The Way of Passion by Andrew Harvey

Author:Andrew Harvey [Harvey, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58394-812-5
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2013-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

At the end of the poem, after giving you all this information, after trying to shock you into losing, as far as you possibly can, your concepts and your sense of who you are, Rumi says, like every mystic and prophet, “What do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?” And immediately, if you’re really listening, you think, “God, what am I going to answer to this question?” On your decision depends your life, your entire mental and spiritual life. “What do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?”

What does the saint do? The saint throws him or herself into the fire and becomes a living sign of fire for the world. What does the sacred genius do, who is a saint? That sacred genius leaps into the fire, becomes a living sign of fire, and speaks and sings of the fire with the fire’s own voice. What do you have to do to get people to admit anything? You have to become the thing of which you are speaking, so that they will know that it is real, and that it is themselves. This is the madness of the life of love.

Mother Teresa isn’t sitting around saying, “Jesus is love.” She is being love, so that you can see Jesus in her. By seeing Jesus in her, you can see that Jesus is real and that Jesus does live. The Dalai Lama isn’t simply talking about enlightenment, Buddha, and compassion—he is being Buddha, enlightenment, and compassion. He is enacting these in every gesture, with every look and laugh. Rumi, the man who is asking you this question, is asking you from the place of a person who has thrown himself into the fire to become the fire. He knows that all things burn in that fire, and he is asking you not to entertain his question as an intellectual proposition, but to take it in the deepest sense as an invitation to transfiguration. He is impatient, as all the sacred ones are impatient, because they see the world burning in illusory fires and want to save everyone, out of love and compassion, from burning in them.

What do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?

Admit it and change everything!

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