Prov 27 19 As the face of water to face, so the heart of man to man.

as water reflects a face, so one’s heart is reflected by the other

I read in the past about a letter of Michelangelo in which he tried to describe to one of his supporters the immanent nature of God in creation by the following analogy:

Place a candle between two mirrors, how many reflections do you see?

I am still looking for the original source of that analogy. Help is appreciated.

The Talmud tells of four sages who entered the “Pardes,” the mystical orchard of spiritual elevation reached only through intense meditation and Kabbalistic contemplations. The greatest of the four, Rabbi Akiva, said to the others before entering, “When you come to the place of pure marble stone, do not say ‘water-water’, for it is said, ‘He who speaks lies shall not stand before my eyes.’” The Ari z”l explains that the place of “pure marble stone” is where the higher and the lower waters unite. Here one must not call out ‘water-water,’ as if to divide the higher and lower waters. “The place of pure marble stone” is the place of truth–the Divine power to bear two opposites simultaneously; in the words of Rabbi Shalom ben Adret: “the paradox of paradoxes.” Here “the exaltation of God” and His “closeness” to man unite with the “lowliness of man” and his “distance” from God.

 source: inner.org

Wholeness and the Implicate Order:

In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the “explicate” or “unfolded” order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders (Bohm, 1980, p. xv).

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force…
We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind.
This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

Max Planck, physicist
considered to be the founder of quantum theory

Hadith: “God says, ‘My heavens and My earth encompass Me not, but the heart of My gentle, believing, and meek servant does encompass Me.‘”

Rümi often refers to this hadith directly or indirectly.

The heart of the saint “contains” God, while the heart of the ordinary man is mired in water and clay. What determines the worth of a man is the state of his heart. Man’s task in this world is to cleanse his heart. to polish it, and ultimately to make of it a perfect mirror reflecting God. This he can only accomplish with the guidance of the Possessor of the Heart.

Quoted from the “The Sufi path of love,
the spiritual teachings of Rumi” by William C. Chittick

“Teacher” said the pupil, “Why is there a difference between a spiritual man and those that are not?”

Son, is there such a thing as a non-spiritual man? In this world there are man who have fallen in love with the gift so much that they have forgotten to seek the face of the giver. Others seek his face constantly. Both bring a smile to the face of the giver.
The misuse of his gift will sadden him.

He gave us of His essence, that we may manifest His essence for He loves us so much that he gave his own that we may find life.

In our darkness and to blinded to see we choose to put out the light and remain in darkness.

Can a woman with a loving and faithful husband remain ignorant of his lovingkindness? Knowing that if she accepts and returns his love that will make her the most revered bride?
Praise the faithful husband that in his lovingkindness he still sees the beauty of his bride even though her missteps in his severity cause his face to turn away. 
Praise the husband that he is a faithful husband!

From a work in progress based on Psalm 119, 54 - working title Songs from the wilderness, H. Blum 

How many words the world contains! But all have one meaning. When you smash the vessels, the water is one.

Rumi - Divan- i Shams-i Tabriz

THREE DIMENSIONS OF SUFISM

Sufi teachings can be divided into three broad categories. The first two categories may be referred to as “wisdom” and “method,” or in terms more commonly used in the context of Islam, “knowledge” (’ilm) and “works” (’amal), i.e., “theory” and “practice.” According to the Prophet, “Knowledge without works is like a tree without fruit.” Here of course “knowledge” is the same thing the Prophet has referred to in many other sayings, such as, “The search for knowledge is incum­bent upon every Moslem”; “Seek knowledge, even unto China”; “Knowledge is a light which God causes to descend into the heart of whomsoever He will!.” It is the knowledge of God Himself and of man’s ultimate end. For Moslems, it is the knowledge revealed by the Koran. In such a perspective “works” means the application of this knowledge to one’s everyday life. For Moslems it is the practice of Islam.

Within the context of this Islamic conception of knowledge and works, the Sufis emphasize a third element that is not set down so explicitly in the Koran and the Hadith: spiritual realization, or the ascending stages of human perfection resulting in proximity to God. Again the Sufis cite a saying of the Prophet: “The Law is my words, the Way is my works, and the Truth is my inward states.” Here the Sufis understand “Law” or Shariah in its widest sense, as embracing “knowledge” and all the theoretical teachings of Islam. The “Way” or Tariqah is then the method of putting the Law into practice. And the Reality or Haqiqah is the inward states and stations attained by the traveller in his journey to God and in God.

The Law is like a lamp: It shows the way.
Without a lamp, you will not be able to go forward. When you enter the path, your going is the Way. And when you reach the goal, that is the Truth.

The Law may be compared to learning the theory of medicine. The Way involves avoiding certain foods and consuming certain remedies on the basis of this theory. Then the Truth is to find everlasting health and to have no more need for theory and practice.
When man dies to the life of this world, the Law and the Way will be cut off from him, and only the Truth will remain…. The Law is knowledge, the Way is works and the Truth is attainment to God. (M V introd.)

These then are the three dimensions of Sufi teaching: the Law, the Way, and the Truth; or knowledge, works, and attainment to God; or theory, practice, and spiritual realization.
Knowledge of God, man, and the world derives ultimately from God Himself, primarily by means of revelation, i.e. - in the context of Islam - the Koran and the Hadith of the Prophet; and secondarily by means of inspiration or “unveiling,” i.e., the spiritual vision of the saints, or the realized Sufis. Knowledge provides the illumination whereby man can see everything in its proper place.

Thus “knowledge,” or the theoretical dimension of religion, which becomes codified in the farm of the Divine Law, situates man in the total universe, defining his nature and responsibilities as a human being. Knowledge and theory find their complementary dimension in practice, or the Way, which is determined by the “works” or Sunnah of the Prophet, the norm for all God-directed human activity. To follow the Sufi path is to obey the commands and prohibitions of God ac­cording to the model provided by His Prophet: “You have a good example in God’s Messenger, for whosoever hopes for God and the last day, and remembers God often” (Koran XXXIII 21). “Say (oh Muhammad)! ‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you and forgive you your sins’” (III 31) More specifically the Sufi Way is to follow the model provided by the Prophet’s representatives on earth, the saints, who are the shaykhs or the spiritual masters.

Once having entered the Way, the disciple begins to undergo a process of inward transformation. If he is among those destined to reach spiritual perfection, he will climb the ascending rungs of a ladder stretching to heaven and beyond; the alchemy of the Way will transmute the base copper of his substance into pure and noble gold.

The Truth or “attainment to God” is not a simple, one-step process. It can be said that this third dimension of Sufi teaching deals with all the inner experiences undergone by the traveller on his journey. It concerns all the “virtues” (akhlaq) the Sufi must acquire, in keeping with the Prophet’s saying, “Assume the virtues of God!” If acquiring virtues means “attaining to God,” this is because they do not belong to man. The discipline of the Way coupled with God’s grace and guidance results in a process of purification whereby the veil of human nature is gradually removed from the mirror of the primordial human substance, made in the image of God, or, in the Prophet’s words, “upon the Form of the All-Merciful.” Any perfection achieved by man is God’s perfection reflected within him.
 
In the classical textbooks, this third dimension of Sufi teachings is discussed mainly under the heading of the “stations” (maqamat) and the “spiritual states” (ahwal). From a certain point of view we can call this dimension “Sufi psychology” - as long as we understand the term “psyche” in the widest possible sense, as equivalent to “spirit” in Rumi’s terminology. Sufi psychology could then be defined as “the science of the transformations undergone by the spirit in its journey to God.” One must remember, however, that this science bears no resemblance to “psychology” as known in the West today.
For in Rumi’s terminology, modern psychology is based totally upon the ego’s study of itself. But the “ego” (nafs) is the lowest dimension of man’s inward existence, his animal and satanic nature. Only God or the spirit can know the spirit, which is man’s higher or angelic nature. Ultimately the ego cannot even know itself without a totally distorted viewpoint, for it gains all of its positive reality from the spirit that lies above and beyond it. Only the spirit that encompasses and em­braces the ego can know the ego. And only the saints have attained to the station whereby their consciousness of reality is centered within their spirits or in God.
In Sufi psychology, the “stations” are said to be the spiritual and moral perfections, or the “virtues,” achieved by the traveller on the path to God. For example, once having actualized wakefulness, the traveller moves on to repentance and then to self-examination; or once having achieved humility, he ascends to chivalry and then to expan­sion. A work such as Ansari’s Manazil al-sa’irin, from which these examples are taken, classifies the ascending stations in ten sections according to one hundred different headings. Other Sufis have em­ployed totally different schemes and classified the stations in a greater or lesser number of headings. But the general idea of all the classi­fications is the same: an ascending ladder of spiritual perfections that man must climb.

As for the “states,” they are usually said to consist of spiritual graces bestowed directly by God and outside of man’s power of ac­quisition. Unlike the stations, the states are not seen as moving in an ascending hierarchy, but rather as coming and going as God wills.
However this may be, Rumi does not discuss the “stations and states” explicitly or as such. But he does discuss the inward spiritual experiences the traveller undergoes in great detail, as well as the attitudes and mental states man must try to achieve. As indicated earlier, numerous poems in the Diwan may be viewed as poetical expressions of specific spiritual states and experiences.
In short, Rumi provides a detailed elucidation of Sufi psychology, but not in terms of the systematic schemes found in the classical textbooks. Hence the student of his works must himself provide a framework within which these teachings can be discussed.

Quoted from the introduction of “The Sufi path of love,
the spiritual teachings of Rumi” by William C. Chittick

“Teacher” said the pupil “Why is it that the most zealous in the search for God’s Kingdom are capable of the most horrific extremes and rigid legalism?”

That, my son, is like this pond; what do you see when you look into it?”

“I see myself, teacher”  

 Now what do you see if you hit the water with your stick?

“then, teacher, I only see troubled water!”

That my son is the problem with the mirror of the soul.

From a work in progress based on Psalm 119, 54 - working title Songs from the wilderness, H. Blum