M6:2254 — عقل از آن بازی همی‌یابد صبی / گرچه با عقلست در ظاهر ابی

Translation: The intellect finds childishness in that game (of love and intuition), though it is outwardly defiant/unwilling in the presence of intellect. Meaning: This verse encapsulates the intellect's conflicted stance toward the realm of love and mystical insight: it simultaneously dismisses this path as childish play, while also finding itself stubbornly resistant and unwilling to submit to it.

This verse starkly portrays the intellect's perennial struggle with what Rumi terms 'the game' – the realm of love, intuition, and divine Unity (Tawhid). The intellect, by its very nature, seeks order, logic, distinction, and multiplicity. Its function is to differentiate, categorize, and create concepts. Thus, whenever it encounters an experience that shatters these frameworks, it dismisses it as 'childish' (ṣabī), deeming it invalid, unserious, and lacking intellectual maturity. This perspective is entirely natural for the intellect, as the path of unity and annihilation in God utterly transforms all its rules of engagement.

I have often stated that our intellect 'prefers, accommodates, and knows multiplicity,' and 'cannot deal with unity.' This is precisely the point Rumi subtly conveys here. The 'game' in which the intellect perceives childishness is none other than the fire of unity that blazes from the mystic's soul. A fire that Rumi describes elsewhere:

Have you seen fire that burns every sapling? Behold the soul's fire, from which imagination burns. Neither imagination nor reality is safe From such a fire that has flared from the soul.

This fire consumes not only imagination (khayāl), but also thought, intellect (ʿaql), and all our conceptual frameworks and sciences. This is because all these sciences and concepts are creators of multiplicity. How can a mind that observes, dissects, analyzes, and transforms a single table into a hundred different concepts ever grasp the unity of 'Everything perishes except His Face' (kullu shayʾin hālikun illā wajhah)? The noble hadith (whose authenticity requires examination but is instructive) states: 'Knowledge was a single point, which the ignorant multiplied.' These 'ignorant' are the seekers of knowledge who, unable to grasp unity, fragmented it.

Therefore, when the intellect confronts this 'fire of the soul' and this 'game' that dissolves multiplicity, it is naturally 'unwilling' (abī); it resists, rebels, and refuses to submit. This is the intellect's inherent rebellion against its own effacement. The intellect does not wish to die, to dissolve, to lose its concept-creating identity. For this reason, anything that points to this mystical realm is, in its view, nothing more than child's play. It is here that we witness how the mystic transcends the realm of intellect and surrenders to the 'game' that intellect finds 'childish.'

An example Rumi himself provides elsewhere to describe this annihilation and dissolution is the 'alif in bismillah.' The alif that is written in 'bismillah' but not pronounced, omitted in recitation: 'That alif in bism has hidden itself; it is in bism, yet also not in bism.' This alif, which exists yet is absent in the word's form, is the perfect image of the state beings find themselves in before the 'Face of God' (wajh-Allāh), or the intellect before the fire of unity. To immerse oneself in God's Face and attributes, and to be annihilated therein, carries precisely this meaning. Our intellect, in this game, must similarly annihilate itself for the path to vision and unity to open. This is not a choice, but its destiny in the face of absolute Truth.

Key takeaways

• The intellect, by its nature of preferring multiplicity, perceives unitary and intuitive experiences as 'childish.'
• The intellect's resistance ('abī' — unwilling) to love and unity stems from its fear of annihilation of its identity and conceptual frameworks.
• The 'game' in which the intellect sees childishness is the 'fire of the soul' that burns imagination, thought, and intellect.
• Knowledge seeks multiplicity, while vision and intuition seek unity; these two realms are often in conflict.
• The annihilation of the intellect and mind, like the hidden 'alif' in 'bism,' is essential for grasping the truth of Tawhid (unity).
• Rumi sometimes refrains from elaborating on predestination and determinism to avoid extinguishing the listener's hope.