When the student is ready the teacher will appear. –Buddha
The following tale comes to us in the parable form. The dervish who related it in the marketplace of Peshawar in the early 1950s warned: ‘Do not take the moral: concentrate upon the early part of the story. It tells you about method.’ The story is found in ‘Tales of the Dervishes’ which is a collection of teaching stories of the Sufi Masters over the past thousand years and it is edited by Indries Shah. I will quote the story as offered to us by Indries Shah; he titles the story ‘The Golden Fortune.’
Once upon a time there was a merchant named Abdul Malik. He was known as the Good Man of Khorasan, because from his immense fortune he used to give to charity and hold feasts for the poor.
But one day it occurred to him that he was simply giving away some of what he had; and that the pleasure which he obtained through his generosity was far in excess of what it really cost him to sacrifice that was after all such a small portion of his wealth. As soon as this thought entered his mind, he decided to give away every penny for the good of mankind. And so he did.
No sooner had he divested himself of all his possessions, resigned to face whatever events life might have in store for him, Abdul Malik saw, during his meditation-hour, a strange figure seem to rise from the floor of his room. A man was taking shape before his very eyes, dressed in the patchwork robe of the mysterious dervish.
‘O Abdul Malik, generous man of Khorasan!’ intoned the apparition. ‘I am your real self, which has now become almost real to you because you have done something really charitable measured against which your previous record of goodness is as nothing. Because of this, and because you were able to part with your fortune without feeling personal satisfaction, I am rewarding you from the real source of reward.
‘In future, I will appear before you in this way every day. You will strike me; and I will turn into gold. You will be able to take from this golden image as much as you wish. Do not fear that you will harm me, because whatever you take will be replaced from the source of all endowments.’
So saying, he disappeared.
The very next morning a friend named Bay-Akal was sitting with Abdul Malik when the dervish spectre began to manifest itself. Abdul Malik struck it with a stick, and the figure fell to the ground, transformed into gold. He took part of it for himself and gave some of the gold to his guest.
Now Bay-Akal, not knowing what had gone before, started to think how he could perform a similar wonder. He knew that dervishes had strange powers and concluded that it was necessary only to beat them to obtain gold.
So he arranged for a feast to be held to which every dervish who heard of it could come and eat his fill. When they had all eaten well, Bay-Akal took up an iron bar and thrashed every dervish within reach until they lay battered and broken on the ground.
Those dervishes who were unharmed seized Bay-Akal and took him to the judge. They stated their case and produced the wounded dervishes as evidence. Bay-Akal related what happened at Abdul Malik’s house and explained his reasons for trying to reproduce the trick.
Abdul Malik was called, and on the way to the court his golden self whispered to him what to say.
‘May it please the court,’ he said, ‘this man seems to me to be insane, or to be trying to cover up some penchant for assaulting people without cause. I do know him, but this story does not correspond with my own experiences in my house.’
Bay-Akal was therefore placed for a time in a lunatic asylum, until he became more calm. The dervishes recovered almost at once, through some science known to themselves. And nobody believed that such an astonishing thing as a man who becomes a golden statue – and daily at that – could ever take place.
For many another year, until he was gathered to his forefathers, Abdul Malik continued to break the image which was himself, and to distribute its treasure, which was himself, to those whom he could not help in any other way.
What is the treasure that is ‘myself’ that I am called to ‘distribute’ to others? What is the treasure that is ‘myself’ that will be renewed only if I ‘distribute’ it to others? What of myself do I need to empty in order to become aware of my ‘golden self’? Do I have the faith and the courage to empty myself and do I have the faith and trust that when I do so my ‘golden self’ will be revealed to me?
As I was editing this post I thought of three questions that my friend George sent me. These questions appeared to him in a dream. Here are George’s three questions:
Is it necessary? Is it beautiful? Does it serve other people?
Searcher-Seeker 