One dark night, two men met on a lonely road.
‘I am looking for a shop near here, which is called The Lamp Shop,’ said the first man.
‘I happen to live near here, and I can direct you to it,’ said the second man.
‘I should be able to find it by myself. I have been given the directions, and I have written them down,’ said the first man.
‘Then why are you talking to me about it?’
‘Just talking.’
‘So you want company, not directions?’
‘Yes, I suppose that is what it is.’
‘But it would be easier for you to take further directions from a local resident, having got so far: especially because from here onwards it is difficult.’
‘I trust what I have already been told, which has brought me this far. I cannot be sure that I can trust anything or anyone else.’
‘So, although you once trusted the original informant, you have not been taught a means of knowing whom you can trust?’
‘That is so.’
‘Do you have any other aim?’
‘No, just to find the Lamp Shop.’
‘May I ask why you seek a lamp shop?’
‘Because I have been told on the highest authority that that is where they supply certain devices which enable a person to read in the dark.’
‘You are correct, but there is a prerequisite and also a piece of information. I wonder whether you have given them any thought.’
‘What are they?’
‘The prerequisite to reading by means of a lamp is that you can already read.’
‘You cannot prove that!’
‘Certainly not on a dark night like this.’
‘What is the “piece of information”?’
‘The piece of information is that the Lamp Shop is still where it always was, but that the lamps themselves have been moved somewhere else.’
‘I do not know what a “Lamp” is, but it seems obvious to me that the Lamp Shop is the place to locate such a device. That is, after all, why it is called a Lamp Shop.’
‘But a “Lamp Shop” may have two different meanings, each opposed to the other. The meanings are “A place where lamps may be obtained” and “A place where lamps were once obtained but which now has none”.’
‘You cannot prove that!’
‘You would seem like an idiot to many people.’
‘But there are many people who would call you an idiot. Yet perhaps you are not. You probably have an ulterior motive, sending me off to some place where lamps are sold by a friend of yours. Or perhaps you do not want me to have a lamp at all.’
‘I am worse than you think. Instead of promising you “Lamp Shops” and allowing you to assume that you will find the answer to your problems there, I would first of all find out if you could read at all. I would find out if you were near such a shop. Or whether a lamp might be obtained for you in some other way.’
The two men looked at each other, sadly, for a moment. Then each went his way.
– A spiritual story from Tasawwuf (Islamic Spirituality) written by Shaykh Shattari (Rah.) (Death; 1632, Meerut, India)
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