M6:1024 — مستمع او قایل او بی‌احتجاب / زانک الاذنان من الراس ای مثاب

Translation: The listener is He, the speaker is He, without veil; For the two ears are from the head, O rewarded one.

Meaning: This verse expresses radical monism: in ultimate reality, God is both the speaker and the listener, without any intervening veil, just as the ears are an inseparable part of the head.

This verse, without any pretense, unveils the countenance of absolute monotheism, declaring the pure unity of existence. Mawlana states: "The listener is He, the speaker is He, without veil." This signifies that at the ultimate level of being, the separation between speaker and listener—indeed, between agent and recipient—dissolves. There is only one existence from which speech originates and which also hears its own address. It is He who speaks, and it is He who listens to His own speech; and all of this transpires without any veil, without any intermediary. This is the station of formlessness and unveiledness, where all dualities collapse.

To elucidate this profound meaning, Mawlana alludes to a jurisprudential point that was debated in his time: the issue of wiping the ears during ritual ablution (wudu'). He says: "For the two ears are from the head, O rewarded one." In Sunni jurisprudence, there's a discussion about whether the ears are considered part of the head when wiping it and thus should also be wiped. Many jurists held that the ears are indeed part of the head. Mawlana, by invoking this point, intends to convey that just as when you name the "head," the "ear" is also included within it and not separate, so too, when you speak of "God," everything is contained within Him, and nothing exists outside of Him. Both the speaker and the listener arise from His singular essence and return to Him.

This is, in essence, an articulation of the "Unity of Acts" (Tawhid-i Af'ali) in its most complete form; a state where not only is there no agent but God, but even perception and hearing are from Him. This station transcends ordinary, dualistic human language. As I've said before, prophets and saints sometimes must temporarily remove the kohl of unity from their eyes and speak in a dualistic language for the comprehension of common folk. However, in the realm of unveiled witnessing, to which this verse points, language falls silent; for the duality of a speaker and listener who could be separate from each other has vanished. This verse demonstrates that in the depth of existence, all manifestations, including speech and hearing, return to the unity of the Divine Presence, and no distance exists between the apparent and the hidden.

Key takeaways

• In ultimate reality, God is both the speaker and the listener, without any veil or intermediary.
• This verse expresses absolute Unity of Acts (Tawhid-i Af'ali); ultimately, there is no agent or recipient but the Divine.
• Mawlana uses the jurisprudential example of wiping the ears during ablution to illustrate this unity: just as ears are part of the head, everything is part of God.
• This station transcends dualities and ordinary human language; a point where language falls silent before ultimate unity.