M6:1856 — خاک را بین خلق رنگارنگ را / می‌کند یک رنگ اندر گورها

Translation: Look at the earth, how it renders all diverse people Into a single hue within the graves. Meaning: This verse highlights the homogenizing power of the earth; how death and burial strip away all outward distinctions and social hierarchies among humans, leveling everyone to a single, shared state.

This beyt, in my view, presents a tangible, earthly image of the very concept of "oneness from colorlessness" or "forms from formlessness," which Rumi emphasizes throughout the Masnavi. Here, the earth acts as the "vat of oneness" or the "salt-marsh."

Rumi, in another passage, refers to a childhood miracle of Jesus, who, in his mother Mary's dyeing workshop, would place all fabrics, regardless of the desired color, into a single vat, yet produce each fabric in the exact hue requested by the customer. This "vat of oneness of our Jesus" shatters the market price of the "hundred-colored vat" of the world; it transforms apparent multiplicity into intrinsic unity. The present verse precisely illustrates this idea with a material, everyday example: the earth of the grave ultimately reduces all diverse humans—with their racial, class, gender, beauty, and ugliness distinctions—to a single color and state. No longer does "white-skinned" or "dark-skinned" hold meaning; neither rich nor poor. All become one.

The concept of the "salt-marsh" (namaksār) is also highly recurrent. Anything that falls into a salt-marsh becomes "colorless" (bi-talwin), losing its original color and form to become salt. Rumi in Book Two states: "When the dead donkey fell into the salt-marsh / It shed its donkiness and deadness." It is no longer a donkey, nor dead, but salt. This alludes to Ṣibghat Allāh (the Dye of God) or God's dyeing vat, where anyone who enters becomes unified, and "the piebalds become one-colored within it."

Thus, we are confronted here with two types of "salt-marsh" or "homogenizer." The first is the "salt-marsh of bodies" (namaksār-i jusūm), which is this very earth and graveyard that homogenizes physical bodies. But Rumi goes further, stating: "Indeed, the salt-marsh of meanings is something else." This implies a "spiritual salt-marsh" (namaksār-i maʿānī) that not only forms but also intellectual and spiritual differences, at a higher level, brings to unity. In the realm of meaning, when we reach a higher station, distinctions and colorations vanish, and everything is dissolved into unity.

This realm of meaning, this spiritual salt-marsh, has a key characteristic: "From eternity to eternity, it is ever new." This realm is always new and never ages. Why? Because aging comes from time; eternity (azal) and infinity (abad) here are supra-temporal stages, not the beginning and end of time. Time ages things, but where there is no time, there is no aging. This is a profound reference to Rumi's philosophy of "renewal"; that malāl (spiritual ennui) results from living in oldness and repetition. Gnostics do not become sad because they renew themselves every moment and see the world as new. To achieve this "newness," one must break habits; habit is the cage of free will. By constantly renewing ourselves and our surroundings, we can escape the trap of oldness and malāl, and experience that "salt-marsh of meanings" which is perpetually in newness and unity.

Key takeaways

• The earth of the grave symbolizes the ultimate unity in death, obliterating all outward and social distinctions among humans.
• Rumi distinguishes between the "salt-marsh of bodies" (physical homogenization by earth) and the "salt-marsh of meanings" (spiritual unity in a higher realm).
• The concept of "Jesus' vat of oneness," from which all colors emerge from a single vat, is an allegory for unity in multiplicity.
• In the realm of meaning, differences and multiplicities dissolve, and everything converges into oneness.
• The world of meaning is perpetually "new" and "ageless," as it is free from the constraints of time; this eternal newness combats malāl (ennui).