The Masnavi, Book I (Rumi) · 24 of 37 · tr. E.H. Whinfield
STORY IX-c
When love of God kindles a flame in the inward man, He burns, and is freed from effects.
He has no need of signs to assure him of love, For love casts its own light up to heaven.
Other details are wanting to complete this subject, But take this much, and all hail to you!
Though reality is exposed to view in this form, Form is at once nigh to and far from reality.
For instance, these two resemble water and a tree; When you look to their essence they are far apart; Yet see how quickly a seed becomes a high tree Out of water, along with earth and sunshine!
If you turn your eyes to their real essence, These two are far, far apart from each other!
But let us quit this talk of essences and properties, And return to the story of those two wealth-seekers.
How God made Adam superior to the Angels in wisdom and honour.
He said, "By Allah, who knoweth hidden secrets, Who created pure Adam out of dust; In the form, three cubits high, which he gave him, He displayed the contents of all spirits, all decrees!
Communicated to him the indelible tablet of existence, 6 That he might know all that is written on those tablets, A11 that should be first and last to endless eternity He taught him, with the knowledge of his own 'names,' 7 So that the angels were beside themselves at his instruction, And gained more sanctity from his sanctification.
The expansion of their minds, which Adam brought about, Was a thing unequalled by the expansion of the heavens.
For the wide expanse of that pure mind The wide space of the seven heavens was not enough." The Prophet said that God has declared, "I am not contained in aught above or below, I am not contained in earth or sky, or even In highest heaven.
Know this for a surety.
O beloved!
Yet am I contained in the believer's heart!
If ye seek me, search in such hearts!" He said also, "Enter the hearts of my servants 8 To gain the paradise of beholding Me, O fearer of God." Highest heaven, with all its light and wide expanse, When it beheld Adam, was shaken from its place!
Highest heaven is greatness itself revealed; But what is form when reality draws nigh?
Every angel declared, "In times of yore We bore friendship to the plains of earth; We were wont to sow the seed of service on the earth, Wherefore we bore a wondrous attachment to it.
What was this attachment to that house of earth When our own natures are heavenly?
What was the friendship of lights like us to darkness?
How can light dwell together with darkness?
O Adam!
that friendship arose from the scent of thee, Because the earth is the warp and weft of thy body.
Thy earthly body was taken from there, Thy pure spirit of light was shed down from here!
But our souls were enlightened by thy spirit 9 Long, long before earth had diverted it to itself.
We used to be on earth, ignorant of tho earth, Ignorant of the treasure buried within it.
When we were commanded to depart from that place, We felt sorrow at turning our steps away from it.
So that we raised many questions, saying, ' O Lord!
who will come to take our place?
Wilt Thou barter the glory of our praises and homage For the vain babble (of men)?' The commands of God then diffused joy upon us; He said, 'What are ye saying at such length?
What ye give tongue to so foolishly Is as the words of spoiled children to their father.
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 analogy of water and a tree illustrates how essence connects seemingly distant forms through transformation.
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.
Love of God kindles a flame that burns the inward man, suggesting an ecstatic state of divine encounter.
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.
The lover burns and is freed from effects when love of God kindles a flame in the inward man.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that in Adam's form, God displayed the contents of all spirits and decrees, making him a mirror of the cosmos.
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.
Angels gained more sanctity from Adam's sanctification, indicating a transfer of divine quality.