The Masnavi, Book I (Rumi) · 13 of 37 · tr. E.H. Whinfield
STORY V-d
But the light that lights the heart is the Light of God, Which is distinct from the light of reason and sense.
At night there is no light, and colors are not seen; Hence we know what light is by its opposite, darkness.
At night no colors are visible, for light is lacking.
How can color be the attribute of dark blackness?
Looking on light is the same as looking on colors; Opposite shows up opposite, as a Frank a Negro.
The opposite of light shows what is light, Hence colors too are known by their opposite.
God created pain and grief for this purpose, To wit, to manifest happiness by its opposites.
12 Hidden things are manifested by their opposites; But, as God has no opposite.
He remains hidden.
God's light has no opposite in the range of creation Whereby it may be manifested to view.
Perforce "Our eyes see not Him, though He sees us." 13 Behold this in the case of Moses and Mount Sinai.
14 Discern form from substance, as lion from desert, Or as sound and speech from the thought they convey.
The sound and speech arise from the thought; Thou knowest not where is the Ocean of thought; Yet when thou seest fair waves of speech, Thou knowest there is a glorious Ocean beneath them.
When waves of thought arise from the Ocean of Wisdom, They assume the forms of sound and speech.
These forms of speech are born and die again, These wa,ves cast themselves back into the Ocean.
Form is born of That which is without form, And goes again, for, "Verily to Him do we return." 15 Wherefore to thee every moment come death and "return." Mustafa saith, "The world endureth only a moment." So, thought is an arrow shot by God into the air.
How can it stay in the air?
It returns to God.
Every moment the world and we are renewed, 16 Yet we are ignorant of this renewing forever and aye.
Life, like a stream of water, is renewed and renewed, Though it wears the appearance of continuity in form.
That seeming continuity arises from its swift renewal, As when a single spark of fire is whirled round swiftly.
17 If a single spark be whirled round swiftly, It seems to the eye a continuous line of fire.
This apparent extension, owing to the quick motion, Demonstrates the rapidity with which it is moved.
If ye seek the deepest student of this mystery, Lo!
'tis Husamu-'d-Din, the most exalted of creatures!
*NOTES: 1.
"Trust in God and keep your powder dry." 2.
"Laborare est orare." 3.
Koran ii.
341.
4.
"And He taught Adam the names of all things" (Koran ii.
29).
5.
The angels said, "We have no knowledge but what thou hast given us to know" (Koran ii.
30).
6.
See Gulshan i Raz, I.
543.
7.
Koran xviii.
17.
8.
See Gulshan i Raz, I.
575: The ocean of Reason is the same as what is elsewhere called the ocean of Being, viz., the Noumenon, or Divine substratum of all phenomenal being and thought.
9.
"Those arrows were God's, not vours" (Koran viii.
17); i.e., Man's reason proceeds from God, the "Only Real Agent." 10.
Alluding to the "Believer's lost camel " (Book II.
Story XII., infra.).
Men seek wisdom, and do not know that in themselves is the reflected wisdom of God (Gulshan i Raz, I.
435).
11.
The real Soul, i.e., the spirit which God "breathed into man" (Koran xv.
29).
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
Sound and speech arise from the thought within the Ocean of Wisdom, mirroring divine generation.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text states 'Opposite shows up opposite' and that colors are known by their opposite, reflecting cosmic structure.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text states God created pain and grief for the specific purpose of manifesting happiness.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
Waves of speech and thought arise from the Ocean of Wisdom, suggesting a flow from source to manifestation.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Pain and grief are presented as opposites that manifest happiness, implying they lack independent positive being.
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.
Forms are described as returning to the formless source, implying the dissolution of individual identity.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The notes mention men do not know that in themselves is the reflected wisdom of God, mirroring the divine.