The Lost Prayer of Attar: The Hidden Opening of Conference of the Birds | Mantiq al-Tayr

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:10]Praise. Praise to the Holy One. To El Khalik who placed his throne upon the waters and made everything that walks the earth.

[00:00:22]To the heavens he gave dominion. To the earth dependence. To the heavens movement. to the earth this uniform sleep we walk on.

[00:00:37]He raised the firmament like a tent above us. No pillars, no rope, nothing holding it but who.

[00:00:47]In six days he made the seven planets with two letters. Cuff nun kun ba.

[00:01:03]And from those two letters, nine cup pupils of heaven. In the beginning he gilded the stars so the night sky could play trick track with itself.

[00:01:15]The body he wo like a net. Each thread a different property, each knot a different name. And on the tail of the bird of the soul he placed dust.

[00:01:29]He made the ocean liquid as a sign of bondage. He capped the mountains with ice. They tremble before him. He dried up the seabed and pulled rubies from its stones, misk from its blood.

[00:01:45]To the mountains he gave peaks like daggers, valleys like belts, so they could lift their heads in pride.

[00:01:57]Sometimes he makes roses bloom from fire. Sometimes he throws bridges across water. He sent a single mosquito to sting Namud and Namud burned with it 400 years.

[00:02:12]He sent a spider to spin a web across the mouth of a cave. And the highest of men was hidden. The habib, the beloved.

[00:02:23]Sheltered by a thread. He squeezed the waist of an ant until it was thin as a hair and made it companion to Sullean.

[00:02:33]He dressed it in the black robes of the Abbassids in unwoven bcade fit for a peacock.

[00:02:40]When he saw the carpet of nature was torn, he stitched it back.

[00:02:48]He stained the sword tulip red. He made beds of water lilies from vapor.

[00:02:56]He drenched clouds of earth with blood so he could pull cornelians and rubies out of dust. The sun and the moon, one for day, one for night. They bow to the dust in sagda and from their prostration comes their motion.

[00:03:16]It is Allah who spread the day in whiteness. It is Allah who folded the night and blackened it. To the parrot he gave a gold collar. To the hood hood the hoopu he gave the office of messenger guide of the way.

[00:03:36]The firmament is a bird beating its wings along a road God marked, striking the door of the unseen with its head like a hammer.

[00:03:48]He turned the wheel. Night follows day, day follows night, and the wheel does not stop.

[00:03:57]He breathes on clay and a man stands up.

[00:04:04]He breathes a little vapor and a world appears.

[00:04:09]Sometimes he sends a dog ahead of the traveler. Sometimes a cat shows the path. Sometimes a staff holds the power of Sullean.

[00:04:20]Sometimes an ant speaks with eloquence.

[00:04:23]From a staff a serpent from a staff a flood of water.

[00:04:30]He hung the orb of the proud in the sky and binds it with iron when it glows red and waines.

[00:04:38]He brought a camel out of a rock. He made a golden calf bellow. In winter he scatters silver snow. In autumn gold leaves he covers the thorn, tints it with the color of blood. To the jasmine he gives four petals. On the head of the tulip he places a red bonnet. On the brow of the narcissus a golden crown.

[00:05:08]Into her shrine pearls of due.

[00:05:12]At the thought of Allah the mind stops.

[00:05:16]Reason fails. Because of Allah the heavens turn. The earth reels.

[00:05:27]From the back of the fish that holds the world to the moon, every atom is a witness. Every depth of earth, every height of heaven, each gives him its own particular sagda.

[00:05:46]He made the wand, the earth, the fire, the blood.

[00:05:53]With these four he whispers his seir. He took clay, kneaded it with water. For 40 mornings he worked it. Then he placed inside it the ru. He gave it intelligence. He gave it knowledge. He gave it the power to weigh and ponder.

[00:06:12]And when the human being came into his faculties, he confessed his impotence, fell into amazement, let his body wander out into exterior acts.

[00:06:27]Friend and enemy, all of us bend our necks under the same yoke.

[00:06:34]And the astonishing thing, he watches over us all. At the beginning of the centuries, he drove the mountains into the earth like nails. He washed her face with the ocean. He set the earth on the back of a bull, the bull on a fish, the fish on the air, and the air on nothing.

[00:06:57]But nothing is nothing, and everything is nothing.

[00:07:05]So admire the works of the Lord.

[00:07:11]He himself counts them as nothing. His essence alone exists. There is nothing but who?

[00:07:22]His throne is on the waters. The world is in the air. But leave the waters.

[00:07:29]Leave the air.

[00:07:31]All of it is Allah. The throne and the world are tilam.

[00:07:37]A talisman, a sealed amulet covering what is real.

[00:07:43]Allah is all.

[00:07:46]Things have only a borrowed value.

[00:07:49]The world you see and the world you do not see are only him.

[00:07:58]There is none but who but ah no one can see him. The eyes are blind even when the world is lit by a thousand sons.

[00:08:14]If you catch even a glimpse you lose your wits.

[00:08:19]If you see him fully you lose yourself.

[00:08:25]This is Fana.

[00:08:27]This is the burning of the moth.

[00:08:31]Every one of us who knows his own ignorance tucks up the hem of his garment and says earnestly, softly, oh you who are not seen, though you make us know you.

[00:08:46]Everyone is you.

[00:08:49]No one is manifest but you. The ru is hidden in the body and you are hidden in the ru.

[00:09:01]Oh you hidden in what is hidden. You are more than all.

[00:09:07]All see themselves in you and they see you in all things.

[00:09:14]Your dwelling is ringed with guards and sentinels.

[00:09:18]How can we come near?

[00:09:20]Mind cannot reach you. Reason cannot reach you.

[00:09:27]No one knows your sifat, your attributes.

[00:09:32]You are eternal. You are perfect. You confound the wise. What more can be said? You cannot be described.

[00:09:46]Oh my cal, my heart. If you want to arrive even at the beginning of understanding, walk slowly.

[00:09:56]Walk carefully.

[00:09:58]To each atom there is a different door.

[00:10:04]To each atom there is a different road to the mysterious one I am speaking of.

[00:10:13]To know oneself one must live a hundred lives.

[00:10:19]But know God by God, not by yourself.

[00:10:26]He opens the way that leads to him, not human wisdom.

[00:10:34]The knowledge of him is not at the door of rhetorics.

[00:10:38]Here knowledge and ignorance are the same. Neither can explain, neither can describe.

[00:10:48]The opinions of men on this rise only in their imagination.

[00:10:53]Whether well spoken or poorly, they speak from themselves.

[00:10:58]Allah is beyond knowledge, beyond evidence.

[00:11:03]Nothing can give an idea of his holy majesty.

[00:11:08]Oh you who love the truth, do not look for an analogy.

[00:11:15]The existence of this being without equal does not admit of one. Even the prophets, even the heavenly messengers have not understood the smallest particle.

[00:11:30]They put their foreheads on the dust and said, "We have not known you as you truly are."

[00:11:40]What am I then to flatter myself that I know him?

[00:11:45]Oh, ignorant son of the first man. Oh child of Adam, Khalifa of God on this earth, strive at least to share a little of your father's maharifa, his nosis.

[00:12:00]Every creature God draws out of nothingness falls into saga before him.

[00:12:07]When he wished to create Adam, he brought him out from behind a 100 hijab, 100 veils and said, "Oh Adam, all creatures adore me. Now be adored in your turn."

[00:12:27]The only one who turned away from that saga was changed from an angel into a demon.

[00:12:36]He became el. He was cursed. He had no knowledge of the seir. His face went black. And he said to God, "Oh you who possess absolute independence, do not abandon me."

[00:12:54]The most high answered, "You who are cursed, know that Adam is my steward and the king of nature."

[00:13:03]Today go before him. Tomorrow burn for him the ispand the seed that wards off evil.

[00:13:14]When the r was joined to the body, it became part of the all. Never was there so marvelous a tilsam.

[00:13:24]The soul had a share of the high, the body a share of the low, a mixture of heavy clay and pure spirit.

[00:13:33]And by this mixing, the human being became the most astonishing of mysteries.

[00:13:41]We do not know our own spirit, not a little of it.

[00:13:46]If you wish to speak about this, better to keep silent.

[00:13:53]Many know the surface of this ocean. Few understand the depths. The visible world is the tilam that protects it. But the talisman of bodily obstacles will break at last.

[00:14:08]You will find the treasure when the talisman disappears.

[00:14:13]The soul will manifest itself when the body is laid aside.

[00:14:20]But your soul is another talisman. For this mystery, it is another substance.

[00:14:28]Walk in the way I will show you, but do not ask for an explanation.

[00:14:35]In this vast ocean, the world is an atom.

[00:14:40]The atom is a world. Who knows which is worth more? The cornelian or the pebble?

[00:14:48]We have staked our life, our reason, our spirit, our den, our religion to understand the perfection of a single atom.

[00:15:03]Sew up your lips. Ask nothing of the empirion.

[00:15:08]Ask nothing of the ash, the throne of God.

[00:15:13]No one knows the essence of an atom. Ask whomever you like. The heavens are an upside down cup, no stability.

[00:15:23]At once moving and unmoving, one is lost contemplating such a mystery. It is veil upon veil, hijab upon hijab.

[00:15:36]You are like a figure painted on a wall.

[00:15:39]You can only bite the back of your own hand.

[00:15:46]Consider those who entered the way of the roof, the way of the spirit.

[00:15:53]Look what happened to Adam. See how many years he spent in mourning.

[00:15:58]Contemplate the Tufan of Nuke, the flood.

[00:16:03]See what that patriarch suffered from the wicked. Consider Ibrahim al- Khalil, Abraham, the friend of God, full of love for Allah, who was tortured and thrown into the fire.

[00:16:18]See the unfortunate Ismael, offered up in the way of divine love.

[00:16:25]Turn toward Yakob, Jacob, who went blind from weeping for his son.

[00:16:33]Look at Ysef. Admirable in his power as in his slavery in the pit and in the prison.

[00:16:45]Remember the unhappy Aub Job stretched on the earth a prey to worms and to wolves.

[00:16:54]Think of Ununas, Jonah, who strayed from the way and went from the moon to the belly of the fish.

[00:17:05]Follow Musa from his birth. A box served him for a cradle. Pharaoh raised him.

[00:17:14]Think of Doud, David, who made himself a breastplate, whose size melted iron like wax.

[00:17:27]Look at Sullean whose empire was mastered by the jin.

[00:17:32]Remember Zacharia so on fire with the love of God that he kept silent when they killed him.

[00:17:42]And Yakya John the Baptist despised before the people whose head was placed on a platter.

[00:17:52]Stand in wonder at Issa al-Masik at the foot of the cross when he was lifted from the hands of his enemies. And finally, ponder all that the chief of the prophets suffered, Seduna Muhammad, the insults, the injuries, the wickedness pressed against him like a wall.

[00:18:19]After this, do you think it will be easy to arrive at Nosis, at Maharifa?

[00:18:27]It means no less than to die to everything. FA, annihilation, the moth in the candle.

[00:18:40]What more shall I say? Since there is nothing more, since there is not a single rose left on the bush.

[00:18:50]Oh wisdom, you are a suckling child.

[00:18:57]The reason of the old and experienced strays in this quest. How shall I, a fool, arrive at this essence? And if I arrive, how shall I enter the door?

[00:19:13]Oh holy creator, oh khalik, vivify my spirit.

[00:19:22]Believers and unbelievers are equally plunged in blood and my head turns like the heavens.

[00:19:30]I am not without hope, but I am impatient.

[00:19:37]My friends, neighbors of one another, I want to repeat this discourse day and night so that for not even a moment do you cease to long for the truth. For al-Hak for who?