The world is no more than the Beloved’s single face;
In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.

Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being.
Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness.

Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just lead to trance;
Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.

Wherever the Footprint is found,
that handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.

This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love
That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.

Ghalib (1797 – 1869) was the preeminent Indian, Urdu and Persian poet during the last years of the Mughal Empire. He was a very liberal mystic who believed that “the search for God within liberated the seeker from the narrowly Orthodox Islam, encouraging the devotee to look beyond the letter of the law to its narrow essence.” His Sufi views and mysticism is greatly reflected in his poems and ghazsals.

When I browse through poetry books looking for a suitable poem(s) to present I often get sidetracked, reading one poem after the other, until an hour or more goes by. It was no different today. I swung from Rumi to Dante to Mechthid to Issa looking for the line or phrase that would stop my wandering.

Today it was the first two lines of this poem by Ghalib:

“The world is no more than the Beloved’s single face;
In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.”

Why are we here? What does it all mean? Part of the perennial questions mankind poses. In these two lines Ghalib sets forth his reply: we exist because God wants to know Its own beauty. By creating Form (the Son, the Creation), the Formless (the Father, the Creator) knows Itself.

It reminds me in a sideways sort of way of the quote,”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:26)

For God so loved what It had created that the creation was given eternal life (my explanation).

Can an infinite Creator create anything that is not infinite like Itself? Is this everlasting life a quality of all creation? Are we not made in God’s own image? If everything is a Child of God, eternal life is certain, love a fact. We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, because we are our neighbor.

This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love
That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.