The dichotomy between the world of form and the world of non-form is constantly referred to in the understanding of things, and it is constantly portrayed in various stories. To make the shift from illusion to haqq, to reality, we have to make the shift from only understanding the world of form to touching the world of non-form, to beginning to understand the world of non-form, and to learn how to integrate ourselves into the world of non-form.
Bawa would call it the atom and the non-atom, meaning there’s physicality and things exist within physical form, but just because you can’t see things that doesn’t mean they don’t have a form to them. It’s just that the form is formless, and as we often say, “If you can’t hold onto paradox you can’t be a Sufi.” We have to think of formless things.
I was talking to Rahman this morning and she mentioned a story that’s in a new book which really goes right into it and lays it out very quickly, and in a beautiful way. It’s a story of Solomon wanting to feed the fish. Solomon, who was a mighty king and could speak to the animals, and had many powers was speaking to Allah and said to Him, “I’d like to feed all the animals in the world for a day because we have stockpiles of food.”
And Allah said, “It’s not possible.”
And they continued to talk and then he said, “Well how about if I just feed the fish?”
And Allah said to him, “You can try.”
So Solomon prepared to feed all the fish in the world, and they pushed all of the food from all of the warehouses to the edge of the ocean, and then Solomon let go with a blast and proclaimed that today all the fish in the oceans should come forward and they would be fed here. And one fish came up, and it was bigger than anything anybody had ever seen, and they couldn’t believe something this big existed. They began to push all of the food they had at this fish, and the fish ate it, and they pushed more, and the fish ate it, and they pushed more, and the fish ate it. Solomon also had the aid of the jinns and the fairies, and they were all helping him push the food into the ocean, and this one fish just kept eating everything. Solomon said to him, “You must be the biggest fish in the ocean.”
And the fish responded and said, “No, I have seventy thousand brothers and sisters, and each of them is seventy thousand times bigger than me, and my mother is seventy thousand times bigger than any of my brothers and sisters, and my father is seventy thousand times bigger than that.”
So Solomon throws up his hands, “What can I do? What can I do?”
And then Gabriel came with one drop of God’s grace and gave it to the fish, and the fish was satisfied and went back into the ocean…
