The Drunken Universe Quotes

“Tawhid, Unity in its deepest sense, is the first principle of Religion, which impels the Sufis to claim that all, everything, is He. This is true not merely at that spiritual stage of Intuition in which the seer and Seen are said to be one, but even at the beginning of the Path. For the aspirant himself is said to be the very object of aspiration. Like a thief who mingles unseen with the crowd that pursues him, the obiect of our search is "closer to us than our jugular vein" (L, 16). As Ahmad Ghazali put it, "We drown in an endless ocean, yet our lips are parched with thirst.”
― Peter Lamborn Wilson, The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry

“The drop of rain knows who and what it is as long as it remains a drop. When it falls back into the sea, its origin, it can no longer know.”
― Peter Lamborn Wilson, The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry

“Divinity in Its Transcendence, the Absolute before any Self-manifestation, cannot be contemplated, for contemplation implies a subject and an object, and the Absolute is beyond all duality, all "place" and all knowing. It is the Mystery, the utterly inscrutable secret in the deepest part of Being, veiled behind all the inmost veils, yet somehow luring and teasing the lover. And the lover waits outside the door, ready to surrender his life at a sign.”
― Peter Lamborn Wilson, The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry