Foolish Wisdom?

....In America, the idea of going to college is just like the idea of prosperity is just around the corner, it was supposed to solve something or everything or something because all you had to do was learn what they taught and then everything else was going to be handled; instead of that, and just like prosperity that was never around the corner but a couple miles at least (and false prosperity —) going to college by acquainting me with all the mad elements of life, such as the sensibilities, books, arts, histories of madness, and fashions, has not only made it possible for me to learn simple tricks of how to earn a living but has deprived me of my one-time innocent belief in my own destiny. So now I sit and stew in a sophistication which has taken hold of me just exactly like a disease and makes me lie around like a bum all day long and stay up all night goofing with myself. I had thought, in, and before college, that to be a writer was like being, of course, the Emile Zola of the film they made about him with Paul Muni shouting angrily in the streets at dumb and stupid masses, as if he knew everything and they didn't know a damn thing; instead of that I wonder what working people think of me when they hear my typewriter clacking in the middle of the night or what they think I'm up to when I take walks at 2 A.M.  in outlying suburban neighborhoods — the truth is I haven't a single thing to wr — feel foolish... How I wish I could grow corn tomorrow morning! How I wish I had enough patience to go and meet Farmer Brown in two hours from now, 5 A.M., and go learn early morning farming matters from him, and sober, too; and not high on tea, either. Instead of that I give myself tremendous headaches and I am also less paid than a Mexican in New Mexico, and at least the Mexican in New Mexico has the right to get angry and to feel truly righteous in his heart....
— Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, pp. 259-260.

Seek a cure for your defective sight by listening.
Many are the holy words that find no entrance
Into blind hearts, but they enter hearts full of light.
But the deceits of Satan enter crooked hearts,
Even as crooked shoes fit crooked feet.
Though you repeat pious expressions again and again,
If you are a fool, they affect you not at all; —
Nay, not though you set them down in writing,
And though you proclaim them vauntingly;
Wisdom averts its face from you, O man of sin,
Wisdom breaks away from you and takes to flight!
— Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad I Rúmi, The Masnavi (Teachings
of Rumi), E. H. Whinfield (sel. & tr.), Book II, Story I, p. 66.

....In answer to an objection that if this were so the prophets and saints, who have subdued lust, would not have been hated and oppressed as they were, it is pointed out that they who hated the prophets in reality hated themselves, just as sick men quarrel with the physician or boys with the teacher. Prophets and saints are created to test the dispositions of men, that the good may be severed from the bad. The numerous grades of prophets, of saints, and of holy men are ordained, as so many curtains of the light of God, to tone down its brilliance, and make it visible to all grades of human sight.
— Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad I Rúmi, Ibid.,
Book II, Story III, p. 72.

Say not, then, that all these creeds are false,
The false ones ensnare hearts by scent of truth.
Say not that they are all erroneous fancies,
There is no fancy in the universe without some truth.
Truth is the "night of power" [night on which the Koran
             /was revealed] hidden amongst other nights,
In order to try the spirit of every night.
Not every night is that of power, O youth,
Nor yet is every night quite void of power.
In the crowd of rag-wearers there is but one Faqir
     [so in the Phaedo, "Many are the wandbearers,
       but few the Mystics."]
Search well and find out that true one.
Tell the wary and discerning believer
To distinguish the king from the beggar
If there were no bad goods in the world,
Every fool might be a skillful merchant;
For then the hard art of judging goods would be easy.
If there were no faults, one man could judge as well as another.
Again, if all were faulty, skill would be profitless.
If all wood were common, there would be no aloes.
He who accepts everything as true is a fool,
But he who says all is false is a knave.
— Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad I Rúmi, Ibid.,
Book II, Story XII, pp. 98-99.

Whatever your lust wills you deem freewill,
What reason demands you deem compulsion.
Whoso is wise and prudent knows this,
That cleverness comes from Iblis, but love from Adam.
Cleverness is like Canaan's swimming in the ocean;
'Tis no river or small stream; 'tis the mighty ocean.
Away with this attempt to swim; quit self-conceit.
'Twill not save you; Canaan was drowned at last.
Love is as the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment;
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.
Make sacrifice of your reason at the feet of Mustafa,
Say, "God sufficeth me, for He is sufficient for me."
Do not, like Canaan, hang back from entering the ark,
Being puffed up with vain conceit of cleverness.
He said, "I will escape to the top of high mountains,
Why need I put myself under obligation to Noah?
....
Would he had been less full of borrowed knowledge!
Then he would have accepted inspired knowledge from his father.
When, with inspiration at hand, you seek book-learning,
Your heart, as if inspired, loads you with reproach
     [Knowledge of "The Truth" is to be attained not by
     exercise of the reason, but by illumination from above.
     When the light of "The Truth" is revealed, reason is
     drowned in bewilderment.]
Traditional knowledge, when inspiration is available,
Is like making ablutions with sand when water is near.
Make yourself ignorant, be submissive, and then
You will obtain release from your ignorance.
For this cause, O son, the Prince of men declared,
"The majority of those in Paradise are the foolish."
Cleverness is as a wind raising storms of pride;
Be foolish, so that your heart may be at peace; ....
— Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad I Rúmi, Ibid.,
Book IV, Story II, pp. 190-191.

Rend not thy plumage off, but avert thy heart from it,
For hostility between them is the law of this holy war.
Were there no hostility, that war would be impossible.
Hadst thou no lust, obedience to the law could not be.
Hadst thou no concupiscence there could be no abstinence.
Where no antagonist exists, what need is there of armies?
Ah! make not thyself an eunuch, become not a monk,
Because chastity is mortgaged to lust.
Without lust denial of lust is impossible;
No man can display bravery against the dead.
God says, "Expend"; wherefore earn money.
Since expenditure is impossible without previous gain?
Although the passage contains only the word "Expend,"
Read "Acquire first, and then expend."
In like manner, when the King of kings says "Abstain,"
It implies an object of desire wherefrom to abstain.
Again, "Eat ye," is said recognising the snares of lust,
And afterwards, "Exceed not," to enjoin temperance,
When there is no subject,
The existence of a predicate is not possible.
When thou endurest not the pains of abstinence,
And fulfillest not the terms, thou gainest no reward.
— Maulana Jalalu-'D-Din Muhammad I Rúmi, Ibid.,
Book V, Story III, pp. 229.