Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan now recounts an Indian tale about the fairy Sabzpari and her human lover Gulfam. The previous post in the series is here.

Love lies in service. Only that which is done, not for fame or name, nor for the appreciation or thanks of those for whom it is done, is love’s service.

The lover shows kindness and beneficence to the beloved. He does whatever he can for the beloved in the way of help, service, sacrifice, kindness, or rescue, and hides it from the world and even from the beloved. If the beloved does anything for him he exaggerates it, idealizes it, makes it into a mountain from a molehill. He takes poison from the hands of the beloved as sugar, and love’s pain in the wound of his heart is his only joy. By magnifying and idealizing whatever the beloved does for him and by diminishing and forgetting whatever he himself does for the beloved, he first develops his own gratitude, which creates all goodness in his life.

Patience, sacrifice, resignation, strength, and steadfastness are needed in love, and ultimately nothing but hope, until one is united with the beloved. Sacrifice is needed in love to give all there is: wealth, possessions, body, heart, and soul. There remains no ‘I’, only ‘you’, until the ‘you’ becomes the ‘I’. Where there is love there is patience, where there is no patience there is no love. The lover takes hope as the extract of love’s religion, for hope is the only thing that keeps the flame of life alight. Hope to the lover is the rope of safety in the sea. ‘Brahma collected honey from all things in life, and it was hope.’

Separation is needed according to nature’s law, although it is most painful. Where there are two hearts that are united in love, separation awaits them. Separation must be accepted. A Persian poet says, ‘If I had known what pain separation gives in love I would never have allowed the light of love to be kindled in my heart.’ God is jealous, as the Japanese say, of any other besides Himself. Whoever it may be that you love, it is this spirit of God in nature that separates sooner or later.

This idea is symbolically expressed in an Indian story called Indra Sabha.

A fairy, Sabzpari, who was one of the dancers of the court of Indra, the King of Heaven, was attracted by Prince Gulfam, a man on earth, while she was flying over his palace. Her servant, the black Deva, carried Gulfam at her desire from earth to heaven. Gulfam was at first most unhappy in the strange place, but then the love of Sabzpari attracted him so much that he lived in her love. Sabzpari had to be at the court of Indra every night to dance and entertain him, and as, in the love of Gulfam, she was absent a few times, everyone at the court wondered why she was not there. But her going every night to the court of Indra made Gulfam suspect that perhaps there might be someone else who was entertained by Sabzpari’s charms. He asked her about this many times, and every time she refused to tell him, until he became vexed and Sabzpari thought she could not hide it from him any longer. On hearing her explanation Gulfam requested her to take him to the court of Indra. She said, ‘No man has ever been there, no man can ever go there, and if Indra should see thee it will at once end our sweet days of love and happiness. We shall surely be separated, and I know not what he will not do to thee.’

Gulfam said, ‘No. It is a woman’s tale. Thou art perhaps in love with some Deva, and wishest to hide it by telling me a story.’ She was most unhappy, finding herself in a helpless situation. Under the spell of the agony that his arrowlike words had produced in her heart she consented, without thinking, to take Gulfam to the court of Indra, saying to herself, ‘What will be, will be.’

Sabzpari took him to the court, hiding him behind the folds of her garment and wings which spread about her. The red Deva sensed the presence of a man in the court, and, looking all around, he found that Sabzpari was dancing most skillfully before Indra, hiding Gulfam behind her. He humbly brought him before Indra, the Lord of the Heavens, who was sitting on a throne with a glass of wine in his hand, his eyes red with the wine and his high being full of glory and grandeur. When Indra saw that a man had been brought into the apex of the heavens he rose in great wrath and said to Sabzpari, ‘O shameless one, how darest thou bring a man into the summit of the heavens, where no earthly creature has ever been allowed to come?’ The red Deva said, ‘It is her love for this earthly creature, my Lord, that has turned her faithless to the heavenly crown and made her fail in her duty at the supreme court of your Majesty.’

Sabzpari said to Gulfam, ‘Seest thou, my darling beloved, what has befallen us through thy insistence?’ Indra said, ‘Separate them at once, that they may no more speak a word to one another. Throw him back into the depths of the earth, and tear her wings off and keep her captive until the love of Gulfam is wiped from her heart. Then purify the polluted one from the five elements. Then only can she come again, if she be allowed by our favor, forgiveness, and mercy.’

To be continued…