Being's Poem, Just Begun, Is Man

The "man of heart" is the All. When you have seen him you have seen everything. The whole hunt is in the belly of the wild ass, as the saying goes. All the people in the world are parts of him, and he is the whole.

All good and bad are part of the dervish.
Whoever is not so is not a dervish.

Now when you have seen a dervish you have certainly seen the whole world. Anyone you see after him is superfluous. Dervishes' words are the whole among words. When you have heard their words, whatever you may hear afterwords is repetitious.

Mevlana, Fihi Ma Fihi (Discourse 16, trans., Thaxton).

The dervish (the "man of heart") is conscious of himself as "Being's poem." The tariqa is not this or that religious community or institution, it is the world. The dervish steps into the breach between earth and sky, mortals and divinities, as the microcosmic bridge among the elements of the fourfold.

The dervish is the unacknowledged legislation of the world.