Many An Illumined Heart Is To Be Found In Darkness

In Mesnavi, Bk. I: 2161-2198, Mevlana relates the story of the minstrel who spent seventy years playing his harp in a graveyard:

God comes to 'Umar, Commander of the Faithful, in a dream and tells him to go to a certain graveyard and find one to whom He wished to show His favor. 'Umar dutifully goes there, but finds no one but an old minstrel. He cannot imagine that this could be the person with whom God is well-pleased but, after a diligent search, concludes that the old harper must be the man he was sent to find. He then says: "Many an illumined heart is to be found in darkness," and approaches the minstrel to tell him of his dream and to bestow upon him the gift that God had commanded him to give: 700 dinars from the Caliphal treasury for the purchase of silks.

The old man, upon hearing 'Umar's tale, reacts strangely: he is beside himself with grief and dashes his harp to the ground, smashing it to bits. "For seventy years," he exclaims, "I have been distracted from God by this instrument, and now this!"

He then prays to God to deliver him from his self-absorption, regretting the time that he was absorbed in anything other than God.