The Book of Mirdad - A collection of wonderful excerpts

Below I give you the excerpts I liked the most, from a man who saw life after lifting and tearing down all its veils..

Mikha'il Na'ima (also spelled Mikhail Naimy: born in 1889 in Mount Sannine in modern day Lebanon, died, 1988) was a Lebanese author.

After graduation he moved to New York, where along with Khalil Gibran and eight other writers he formed a movement for the rebirth of Arabic literature, the New York Pen League. He was the Vice President and Khalil Gibran was President. In 1932, having lived in the States for 21 years, he returned to Baskinta, where he lived for the rest of his life. He died of pneumonia at the age of 98 on March 1, 1988 in East Beirut.

Among his best known books is the Book of Mirdad, a mystical text first published in Lebanon in 1948, which was translated into English and published in London in 1962. The mystic Osho had this to say about The Book of Mirdad: "There are millions of books in the world, but The Book of Mirdad stands out far above any book in existence." And that's why I keep getting closer to the book for I have heard the same from Osho's discourses all the time..

Osho says, "It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book - and mind my words, I am not saying 'the man who wrote this book', nobody wrote this book - was an unknown, a nobody. And because he was not a novelist, he never wrote again; just that single book contains his whole experience. The name of the man was Mikhail Naimy."

1. Less possessing - less possessed.
   More possessing - more possessed.
   More possessed - less assessed.
   Less possessed - more assessed.
2. The truly high is ever low.
   The truly swift is ever slow.
   The highly sensitive is numb.
   The highly eloquent is dumb.
   The ebb and flow are but one tide.
   The guideless has the surest guide.
   The very great is very small, and he has all who gives his all.
3. Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled. Nor ask of things to break their seals. Unseal yourselves, and all will be unsealed.
4. In this unequal fight Man tears his flesh in shreds, and spills his blood in streams. While God, the Father-Mother, lovingly looks on. For He knows well that Man is tearing but the heavy veils, and spilling but the bitter gall that blind him to his oneness with the One.
5. Beware, therefore, of fences. You but fence in Deception and fence out the Truth. And when you turn about to see yourselves within the fence, you find you face to face with Death which is Deception by another name.
6. Except it loose itself, it cannot find itself. Except it die and vanish as a cloud, it cannot find the ocean in itself which is its only self.
   A God-bearing cloud is Man. Save he be emptied of himself, he cannot find himself. Ah, the joy of being empty!
7. Aye, the head is master of the belly. But no less is the belly master of the head.
8. Nothing can serve sve it be served by serving. And nothing can be served except it serve the serving.
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I am still reading the book... :D
Loving it.