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Literary Gems
Gems of World Literature
We bring you extracts and articles from the literary world that has impressed and influenced our life. These fairlytales, myths, poems, plays and other writings contain grains and seeds of truth seen from different angles and points of view.
We wish you can make them your own!
Apocryphic Texts
- Anonymous: The Hymn of the Pearl
Imbedded within the Acts of Thomas we find a beautiful and complete statement of a classic Gnostic myth describing the exile and redemption of the soul. The text is known both as the "Hymn of the Pearl" and occasionally as "Hymn of the Robe of Glory". What astounds most is that such a clear ren...
Fairytales
- Hans Christian Andersen: Shadow
In very hot climates, where the heat of the sun has great power, people are usually as brown as mahogany; and in the hottest countries they are negroes, with black skins. A learned man once travelled into one of these warm climates, from the cold regions of the north, and thought he would roam about... - Hyemeyohsts Storm: The Story of Jumping Mouse
Written by in Seven Arrows (1972 Harper & Row, New York) Once there was a little mouse. He was a busy mouse, searching everywhere, touching his whiskers to the grass, and looking about. He was busy as all mice are, busy with mice things. But once in a while he would hear an odd sound. He would ... - Shaykh Naqshbandi Erzinjani: The Cities of the Soul
As I was wandering in this temporal world, Allah led me to a straight path. Walking on it in a state between sleep and awakening, as if in a dream, I reached a city which was enveloped in darkness. It was so vast, I could neither see nor conceive of its limits. This city contained everything whic...
Sufism
- Jelaleddin Rumi: It Is As It Is (Fihi Ma Fihi)
This is the first chapter of Jelaleddin Rumi's only known prose work originally published in English as "Discourses of Rumi". This original was translated by A. J. Arberry, published in 1961. The present sample is from a version based on the Arberry translation, though with changes, and made...