt

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