In this instalment Pir-o-Miurshid Inayat Khan briefly tells the story of the lover, poet and sage Surdas. The previous post is here.

With the deep sigh of the lover heaven and earth shake. His tears in the thought of the fair one turn into flowers as they touch the ground. Pain is his comrade in the heart of the night, and death is his companion through the journey of life. He plans and imagines a thousand things to tell to the beloved, of his longing, his pain, praise, and love. But when he sees the beloved he is spellbound, his tongue motionless and his lips sealed, his eyes engaged in the vision of the desired one.

Joy in the real sense of the word is known to the lover alone. The loveless know it by name, not in reality. It is like the difference between a rock and man. Man, with all life’s struggles and difficulties, would rather live as a man than become a rock, which no struggle or difficulty can ever touch. For even with struggles and difficulties the joy of living is immense. With all the pains and sorrows that the lover has to meet within love, his joy in love is unimaginable, for love is life, and its lack is death. ‘Angels would give up their free dwelling in the heavens if they knew the joy when love springs up in youth.’

There are two worthy objects of love: on the lower plane man, and on the higher God. Every person in the world first learns to love on the lower plane. As soon as the infant opens its eyes it loves whatever its eyes see, whatever seems to it beautiful. Later there comes the love for what is permanent, for what is unchanging, which leads to the ideal of God. But then the man is already fixed in such a difficult position in life that there is a struggle between the one and the other. The idol pulls from one side and the ideal draws from the other side, and it is only the rare one who rises above this difficulty.

This is explained in the life of Surdas, a very great musician and poet of India. He was deeply in love with a singer and took delight in seeing her. His fondness so increased that he could not live a single day without her. Once there was a heavy rainfall which continued for weeks and the country towns were all flooded. There was no means of getting about, the roads were impassable, but nothing would prevent Surdas from seeing his beloved at the promised time. He set out through the heavy rain, but on the way there was a river which was in flood and unfordable. There was no boat in sight. Surdas therefore jumped into the river and tried to swim. The rough waves of the river buffeted him, raised him up and threw him down as if from mountains to the abyss. Fortunately he was thrown against a corpse, of which, taking it to be a log of wood, he seized hold, and he clung to it and arrived in the end, after a great struggle, at the cottage of his beloved.

He found the doors locked. It was late at night and any noise would have roused the whole neighborhood. Therefore he tried to climb up the house and enter through the upper window. He took hold of a cobra, which seemed like a rope hanging, thinking that it had perhaps been put there on purpose for him by his beloved.

When she saw him she was amazed. She could not understand how he had managed to come, and the impression that his love made on her was greater than ever. She was as if inspired by his love. He was raised in her ideal from a man to an angel, especially when she discovered that he had taken a corpse for a log of wood and the cobra, the enemy of man, for a rope of safety. She saw how death is slain by the lover. She said to him, ‘O man, thy love is higher than the average man’s love, and if only it could be for God, the supreme Deity, how great a bliss it would be! Rise, then, above the love of form and matter, and direct thy love to the spirit of God.’ He took her advice like a simple child, and left her with heavy heart and wandered from that time onward in the forests of India.

For many years he roamed in the forests, repeating the name of the divine Beloved and seeking refuge in His arms. He visited the sacred places, the places of pilgrimage, and by chance reached the bank of a sacred river where the women of the city came every morning at sunrise to fill their pitchers with the sacred water. Surdas, sitting there in the thought of God, was struck by the beauty and charm of one among them. His heart, being a torch, did not take long to light. He followed this woman. When she entered her house she told her husband, ‘Some sage saw me at the river and has followed me to the house and he is still standing outside.’ The thoughtful husband went out immediately and saw this man with the face of a sage and spiritual dignity shed around him. He said, ‘O Maharaj, what has made thee tarry here? Is there anything that I can do for thee?’ Surdas said, ‘Who was the woman who entered this house?’ He said, ‘She is my wife, and she and I are both at the service of sages.’ Surdas said, ‘Pray ask her to come, O blessed one, that I may see her once more.’ And when she came out he looked at her once and said, ‘O Mother, pray bring me two pins.’ And when she brought them to him he bowed to her charm and beauty once more and thrust the pins into his eyes, saying, ‘O my eyes, ye will nevermore see and be tempted by earthly beauty and cast me down from heaven to earth.’

Then he was blind for the rest of his life, and his songs of the divine ideal are still alive and are sung by the God-loving people in India, and if any Hindu is blind, people call him Surdas, which he takes as a term of honor and respect.

‘Though I have loved only one, yet it is eternal,’ says Mohi. There can be love only where there is one object before us, not many. Where there are many there can be no devotion. ‘When in the place of one there are two, the peculiarity of the one is lost. It is for this reason that I did not allow the portrait of my beloved to be made.’ That one is God, the formless and even nameless, the eternal, who is with us and will remain for ever.

Love for one person, to whatever depth it may have reached, is limited. Perfection of love lies in its vastness. ‘The tendency of love is to expand, even from one atom to the whole universe, from a single earthly beloved to God.’

To be continued…