M6:3433 — ایستاده پیش سلطان ظاهرش / در ریاض غیب جان طایرش

Translation: He stands before the visible sultan, yet his soaring soul (jān-i ṭāyirash) is in the gardens of the Unseen (riyāḍ-i ghayb). Meaning: This verse describes the state of a saint or gnostic whose physical body is present in the manifest world, while their soul freely soars in the invisible realms.

This verse presents a vibrant and profound image of the state of the awliyā (saints) and wāṣilān (those who have attained union); an image that Rumi emphasizes time and again through various expressions. He tells us that the outward appearance of the gnostic might be amidst creation, bound by the manifest world – just like ʿImād al-Mulk standing before the apparent sultan. But this is merely the external veneer of the matter.

I firmly believe that for gnostics and prophets, the enclosures and limitations of nature cannot imprison their spirit. They reside and live here, in this world, yet at the same time, their souls have taken flight into boundless space, into the realm of the Unseen. The gnostic's soul is a bird freed from the cage of the body and from the confines of time and space, intoxicated by the fresh draught of gnosis, soaring and journeying in the riyāḍ-i ghayb – the gardens of the hidden world.

Rumi offers us an analogy: you see the moon traverse all the constellations and cover vast distances in a single night. How then could the thoughts and souls of prophets and divine saints not soar and travel beyond the celestial spheres and stars? Their true realm and domain lie elsewhere. Although, by virtue of their imprisonment in nature and the material world, their hands and wings are tied here, and their agency is limited, this is but the superficial aspect of their existence.

It is precisely here that Rumi touches upon a very subtle point: the prophetic dictum, "We, the community of prophets, are commanded to speak to people according to the measure of their intellects." This implies that the inner truth and vast worldview of the awliyā are not comprehensible to everyone, and if they were to fully disclose it, they would cast people into an unintended perplexity. Their daily lives, too, must align with ordinary people, not like angels or superhumans, otherwise, interaction and coexistence would not occur. The inner self soars in the exalted realm, but the outer self sits on earth with creation.

I liken this to the situation of the "chick in the egg" that Rumi uses as an example. A chick in an egg can never understand the glorification (tasbīḥ) of birds in the air or comprehend that there are birds flying in the sky. The same example holds true for human beings trapped in the material world and empirical experience, who cannot perceive or understand other realms. The scientists of our era, engrossed in sensory and inductive experiences, unfortunately suffer from this common fallacy: they assume everything must be reduced to what is empirically verifiable. This is a great error – reducing the spirit to the body, and the Unseen to the manifest. This is the fallacy of reductionism that Rumi avoids. The gnostic's soaring soul journeys in formlessness (bī-ṣūratī); it is like water that takes the shape of any vessel but is itself shapeless; it is like light that reveals colors but is itself colorless. Through this flight in the Unseen, he transcends the boundaries of body and matter, while we, the oblivious, assume he is merely standing before the visible sultan.

Key takeaways

• A gnostic's outward presence may be bound by the manifest world, but their inner essence freely soars in the Unseen.
• Prophets and saints are not imprisoned by natural limitations; their souls traverse boundless spiritual realms.
• The true world of the gnostic transcends the material realm and is beyond ordinary intellectual grasp.
• Rumi, through Soroush's reading, critiques reductionism as a common and grave error that confines truth to sensory experience.
• Journeying in the gardens of the Unseen leads to intoxication from fresh gnosis and liberation from temporal and spatial constraints.