Mirrors of the Soul

by Kahlil Gibran

  The monks had John arrested and refused to free him until his father testified that he was insane. Therefore no one listened to John because the public was led to believe he was a madman.

  Gibran, writing a friend about “John the Madman,” said, “I found that earlier writers, in attacking the tyranny of some of the clergy, attacked the practice of religion. They were wrong because religion is a belief natural to man. But using religion as an excuse for tyranny is wrong. That is why I made sure that John in my story was a powerful believer in Jesus, in his Gospel and in his teaching.”

  The ethics of the West are, of course, the products of religion. It is true that much of the Western world has separated the state from religion;4 but our laws recognize Mosaic law in the prohibition against murder, theft and adultery and in recognition of each individual’s property rights. Gibran, recognizing the traditions and ethos of religion, also urged prudence, temperance, courage, justice, love, mercy and self-negation. Nowhere, however, does he answer the question, “Is it possible to believe in God, to practice the ethics of religion and to admit salvation without the rites of religion?” He does, however, recognize the question in his short poem in Arabic, “O Soul”:

  O Soul

  by Gibran

  O Soul, if I did not covet immortality, I would never have learned the song which has been sung through all of time.

  Rather, I would have been a suicide, nothing remaining of me except my ashes hidden within the tomb.

  O soul! if I had not been baptized with tears and my eyes had not been mascaraed by the ghosts of sickness, I would have seen life as through a veil, darkly.

  O soul! life is a darkness which ends as in the sunburst of day.

  The yearning of my heart tells me there is peace in the grave.

  O soul! if some fool tells you the soul perishes like the body and that which dies never returns, tell him the flower perishes but the seed remains and lies before us as the secret of life everlasting.

  1. In the field of medicine, the books of Avicenna remained basic textbooks of the universities of Europe almost until the present day. About a hundred treatises are ascribed to him. He was great not only in his medical work, but in mathematics and astronomy, as well as philosophy. See One White Race by Joseph Sheban, page 241.

  2. Both Mutanabbi and Maary are great Arab poets.

  3. Al Ghazali was a professor at the college in Bagdad. He gave up his chair suddenly, left his family and devoted himself to the ascetic life. He left 69 works, one of them in thirteen volumes. Al Ghazali wandered through Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron, Mecca, Medina and Alexandria, but returned to Tas, Arabia, where he died.

  4. See One White Race, by Joseph Sheban.

  8. “ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU”

  The feudal system disappeared in both the political and religious life of Lebanon. It is now an independent state with its president and parliament elected by the people. Some of the stories and articles written by Gibran fifty years ago are a matter of history, but others are as modern as today’s political situation, remaining timeless.

  On the walls of many American homes hangs a plaque commemorating the statement of the late President John F. Kennedy:

  Ask not what your country can do for you,

  but ask what you can do for your country.

  This statement appeared in an article written by Gibran in Arabic, over fifty years ago. The heading of that article can be translated either “The New Deal” or “The New Frontier.”

  The article was directed to Gibran’s people in the Middle East, but its philosophy and its lesson will continue as long as man lives in a free society. Hence we offer the translation of the whole article:

  “The New Frontier”

  by Gibran

  There are in the Middle East today1 two challenging ideas: old and new.

  The old ideas will vanish because they are weak and exhausted.

  There is in the Middle East an awakening that defies slumber. This awakening will conquer because the sun is its leader and the dawn is its army.

  In the fields of the Middle East, which have been a large burial ground, stand the youth of Spring calling the occupants of the sepulchers to rise and march toward the new frontiers.

  When the Spring sings its hymn the dead of the winter rise, shed their shrouds and march forward.

  There is on the horizon of the Middle East a new awakening; it is growing and expanding; it is reaching and engulfing all sensitive, intelligent souls; it is penetrating and gaining the sympathy of noble hearts.

  The Middle East, today, has two masters. One is deciding, ordering, being obeyed; but he is at the point of death.

  But the other one is silent in his conformity to law and order, calmly awaiting justice; he is a powerful giant who knows his own strength, confident in his existence and a believer in his destiny.

  There are today, in the Middle East, two men: one of the past and one of the future. Which one are you? Come close; let me look at you and let me be assured by your appearance and conduct if you are one of those coming into the light or going into the darkness.

  Come and tell me who and what are you.

  Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country.

  If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

  Are you a merchant utilizing the need of society for the necessities of life, for monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or a sincere, hard-working and diligent man facilitating the exchange between the weaver and the farmer? Are you charging a reasonable profit as a middleman between supply and demand?

  If you are the first, then you are a criminal whether you live in a palace or a prison. If you are the second, then you are a charitable man whether you are thanked or denounced by the people.

  Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income?

  Or are you a devout and a pious man who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depth of his own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the world?

  If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God even if you fast at day and pray by night.

  If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved.

  Are you a newspaperman who sells his idea and his principle in the slave market, who lives on the misery of people like a buzzard which descends only upon a decaying carcass?

  Or are you a teacher on the platform of the city gathering experience from life and presenting it to the people as sermons you have learned?

  If you are the first, then you are a sore and an ulcer. If you are the second, then you are a balsam and a medicine.

  Are you a governor who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed?

  Or are you the faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people?

  If you are the first, then you are as a tare in the threshing floor of the nation; and if the second, then you are a blessing upon its granaries.

  Are you a husband who allows for himself what he disallows for his wife, living in abandonment with the key of her prison in his boots, gorging himself with his favorite food while she sits, by herself, before an empty dish?

  Or are you a companion, taking no action except hand in hand, nor doing anything unless she gives her thoughts and opinions, and sharing with her your happiness and success?

  If you are the first, then you are a remnant of a tribe which, still dressing in the
skins of animals, vanished long before leaving the caves; and if you are the second, then you are a leader in a nation moving in the dawn toward the light of justice and wisdom.

  Are you a searching writer full of self-admiration, keeping his head in the valley of a dusty past, where the ages discarded the remnant of its clothes and useless ideas?

  Or are you a clear thinker examining what is good and useful for society and spending your life in building what is useful and destroying what is harmful?

  If you are the first, then you are feeble and stupid, and if you are the second, then you are bread for the hungry and water for the thirsty.

  Are you a poet, who plays the tambourine at the doors of emirs, or the one who throws the flowers during weddings and who walks in processions with a sponge full of warm water in his mouth, a sponge to be pressed by his tongue and lips as soon as he reaches the cemetery?

  Or have you a gift which God has placed in your hands on which to play heavenly melodies which draw our hearts toward the beautiful in life?

  If you are the first, then you are a juggler who evokes in our soul that which is contrary to what you intend.

  If you are the second, then you are love in our hearts and a vision in our minds.

  In the Middle East there are two processions: One procession is of old people walking with bent backs, supported with bent canes; they are out of breath though their path is downhill.

  The other is a procession of young men, running as if on winged feet, and jubilant as with musical strings in their throats, surmounting obstacles as if there were magnets drawing them up the mountainside and magic enchanting their hearts.

  Which are you and in which procession do you move?

  Ask yourself and meditate in the still of the night; find if you are a slave of yesterday or free for the morrow.

  I tell you that the children of yesteryears are walking in the funeral of the era that they created for themselves. They are pulling a rotted rope that might break soon and cause them to drop into a forgotten abyss. I say that they are living in homes with weak foundations; as the storm blows — and it is about to blow — their homes will fall upon their heads and thus become their tombs. I say that all their thoughts, their sayings, their quarrels, their compositions, their books and all their work are nothing but chains dragging them because they are too weak to pull the load.

  But the children of tomorrow are the ones called by life, and they follow it with steady steps and heads high, they are the dawn of new frontiers, no smoke will veil their eyes and no jingle of chains will drown out their voices. They are few in number, but the difference is as between a grain of wheat and a stack of hay. No one knows them but they know each other. They are like the summits, which can see and hear each other — not like caves, which cannot hear or see. They are the seed dropped by the hand of God in the field, breaking through its pod and waving its sapling leaves before the face of the sun. It shall grow into a mighty tree, its root in the heart of the earth and its branches high in the sky.

  1. Fifty years before this translation.

  9. SOLITUDE AND SECLUSION

  by Gibran

  Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.

  Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion.

  Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.

  I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own.

  I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it.

  On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water.

  I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory, surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body.

  On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion.

  I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and the sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion.

  On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the palm of that woman.

  Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other residence and neighbors.

  Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named after you. If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbor’s lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else.

  Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, I would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

  10. THE SEA

  by Gibran

  In the still of the night

  As man slumbers behind the folds,

  the forest proclaims.

  “I am the power

  Brought by the sun from

  the heart of the earth.”

  The sea remains quiet, saying to itself,

  “I am the power.”

  The rock says,

  “The ages erected me as a monument

  Until the Judgment Day”;

  The sea remains silent saying to itself,

  “I am the monument.”

  The wind howls

  “I am strong,

  I separate the heavens from the earth.”

  The sea remains quiet, saying to itself,

  “The wind is mine.”

  The river says

  “I am the pure water

  That quenches the thirst of the earth”;

  The sea remains silent saying to itself,

  “The river is mine.”

  The summit says,

  “I stand high like a star

  In the center of the sky.”

  The sea remains quiet saying to itself,

  “The summit is mine.”

  The brain says,

  “I am a ruler;

  The world is in those who rule”;

  The sea remains slumbering saying, in its sleep,

  “All is mine.”

  11. HANDFUL OF BEACH SAND

  by Gibran

  When you tell your trouble to your neighbor you present him with a part of your heart. If he possesses a great soul, he thanks you; if he possesses a small one, he belittles you.

  Progress is not merely improving the past; it is moving forward toward the future.

  A hungry savage picks fruit from a tree and eats it; a hungry, civilized man buys it from a man who, in turn, buys it from the man who picks it
.

  Art is one step from the visibly known toward the unknown.

  The earth breathes, we live; it pauses in breath, we die.

  Man’s eye is a magnifier; it shows him the earth much larger than it is.

  I abstain from the people who consider insolence, bravery and tenderness cowardice. And I abstain from those who consider chatter wisdom and silence ignorance.

  They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom.

  I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.

  Contradiction is a lower degree of intelligence.

  Bravery is a volcano; the seed of wavering does not grow on its crater.

  The river continues on its way to the sea, broken the wheel of the mill or not.

  The greater your joy or your sorrow, the smaller the world in your eyes.

  Learning nourishes the seed but it gives you no seed of its own.

  I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.

  There are among the people murderers who have never committed murder, thieves who have never stolen and liars who have spoken nothing but the truth.

  Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

  O great intelligent Being! hidden and existing in and for the universe, You can hear me because You are within me and You can see me because You are all-seeing; please drop within my soul a seed of Your wisdom to grow a sapling in Your forest and to give of Your fruit. Amen!

  12. THE SAYINGS OF THE BROOK

  by Gibran

  I walked in the valley as the rising dawn spoke the secret of eternity,

  And there a brook, on its course, was singing, calling and saying:

  Life is not only a merriment;

  Life is desire and determination.