M1:404 — روحهای منبسط را تن کند / هر تنی را باز آبستن کند

Translation: He makes expanded souls take on bodies, And makes each body pregnant with soul again.

Meaning: This couplet describes how souls, vast and formless in their pre-existent state, return to the physical realm to inhabit and vitalize bodies, making each body a vessel for the spirit.

This profound couplet by Mawlana unveils a fundamental relationship between soul and body that sharply contrasts with our conventional understanding. When he says, "He makes expanded souls take on bodies, / And makes each body pregnant with soul again," Mawlana means that the Divine essence summons vast, boundless souls to assume the form of bodies, and then makes each body pregnant with spirit anew. This is far more than a simple metaphor; it signifies an ontological truth: the soul is the origin, and the body is its derivative. As he emphasizes elsewhere in the Mathnawi, "The soul is the essence, the body but a branch." The body is neither the prison of the soul nor its container; rather, it is a garment the soul wears, or a saddle the soul (as the horse of existence) bears.

Mawlana illustrates this relationship with a beautiful analogy: the body is like a saddle placed upon the horse of the soul. Each night, God removes this saddle from the souls, and they are freed from the body's constraints. This is the essence of the saying, "Sleep is the brother of death" (al-nawm akhū al-mawt). Sleep is a temporary separation of the saddle from the horse; a small, temporary death in which the soul is partially liberated from the body's dictates. Just as we experience sweet or terrifying dreams that do not arise from our will but from another realm, so too in death does the soul descend into an eternal sleep, where heaven and hell will be the continuation of those sweet dreams or frightening nightmares. In this way, Mawlana uses the everyday experience of sleep as a bridge to understand the states after death.

Yet, this nightly freedom of the soul is not permanent. Mawlana, in subsequent verses, explains that God places a "long tether on its foot" so that souls "return on the morrow." This means that even in temporary liberation, an invisible thread keeps the soul connected to the body, ensuring that with the arrival of day, the saddle returns to the horse, and the body is once again impregnated with the soul. It is here that the longing of a mystic like Mawlana becomes apparent. Like 'Abd al-Quddus Gangohi, from whom Iqbal Lahori famously quoted, "The Prophet ascended and returned; had it been me, by God, I would not have returned," Mawlana too yearns: "Would that You had preserved this soul like the Companions of the Cave or Noah's Ark, / So that from this storm of wakefulness and awareness, / This conscience, eye, and ear might find release." This expresses Mawlana's profound Sufi root: a desire for complete and irreversible return to the original homeland, to rest eternally with the Divine, far from the storms of wakefulness and the world's tumult.

This couplet also resonates with the concept of 'formlessness' (bī-ṣūratī), one of the most crucial insights in the Mathnawi. The 'expanded souls' (rūh-hā-yi munbasiṭ)—boundless and shapeless—enter the realm of 'form' (ṣūrat). This metamorphosis testifies that the truth of existence is rooted in formlessness, and everything that takes shape emerges from that formless sea. The relationship between soul and body in the Mathnawi is not a spatial one but a relational presence; the soul is not in the body, but with the body, just as time is not in the cosmos, but with the cosmos. This perspective completely differs from Cartesian dualism and profoundly enriches Mawlana's spiritual ontology.

Key takeaways

• The soul is the origin and essence of being; the body is secondary and temporary, functioning as a garment for the soul.
• The soul's relationship with the body is not one of imprisonment or containment, but rather the soul carries and vitalizes the body.
• Sleep symbolizes the temporary separation of soul from body, functioning as a 'brother of death' where the soul finds partial release from worldly constraints.
• Mawlana yearns for this temporary separation in sleep to become a permanent departure and a complete return to the Origin, far from the clamor of wakefulness.
• This couplet emphasizes that the truths of the world stem from 'formlessness' (bī-ṣūratī), with vast souls adopting the form of the body.