Inner City

This is where I am originally from, said the swami. It was the old city, even then. Some called it the inner city.

And what was 'outside'?

Only darkness and the forest..and outlaws. 'If one looks carefully, just beyond the door, on the right hand side, is the police station, the place where we would make phone calls to our father to bring back fried fish on his way home from the press'

But those days are gone now. Who is to say what is inner, what is outer. The gate itself is crumbling and people walk by it without even noticing it !

What are you reading now? asks the swami.

It is a book on science.

What is the point of that?! You should give up physics and look at metaphysics if you want the answers.

Tell me, why is that the young people of your land always talk about having 'fun'? And why do they always look so miserable?

Are they related questions?

Tell me, does not the tree withdraw into itself before it brings forth beautiful blossoms? Your mind stands there, rapt before the details of the gate..we must learn to walk through it again.

But you yourself have said that the city is no more.

It lives on, as desire, as a hope, as a memory...

But beyond earthly destructions there is the Indestructible:

"Every form you see, has its archetype in the divine world,beyond space; if the form perishes what matter, since its heavenly model is indestructible?Every beautiful form you have seen, every meaningful word you have heard-be not sorrowful all this must be lost; such is not really the case. The Divine Source is immortal and its outflowing gives water without cease; since neither the one nor the other can be stopped wherefore do you lament?...from the first moment when you entered this world of existence , a ladder has been set up before you..."

---Rumi.