Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet has seemingly been around forever. And considering it was first published in 1923, the timelessness seems justified. I read it when I was about 25 years old when, to me, love, friendship, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow and religion meant something quite different from what they do today. Reading the book again three decades later, Gibran’s words have greater depth, and each sentence holds a new meaning, a new understanding. Much of what he writes will at some stage in our lives, apply to each one of us. I realise it is a book that has to be read and re-read at random to appreciate the detailed poetic thoughts.
This is a book that should be by your bedside. Use it to get answers to the questions in your mind – or problems and relationships you don’t know how to handle. Try and get a copy of The Prophet with Gibran’s enchantingly haunting illustrations. And study them in relation to the accompanying thoughts.
Translated into 20 languages, this can easily be among the top keepsake bestsellers of our time. The simple everyday thoughts are given a new life by the pure mastery of his words. Written in Gibran’s poetic style, the words are moving, powerful and lucid and can surely provide a divine inspiration. Very simply, this book reaches out to everyone. It is believed to be semi-autobiographical.
The poet-philosopher-artist writes about a Prophet, Almustafa, who is preparing to depart from the imaginary city of Orphalese after 12 years, to return to the island of his birth. As he walks towards the sea, where he will board his ship, the people of Orphalese gather around him, asking this Prophet of God to give them a parting gift. The man has nothing to gift but his wisdom. The seeress, Almitra, who has believed in him from the day he landed on the shores of this land, asks: “…speak to us and give us your truth. And we will give it unto our children, and they unto their children, and it shall not perish.”
One by one the people ask him to speak on a subject dear to them, starting with Love. Among the Prophet’s many explanations, is: “Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. When you love you should not say ‘God is in my heart’, but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God’.”
He counsels about Marriage thus: “You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore, but let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.”
My favourite one is about Children, where he tells all parents, “You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
Gibran continues with Giving: “You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
When the mason asks the Prophet to speak about Houses, he asks the people in return what they have in their houses that they guard with fastened doors. Is it peace, or remembrances, or beauty? “Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?”
To the astronomer who asks about Time, he says: “Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, and knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. “
The most thought provoking is of Religion, where he asks the gathering: “Have I spoken this day of naught else? Is not religion all deeds and all reflection? Who can spread his hours before him saying, ‘This for God and this for myself; this for my soul and this other for my body.’
His final words of wisdom are, expectedly, on Death: “If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide onto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one.” And, continues, “And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you surely dance.” |
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