The following picture shows the old entrance to Bastam's historic complex.
Through the miracle of the virtual world and our own dreams, we can now watch this picture for a moment and then close our eyes and walk through the left passage way in this picture and stand beside one of the greatest mystics in the history of Iran and the world named Bayazid Bastami.
Bastami in Persian means from Bastam. There was a time when Bayazid was beaten and expelled from the town of Bastam for his explicit openness in expressing his mystic / sufi ideas, but today, one thousands years later, it is Bayazid's name that helps the town to survive in the hearts of all the Iranian's and many people in the world.
He is known to be the first to speak openly of the annihilation in God or the Fan Fillah, which means losing one's own identity in God. He once dropped his head down, looked at himself in a very deep mood, raised his head again and said, "I plunged into my own annihilation and rose in the eternal existance of God." He has also said, "I came out of Bayazid the way a snake leaves its slough."
Without writing a single line of official poetry, his words are among the most beautiful samples of absolute poetry in Iran. So much so that he has influenced the greatest Persian poets like Saadi and Rumi. Looking at the picture of Bayazid's resting shrine above, you can see one of the most important figures in the shaping of Saadi's character. Saadi called him, "the peacock of mystics" and Rumi has admired him throughout his poetry.
Bayazid is a mirror of beauty in the Islamic culture. Love is at the core of his ideas. Love was his whole existance. He once said, "In the deserts that I walked, love fell not rain and my feet stuck in love the way they stick in mud."
Mystics like Bayazid are a miraculous mixture of the highest pride and the most beautiful forms of humility. On one hand, they felt one with their God and on the other, they never felt they were above a single human being. About such mystics, Attar says, "It is said that whenever they looked at every human being they thought that he or she was better than them." Therefore, their pride rests in humility and their humility stands on the highest peaks of pride.
You can never imagine the name of Bayazid without enjoying his selfless devotion to his mother. He believed that he reached this unique position in sufism because of the positive prayers of his mother for him. Once in a very cold winter night, Bayazid's mother asked him for a glass of water. He raised from sweet sleep, left the house, went to the fountain, brought back the water, but when he returned to his mother's bed, he saw that his mother had fallen asleep again. Then in the morning, his mother woke up and saw Bayazid had been standing at her bed throughout the whole night holding the glass of water in his hand. She asked, "What are you doing here, my son?" He answered, "This is the glass of water that you asked me, mother. I stood beside your bed in order to give you the water the moment you wake up again." Bayazid's mother looked at the water and saw it had frozen in the cold weather while he had been holding it in his hand. She then sighed and said, "Oh God endear my son the way he endears me in this way."
This is just one of the drops of that special rain that fell from the sky above Bayazid's head on the deserts under Bayazid's feet. Just a single drop of love.
I wrote this moments before leaving on my trip to Bastam. I was terribly busy, but I really loved to take the first step with you on this trip.
Please leave a comment. Once I reach Bastam, I want to show all your comments to the people of Bastam. You just can't Imagine how the people of that tiny town in the east of Iran will feel when they see a friend from the US has paid attention to them and to their mystics. I also want to show your comments to the officials who run the Bayazid's shrine. Americans are unaware of the fact that ordinary Iranians are so thirsty to listen to the people of the US talk to them -- especially when it comes to their poets and their mystics.
Ali
