The Masnavi, Book I (Rumi) · 5 of 37 · tr. E.H. Whinfield
STORY II
The Oilman and his Parrot. An oilman possessed a parrot which used to amuse him with its agreeable prattle, and to watch his shop when he went out. One day, when the parrot was alone in the shop, a cat upset one of the oil-jars. When the oilman returned home he thought that the parrot had done this mischief, and in his anger he smote the parrot such a blow on the head as made all its feathers drop off, and so stunned it that it lost the power of speech for several days. But one day the parrot saw a bald-headed man passing the shop, and recovering its speech, it cried out, "Pray, whose oil-jar did you upset?" The passers-by smiled at the parrot's mistake in confounding baldness caused by age with the loss of its own feathers due to a blow. Confusion of saints with hypocrites. Worldly senses are the ladder of earth, Spiritual senses are the ladder of heaven. The health of the former is sought of the leech, The health of the latter from "The Friend." The health of the former arises from tending the body, That of the latter from mortifying the flesh. The kingly soul lays waste the body, And after its destruction he builds it anew. Happy the soul who for love of God Has lavished family, wealth, and goods! Has destroyed its house to find the hidden treasure, And with that treasure has rebuilt it in fairer sort; Has dammed up the stream and cleansed the channel, And then turned a fresh stream into. the channel; Has cut its flesh to extract a spear-head,1 Causing a fresh skin to grow again over the wound; Has razed the fort to oust, the infidel in possession, And then rebuilt it with a hundred towers and bulwarks. Who can describe the unique work of Grace? I have been forced to illustrate it by these similes. Sometimes it presents one appearance, sometimes another. Yea, the affair of religion is only bewilderment. Not, such as occurs when one turns one's back on God, But such as when one is drowned and absorbed in Him. The latter has his face ever turned to God, The former's face shows his undisciplined self-will. Watch the face of each one, regard it well, It may be by serving thou wilt recognize Truth's face. As there are many demons with men's faces, It is wrong to join hand with every one. When the fowler sounds his decoy whistle, That the birds may be beguiled by that snare, The birds hear that call simulating a bird's call, And, descending from the air, find net and knife. So vile hypocrites steal the language of Darveshes, In order to beguile the simple with their trickery. The works of the righteous are light and heat, The works of the evil treachery and shamelessness. They make stuffed lions to scare the simple, They give the title of Muhammad to false Musailima. But Musailma retained the name of "Liar," And Muhammad that of "Sublimest of beings." That wine of God (the righteous) yields a perfume of musk; Other wine (the evil) is reserved for penalties and pains. *NOTES: 1. These are all figures and types of self-annihilation in order to the acquisition of eternal life in God.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
Metaphors of destroying a house to find hidden treasure and rebuilding it in fairer sort mirror spiritual transformation.
John of the Cross's stage of contemplative purgation: a felt absence and aridity of God that strips the soul of attachments to its own consolations en route to deeper union.
The process of destroying the house and laying waste to the body parallels purgation before union.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The passage advocates letting go of family and wealth to find the hidden treasure of God.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
The text contrasts the 'wine of God' which yields perfume with other wine reserved for penalties.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
[auto] The passage explicitly references self-annihilation in the notes and describes destroying the house/body to rebuild it anew for God.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The passage mentions the 'ladder of heaven' and the soul lavishing goods for love of God.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
The soul is described as happy when it has destroyed its house and lavished goods for God.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The soul builds itself anew after destruction to acquire eternal life in God.