Spirituality and Mysticism as Explained in the Masterpiece Sufi Text “Garden of The Secret”
Introduction
I’ll be writing some translations and commentaries on this great work, one that still remains largely unknown here in the West.
Gulshan-e Raz, “The Rose Garden of Secrets,” is a collection of poems written in the early 14th century (around 1317) by Sheikh Mahmoud Shabestari. He took his name from Shabestar, a small village near Tabriz — the same area that Rumi’s master, Shams of Tabriz, came from — in the northwest of Iran. This was a time of great upheaval — empires rising and falling all around him — and yet out of that came one of the clearest maps of inner spiritual ascension ever written.
Shabestari was a realized Sufi mystic. And here’s something beautiful about him — unlike many Sufis, he didn’t write many books. He wasn’t trying to fill shelves or build a name for himself. He spoke when he was asked, and mostly he stayed silent.
So how did this book even come to be?
A spiritual seeker sent Shabestari a series of deep questions about the nature of reality. Who am I? What is this world? What is thought? What does it really mean to “see God”? Big questions — the kind a person can chase for a whole lifetime and still die thirsty.
And Shabestari didn’t sit down to construct a careful book over many years. He simply answered. The tradition says the answers poured out of him, divinely inspired, almost in one breath — spoken as if he were reading them straight off his own heart. Not built. Not arranged. Received. Just like all real mystics, he spoke from experience, not merely theory.
That is the secret of why this small book carries so much weight. It didn’t come from a scholar organizing clever ideas. It came from a realized one answering from PRESENCE.
And that is exactly what we are going to walk through together.
Short Intro to Sufism
Sufism, unlike what many people think, doesn’t have its roots in Islam. It goes much older than any organized religion — all the way back to the ancient mysticism of the East, the same source as Yoga. Just like Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga of Devotion, Sufism is at its heart a path of pure love. A devotional practice for realizing the Truth, for becoming united with “The Beloved” — call it Cosmic Consciousness, call it God, call it the SELF. The names change. The Beloved does not.
Although there are many elements of Islam in some Sufi works, it’s mostly an adaptation for survival. The Sufis lived in a world where speaking the naked truth could get you killed, so they wrapped it in the language of the religion around them.
But look closer and you’ll see that many elements of Sufism actually disagree with common Islamic beliefs. For example, in Islam — just like in Judaism — there is the principle of “an eye for an eye.” If someone harms you, you are allowed to harm them back.
But the Sufis strictly believe in love and forgiveness. Just like Jesus said, “turn the other cheek.” It’s very much in line with the concept of compassion in Buddhism and in every other true spiritual tradition. And this is not being weak, this is not failing to stand up for yourself — it has a much deeper spiritual meaning.
Sufis also don’t believe in forcing any belief onto anyone, or in converting people. They believe that if someone joins the path, it’s because God has called them. And not many are called. And of those who are called, only a few will reach the goal. It’s very much like the Daoist Master Lao Tzu said:
“Wise men don’t need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.”
There’s another thing about the Sufis that points to the difference between the masses who just follow organized religion and the true spiritual seekers. They don’t care about going to paradise when they die. They want to realize the Truth Here and Now. For them, paradise is just another trap.
Just like in Yogic and Buddhist mysticism, going to paradise simply means another round of birth, another round of suffering — because even a pleasant experience of paradise is temporary. But becoming united with the Truth, with God, is the ultimate joy and the ultimate freedom. It is the end of the whole game.
The great Sufi poet Omar Khayyam — whose work has inspired the world from East to West, and on whose poems even Paramahamsa Yogananda wrote commentaries — said this about the idea of waiting to be happy after you die:
Some for the Glories of This World; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
“Nothing-ness.” Just like in Buddhism, Hinduism, the Yogic traditions, and so many other spiritual traditions, the Sufis believe that in order to become united with the Truth, a person has to become “Nothing,” or “No one.” In Buddhism and Yoga this is called Shunya. In fact, the highest realization in these traditions is exactly this — Nothingness, Emptiness, Zero. This is what modern spiritual circles call ego-death. You don’t add something to become free. You lose everything you never really were. You become free of the misperception about your true nature.
And here is a point that all of these traditions agree on — the Sufis, the Yogis, all of them.
You can’t realize the Truth by “doing.” You realize it by “becoming,” or better said, by waking up to who you already are. So some Sufis spoke of two things: Shariat and Haqiqat. “Rules” and “the Ultimate Truth.”
Sharia in Islam — just like Halakhah in Judaism — meant the codes of conduct. How to wash your hands, what to eat, what not to eat, and so on. And every realized Master says these doings, by themselves, will never make you realize the Truth. The Hindu cosmology clearly explains this and says that neither good action nor bad action is going to set you free. As a matter of fact, from the highest spiritual perspective, both are bondage.
Rumi, the great Sufi mystic, symbolically expressed this in one poem, saying:
“I took the core from the Quran, and left the skin for idiots.”
Basically, this means: “I saw the deeper message of it, and left the superficial aspects of religion.”
Jesus also kept trying to show this to people: if you want to become free and realize the ultimate, you have to make your heart pure. Forgive. Love. Dissolve your ego. Serve. Have devotion. And then grace will carry you there — not the rules.
What he, and all the other great Masters, were really saying is this: you have to change who you are, not necessarily what you do. Being comes first, then doing.
This misunderstanding of religion has existed everywhere, not only in Islam. It crept into Hinduism too. Adi Shankaracharya, the great Saint and Master, fought his whole life to free people from exactly this kind of confusion. There’s a line in his famous work Bhaja Govindam where he tells a priest who was arrogantly proud of his theoretical knowledge:
“Oh fool! Rules of Grammar will not save you at the time of your death.
Give up your thirst for material belongings, devote your mind to thoughts of the Truth.”
It’s also worth mentioning here that there are two kinds of law in this universe — “Universal Laws” and “Conventional Laws.”
Universal Laws are written into the very fabric of the universe. They apply to everyone — whether you are an atheist, a Jew, or a Hindu. Whether you believe in them or not, they apply to you.
Take the Law of Karma, the law of cause and effect. It doesn’t care who you are. If you do good or bad, in any form, it comes back to you — sooner or later. Anyone who thinks otherwise is merely misguided. Universal Laws are scientific in this way, just like the laws of physics. The Law of Gravity applies to everyone on earth. Good or bad, man or woman, religious or atheist — it pulls on all of them the same. The Universal Laws are exactly like that.
But what I’m calling “Conventional Laws” are different. They are either man-made, often based on a misunderstanding of something, or created for a particular purpose. Sometimes they are just an agreement between certain beings, and they only affect you if you choose to follow and believe in them.
Certain things are only “wrong” or “sinful” depending on the system you choose to follow. Drinking alcohol is a great sin in Islam — but it’s part of the religious ceremonies in Judaism and Christianity. Same act, opposite verdict, depending on the agreement you’ve signed up for. This reminds me of a great movie, PK, played by Aamir Khan — a meaningful comedy that pokes at exactly this kind of thing. I suggest you watch it.
Garden of The Secret is a comprehensive work. It lays out, one by one, the most important spiritual concepts a person needs in order to realize the universal Truth.
In the sections that follow, I’ll go through the text and unpack some of its parts. I’ll try to go deep, but I won’t bother giving you an exact word-for-word translation. Instead, I’ll focus on the meaning, the heart, the message behind the words. That’s where the secret actually lives.
📖 Read the Full Series: Garden of The Secret
Introduction · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4 · Part 5 – Thought · Part 6 – Reflection of God · Part 7 – Who am I?