M6:1836 — پنج گوهر دادیم در درج سر / پنج حس دیگری هم مستتر

Translation: Five jewels You placed within the casket of the head; / Five other senses too, You concealed within. Meaning: This verse speaks of God's profound gifts to humanity: the five outer senses and five additional hidden, inner faculties, all bestowed without any prior effort on our part.

Here, through the voice of a poor man praying for effortless provision, Rumi embarks on an enumeration of divine gifts. The prayer began with the plea, 'You created me without effort,' implying that my existence came to be without any toil on my part, or exertion on Your part. This subsequent list of blessings extends that very argument: what wonders have You bestowed upon me without me lifting a finger?

Rumi states that God has placed 'five jewels' within the 'casket of our head.' This 'casket of the head' is, of course, a metaphor for the human skull, containing our most precious faculties. These five jewels are undeniably our five outer senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. These are our primary instruments for perceiving the external world.

But beyond these, Rumi points to 'five other senses too, concealed within.' This 'concealed' nature refers to their internal and hidden aspect. Ancient philosophers and natural scientists considered these inner senses to be other faculties playing a fundamental role in perception and cognition. These include the faculty of memory (ḥāfiẓa), intellect (ʿāqila), imagination/conjecture (wāhima), creative imagination (mukhayyila), and common sense (ḥiss-i mushtarak), which in Greek was called phantasia or banṭāsiyā and is referenced in Islamic philosophy. These inner faculties receive, store, and process the forms perceived by the outer senses, enabling imagination, reasoning, and recall. Rumi himself, elsewhere in the second book of the Masnavi, presents this same distinction with the simile, 'There are five senses apart from these five senses; / Those are like red gold, and these like copper,' thereby asserting the significance and authenticity of these inner senses as equal to, or even superior to, the outer ones.

The key point here is the 'effortless' nature of these gifts. This poor man, and by extension all of us, have made no effort to acquire these jewels. Our very existence, along with all its tools for perception and knowledge, has been bestowed upon us purely out of absolute divine grace. This itself serves as evidence and justification for the ensuing request for 'effortless provision,' which also rests upon this foundation of divine kindness and generosity.

Key takeaways

• Human existence is shaped by countless, unearned divine blessings.
• The five outer senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) are our primary tools for perception.
• The five inner senses (memory, intellect, imagination, creative imagination, common sense) are hidden faculties that complete our cognition.
• Rumi places special emphasis on these inner senses, sometimes even valuing them above the outer ones.
• These blessings are acts of divine grace, bestowed without any effort on our part, forming the basis for requesting effortless provision.