Journeys and Star Gazing

The following quote comes from ” The Conference of the Birds”   a beautiful Sufi Persian Book of Poems written in 1177 by  Farid ud – Din Attar.

During the 1970’s it was adapted into a play by Peter Brook and  Jean-Claude Carriere which Brook took on a tour through parts of wild Africa and performed in the streets and later to Western audiences in New York, Paris and in Sydney. I was lucky at the time because I was living in Sydney and saw it. The play communicated at a very subliminal level in that it didn’t really matter if you understood rationally what the actors were saying because the “meaning” was transmitted almost viscerally through the movements and the sounds that emanated from the stage.

The devil’s secret:

       God said to Moses once:  “Go out and find                        

       The secret truth that haunts the devil’s mind,”

       When Moses met the devil that same day

       He asked for his advice and heard him say:

       “Remember this, repeat it constantly,

       Don’t speak of ‘me’, or you will be like me.”

       If life still holds you by a single hair,

       The end of  all your toil will be despair;

       No matter how you prosper, there will rise

       Before your face a hundred smirking “I”s.

                              The Conference of the Birds 

“Manteq at-Ṭayr” (“Conference of the Birds”)