THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DISCOURSE

 

              

THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DISCOURSE 

‘Futuh al Ghaib’

He (may God be pleased with him) said: 

Regard good and evil as two fruits coming out from two branches 

of a single tree. One of the two branches yields sweet fruit and 

the other bitter. So you leave cities and countries and the 

outlying part of countries where fruits plucked from this tree 

are sent, and keep away from them and their people. 

Approach the tree itself and become its guard and attendant 

servant and acquire knowledge of these two branches and of 

the two fruits and their neighborhoods and remain near the branch 

which yields sweet fruit. Then, it will be your food and your source 

of strength and beware lest you should approach the other branch 

and eat the fruit of it lest its bitterness should kill you. When you 

persist in this attitude you will be in ease and security and safety 

from all troubles because troubles and all kinds of calamities are 

born of this bitter fruit. 

When you are away from this tree and wander about in countries 

and these fruits are brought before you and they are mixed up 

in a manner that the sweet cannot be distinguished from the 

bitter and you start eating them, your hand may fall on the 

bitter and you may put it in your mouth and eat a part of it 

and chew it so that its bitterness goes to your palate, and 

then to your throat and further to your brain and nostrils and 

spreads its effect on you as far as your veins and the organs of 

your body and you are thus killed. You’re throwing away the 

remainder from your mouth and washing off its effect cannot 

take away from you what has already spread in your body and 

will not benefit you. 

If in the beginning you eat the sweet fruit and its sweetness 

spreads to different parts of your body and you have been 

benefited by it and have become happy, even this is not enough 

for you. It is inevitable that you will eat another fruit and you 

cannot be sure that this other one will not be bitter; so you will 

experience what I have already mentioned to you.