M6:3142 — در چه دنیا فتادند این قرون / عکس خود را دید هر یک چه درون

Translation: Into what world have these generations fallen? Each saw their own reflection within the well. Meaning: This verse speaks to generations of humans who have fallen into the material world, mistaking its reflections for reality, seeing only their own images projected onto it.

“Into what world have these generations fallen? Each saw their own reflection within the well.” This verse, concise yet penetrating, unveils one of Rumi’s most profound insights into the nature of the world and self-knowledge. Here, Rumi leans on the ancient Neoplatonic idea that our sensible world is nothing more than a shadow or ‘reflection’ (ʿaks) of a higher realm of realities. This concept has flowed through the veins of our mystical thought, including the works of Muhyiddin Ibn al-ʿArabi. The world, like a grand mirror, reflects images, and we, ensnared by these reflections, often fail to distinguish the original from the copy, reality from mere appearance.

To elucidate this truth, Rumi recalls a tale from Book One of the Masnavi: the story of the Lion and the Rabbit. A lion, believing it saw another lion at the bottom of a well, plunged in with rage to fight its supposed rival, thus destroying itself. It did not realize it was merely seeing its own ‘reflection’. This narrative serves as an allegory for the ignorance of humans in “these generations”—qurūn here signifying not just centuries, but epochs and the people of an era—who are trapped in a “pit of a world” that is but a reflection of themselves.

The deep psychological and ethical point Rumi extracts from this story is the concept of ‘projection’. It is often the case that when we perceive faults and evils in others and rise to contend with them, we are in fact confronting our own ‘reflection’, the shadow of our own deficiencies and ugliness, projected onto the other. Rumi declares with certainty: “That enmity in him is a reflection of God / For it is derived from the attributes of wrath / And that sin in him is of the same kind as your fault / You must cleanse that habit from your own nature.” This means the enmity you see in another is both a manifestation of God’s wrathful attributes reflected in this world and rooted in your own transgressions and ugly habits. Instead of blaming and fighting the ‘reflection’ in others, one must strive to rectify one’s own ‘original’ self.

Rumi extends this view to humanity’s limited senses. We are, as he says, “O abject one of the six directions, mistaken in every one of the six”; meaning, we are prone to error in this six-dimensional world (up, down, left, right, front, back) in which we are confined. This world is full of shadows and images that prevent us from grasping the original. He states emphatically: “How long, after all, can a reflection persist in sight? / Make original-seeing your habit, O crooked-gazer!” This invitation to asl-bīni (original-seeing) is a call to a vision that transcends appearances, seeking out roots and sources—both in the cosmos and within oneself. It is this original-seeing that rescues humanity from the abyss of deceptive reflections and guides it toward the realm of truth. Thus, mystics become the profound psychoanalysts of history, unveiling not only the human psyche but the very reality of existence.

Key takeaways

• The material world is a realm of reflections and shadows, not to be mistaken for the original reality.
• Being deceived by 'one's own reflection' (like the lion in the well) leads to spiritual peril.
• Many flaws we perceive in others are, in fact, projections of our own inner deficiencies.
• Rumi urges us to cleanse the roots of evil within ourselves, rather than fighting their reflections in others.
• We must avoid 'crooked-gazing' and reliance on appearances, and instead cultivate 'original-seeing'; for reflections are fleeting.
• The cosmos is perfect; any perceived 'crookedness' lies within our perception, not in the architecture of existence.