Simurg is the name of a bird in a tale.
It is a very big bird with a white ring around its long neck, has saffron feathers, a beautiful voice and it resembles the human being…
It is the sultan (king) of the birds and lives behind the Mountain Kaf (the mythical mountain).
According to the myth, one day the birds come together and start a journey to find their sultan/ king…
The distance to be travelled is far and the journey is difficult.
They first pass through the ‘’SEA OF LOVE’’,
Fly through ‘’the valley of separation’’,
Go over ‘’the plain of rage’’ and turn towards ‘’the lake of jealousy’’.
Some of the birds dive into the Sea of Love and some leave the flock in the Valley of Separation
Some of them become furious and fall onto the plain and some become jealous and get drowned in the lake.
When the journey is over only 30 birds could reach beyond the mountain Kaf, but there they still cannot find their Sultan Simurg…
In the end it was the words that solved the secret:
In the Persian language ‘’si’’ means thirty
and ‘’mürg’’ means ‘’Bird’’…
Smimurg means ‘’The thirty birds’’… So, they understand that they themselves are the Sultan whom they have been searching and the real journey is the journey that is made within oneself.

Actually, the ‘’Alchemist’’ also tells about the awareness/ the conscious of being the master of oneself like most of the myths.
As the Alchemist has told to the shepherd who was searching for treasure at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids
‘’The journey is a method of learning. It teaches us the things that we need to learn’’.
The traveller who looks for the hidden treasure, for the one he loved, for the country that he had lost goes through very big tests, overcomes the difficult obstacles and reaches his own self, and embraces his conscious in the Kaf mountains of these legends…
So, in the end he finds his own treasure
He understands that the country to be explored is nothing else but himself.

The human being looks for the secret and whereas the secret is within himself.

As you can see, all the things that have been told above are exactly the same as the statement that is being placed on the Temple of Delphi in the Ancient Greek which says ‘’Know Yourself’’. Don’t you think so?
 

Istanbul, March 19th 2002
http://sufizmveinsan.com