M6:1518 — کان معلم نایب افتاد و امین / هر امین را هست حکمش همچنین

Translation: That teacher was a deputy and trustee, / The ruling for every trustee is likewise this. Meaning: This verse, using a jurisprudential example, states that when someone acts as a deputy or representative of a higher truth, they are exempt from the personal consequences of their actions, as their deeds are attributed to that higher truth.

This verse is one of many instances in the Mathnawi where Rumi, with astonishing ingenuity, leverages a jurisprudential (fiqhi) issue to explicate a profound mystical truth. He distinguishes between acting 'for oneself' and acting 'for God' by employing two legal examples. First, a father disciplining his child who subsequently dies. Rumi states that in this scenario, since the father struck the child 'for his own purpose' (e.g., to enforce obedience or to shape the child according to his own will), he is liable for blood money. However, the second example involves a teacher disciplining a student who accidentally dies. Here, Rumi refers to the Sunni legal ruling that in such a case, the teacher is not held liable and is exempt from atonement. Why? As the verse states, 'That teacher became a deputy and trustee / The ruling for every trustee is likewise this.' The teacher acts as a deputy and trustee for a purpose beyond their personal self; they do not act for their own sake, but rather on behalf of education and truth. Consequently, their action is not attributed to their personal ego.

I have emphasized for years that the key to understanding many verses in the Mathnawi lies in this very distinction. Rumi extracts a fundamental existential lesson from this jurisprudential difference: liberation from khodī (selfhood) and attainment of bī-khodī (selflessness). He explicitly declares: 'So slay the self, O Dhulfiqar / Become selfless, a dervish annihilated.' This bī-khodī means acting completely impartially and free from personal attachments and emotions, like a voiceless, emotionless scale or an unfeeling mirror. This is the station of fanā (annihilation), where the servant empties themselves of self and becomes filled with Truth.

The perfect embodiment and Quranic paradigm of this bī-khodī and fanā is the noble verse, 'And it was not you who threw when you threw, but Allah threw' (Quran 8:17). This verse is, truly, the Quran's seal of affirmation on the station of fanā and bī-khodī. God tells His Prophet: 'You did not throw the arrow when you threw it, but God threw it.' This apparent paradox, which both attributes the action to the Prophet and simultaneously negates his agency, is precisely the language of mystics and the language of fanā. In this state, the agent is outwardly human, but inwardly, the divine act flows through them. I myself, in explaining the theory of revelation, have consistently relied on this verse, stating that the Prophet, during the reception and communication of revelation, was empty of self and full of Truth, thus the words were both his and God's.

Al-Ghazali, in his Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din and Kimiya-ye Sa'adat, repeatedly underscored the importance of this verse in explicating how the servant achieves fanā in God. Rumi considers this station the ultimate tawakkul (trust in God); a state where a human is like a corpse in the hands of the washer, devoid of any personal movement or will, or more precisely, becomes so annihilated in self that they no longer perceive a 'self.' Such a person, having become selfless, 'Whatever you do / It is 'you did not throw when you threw', you are safe.' That is, their action is attributed to God, and they are immune from error and its consequences. Rumi even recounts (incorrectly and from an unreliable narration) the story of Ali's encounter with Ibn Muljam, where Ali tells him, 'You are an instrument of Truth, and the doer is the hand of Truth / How can I cast aspersion upon the hand of Truth?' This saying, though historically inaccurate, serves to elucidate the station of fanā and bī-khodī that Rumi seeks to convey: relinquishing the self and becoming an instrument in the hand of Truth.

At the conclusion of this jurisprudential discussion, Rumi admonishes us not to mistake the Mathnawi for a mere shop of jurisprudence and its disputes: 'Every shop has a different trade / The Mathnawi, O son, is a shop of poverty.' This means the Mathnawi is not a shop for selling fiqh; although it draws examples from fiqh, its ultimate destination is the path of love and the station of faqr (spiritual poverty) and bī-khodī.

Key takeaways

• Human actions are categorized: those stemming from khodī (selfhood) and those performed as nāyib (deputy) for Haqq (Truth/God).
• The core concept is bī-khodī (selflessness or mystical self-effacement), signifying the emptying of personal motivations.
• The Quranic verse 'Ma ramayta idh ramayta' serves as the perfect archetype for the station of fanā (annihilation of self), where the apparent and true agents become one.
• The teacher's exemption from personal liability, by acting on behalf of a higher purpose (education), is an analogy for the mystical path of self-transcendence.
• Rumi uses jurisprudential examples to convey his message, but emphasizes that the Mathnawi is a 'shop of poverty' (faqr), not 'a shop of jurisprudence' (fiqh), with love and selflessness as its ultimate goals.