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 by Doug Marman (Little Known Publications).

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 which was created. There were people from all nations and races. So crowded were the streets that one could hardly walk, so noisy was it that one could hardly hear oneself or others. All the ugly actions of all the creatures, all the sins known and unknown to me, surrounded me. In awe and amazement I watched the strange scene.

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 rendition of the Gnostic mythos survived within a text which residing for centuries on the shelves of orthodox archives.

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 lift his head, squinting hard to see, his whiskers wiggling in the air, and he would wonder. One day he scurried up to a fellow mouse and asked him, Do you hear a roaring in your ears, my brother?