The Message Papers Jelal-ud-din Rumi
To conclude, I will tell you a little story of a madzhub (A madzhub is a person who shows himself a simpleton in order to keep the crowd away and who is one with the whole universe. His is a cosmic consciousness.) One day this madzhub was moving in the city in the middle of the night, when no one is allowed to move about. A policeman asked, "Who are you?" He smiled and enjoyed the question. He did not know what he was, because that "I" was not strongly attached to his own body. Nafs was not there. So he did not answer. The policeman asked, "Are you a thief?" "Yes," he said, because the ego was empty and any name that was given was accepted there. A so-called [false] saint would be very offended to think that he was a thief.
They took him in the police station and he sat there for the whole night, quite happy; as happy as he was in the road, walking about. He felt no insult because he was an empty cup. He put in that empty cup "thief," so he was quite glad to receive that title. In the morning the officer came, and he recognized that this man was a highly developed spiritual man. He said, "I am surprised to find him here. Many respect him." The policeman said, "He himself said that he was a thief." "But you must have called him a thief." The policeman said, "Yes. " The officer said, "That is their consciousness. That 'I' which holds everything to oneself is crushed and effaced and thrown away. That 'I' is no longer there. And therefore all names are his name, all forms are his form, and the whole cosmos is his own being."
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