M6:1068 — خود تو دانی که آفتابی در حمل / تا چه گوید با نبات و با دقل

Translation: You yourself know what the Sun in Aries / Says to plants and to unripe dates. Meaning: This verse speaks to God's communication through nature and His actions; the sun, in its annual cycle, "speaks" to plants, inviting them to grow and flourish, which is a form of divine address.

Here, Mowlana delves into a profound aspect of his philosophy that may be obscured by the surface reading of this verse. He unveils how God “speaks,” but not through the conventional speech we are accustomed to. This is a true, authentic divine address, not a merely conventional or contractual one, as it is among humans. When spring arrives, and the sun enters Aries—marking the beginning of Farvardin (March/April)—the sun speaks to the plants and seeds dormant in the soil. It commands the seed: “Split open, rise up, emerge from the earth, and become green.” This command from the sun, which is in fact a command from the Divine, requires no articulated words. His ṣanʿ—His act of making and creating—is itself His speech. It is akin to pressing an elevator button; you are, in effect, commanding the elevator to “go up.” This command, though silent and wordless, carries an imperative meaning. God, too, speaks by pressing the “buttons” of nature, that is, through the causes and effects of the world. The entire universe is a long, continuous utterance from the Divine. As Mowlana states elsewhere: “The whole world is the sound of His melody / Who has heard such a long sound?” This means the ongoing system of the world is a continuous divine address, though hearing it requires a discerning ear. And this concept extends beyond the sun and plants. The “attraction of Yazdan” (God’s pull), which permeates the cosmos, “speaks a hundred hidden words without letter or lip” through “effects and causes” (natural phenomena). These are all coverings over direct divine action. Causes and effects, in Mowlana’s view, are divine habits or customs (ʿādat-e ilāhī); God has established this world upon these habits, but it could have been otherwise. They are veils over divine action, not independent agents of influence. This insight confounds imitative reason (ʿaql-e muqallid), which looks only at the outward appearance of causes. Such reason fails to grasp this depth, and thus Mowlana emphasizes that this discourse is for those who have freed themselves from the confines of partial and imitative intellect.

Key takeaways

• God communicates with creation through His acts and making (ṣanʿ) in the world, not solely through articulated words.
• This divine "speech" is authentic and real, not merely conventional or symbolic.
• The ongoing cosmic order, such as the sun's cycle and plant growth, is a manifestation of continuous divine address.
• Causes and effects in nature are, for Mowlana, "divine habits" (ʿādat-e ilāhī) and veils over direct divine action, rather than independent agents.
• Grasping this form of divine communication requires an insight beyond merely "imitative reason" (ʿaql-e muqallid) that focuses only on appearances.