The Masnavi, Book I (Rumi) · 23 of 37 · tr. E.H. Whinfield
STORY IX-b
Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress, The Creator's self, as it were, not a mere creature!
Moses and Pharaoh, alike doers of God's will, as Light and Darkness.
Poison and Antidote.
Verily, both Moses and Pharaoh walked in the right way, Though seemingly the one did so, and the other not.
By day Moses wept before God, At midnight Pharaoh lifted up his cry, Saying, "What a yoke is this upon my neck, O God!
Were it not for this yoke who would boast, 'I am ?' Because Thou hast made Moses' face bright as the moon, And hast made the moon of my face black in the face.
Can my star ever shine brighter than the moon?
If it be eclipsed, what remedy have I?
Though princes and kings beat drums, And men beat cymbals because of my eclipse, 4 They beat their brass dishes and raise a clamour, And make my moon ashamed thereby, I, who am Pharaoh, woe is me!
The people's clamour Confounds my boast, 'I am Lord Supreme!' 5 Moses and I are Thy nurslings both alike, Yet Thy axe cuts down tho branches in Thy woods.
Some of these branches Thou plantest in the ground, Others Thou castest away as useless.
Can branch strive against axe?
Not so.
Can branch elude the power of the axe?
Nay, O Lord of the power that dwells in Thy axe, In mercy make these crooked things straight!" Man and wife types of the spirit and the flesh.
The dissension of this husband and wife is a parable; They are types of thy animal and rational souls.
This husband and wife are the reason and the flesh, A couple joined together for good and for evil.
And in this earthly house this linked pair Day and night are ever at variance and strife.
The wife is ever seeking dainties for domestic needs, Namely, bread and meat and her own dignity and position.
Like the wife, the animal soul seeks comfort, Sometimes carnal, sometimes ambitious; Reason has no care for these matters, In its mind is naught but regard to Allah.
Though the secret moral hereof is a bait and snare, Hear its outward form to the end.
If spiritual manifestations had been sufficient, The creation of the world had been needless and vain.
If spiritual thought were equivalent to love of God, Outward forms of temples and prayers would not exist.
Presents which friends make one to another Are naught but signs and indications, To give outward testimony and witness Of the love concealed within the heart.
Because outward attentions are evidence Of secret love, O beloved!
The witness may be true or false, Now drunk with real wine, now with sour whey; He who drinks fermented whey displays drunkenness, Makes a noise, and reels to and fro.
That hypocrite in prayers and fasts Displays exceeding diligence, That men may think him drunk with love of God; But if you look into the truth, he is drowned in hypocrisy.
In fine, outward actions are guides To show the way to what is concealed within.
Sometimes the guide is true, sometimes false, Sometimes a help, and at other times a hindrance.
O Lord, grant, in answer to my prayers, discernment, That I may know such false signs from the true!
Know you how discernment accrues to the sense?
'Tis when sense "sees by the light of Allah." If effects are obscure, still causes testify; Kindred, for instance, shows that there is love.
But he to whom God's light is the guide Is no longer a slave to effects and causes.
When the light of Allah illumes his senses, A man is no longer a slave to effects.
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.
Outward actions are described as guides and signs that testify to the love concealed within the heart.
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 enlightened man is described as no longer being a slave to effects and causes.
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 metaphor of being drunk with real wine versus sour whey is used to describe states of spiritual love and hypocrisy.
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.
[auto] God is depicted as actively ordering all events through the metaphor of the axe cutting branches and planting others.
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.
Pharaoh's darkness is described as an eclipse or blackness of the moon, suggesting a lack of light rather than independent evil.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
[auto] The passage asserts that even opposing figures like Moses and Pharaoh are alike doers of God's will, expressing the non-dual nature of existence.