M6:2353 — ای کمان و تیرها بر ساخته / صید نزدیک و تو دور انداخته

Translation: O you who have strung your bow and made ready your arrows / The quarry is near, yet you have cast it far away. Meaning: This verse addresses seekers who, through elaborate preparations and far-reaching intellectual pursuits, miss the truth that lies immediately present and intimately close to them, often within their own being.

Mowlana, in this concise yet profound verse, delivers a fundamental critique of the epistemological approach favored by many theologians and philosophers, pointing instead to the mystic's path where truth, contrary to their assumptions, is not distant but intimately close. I have often emphasized how Mowlana consistently delineates the true path from misleading detours in the Masnavi. The path that philosophers and speculative thinkers seek through rational arguments and intricate reasoning, believing they can reach God by traversing the arduous journey of thought, is, in Mowlana’s view, a lengthy and ultimately fruitless endeavor.

I understand that Mowlana addresses this verse to those who have fashioned bows of intellect and arrows of argumentation to hunt for truth, imagining they must search for it in distant horizons. Yet, the quarry – the Absolute Truth or the Divine Essence – is so near that it requires no such elaborate equipment or far-flung projectiles. This utterance echoes the Quranic verse, “And We are nearer to him than his jugular vein” (50:16). This proximity is not spatial; it is existential, a matter of immediate Presence. The phrase “The quarry is near, yet you have cast it far away” perfectly illuminates this point.

In our encounter with truth, we often become our own veil. Hafez too, wisely declared: “O Hafez, you are your own veil, rise from the midst!” This is the very point mystics have repeatedly stressed: the issue is not God’s distance, but our distance from ourselves. Our distance from that center where God resides, and that center is none other than our ‘self,’ our heart, our soul. Mowlana reiterates this meaning elsewhere, stating, “Two steps, and you have arrived.” One step upon yourself, and one step towards the Divine. And one mystic went even further, saying: “It is but one step; for the step upon oneself is precisely the step towards God.”

This critique by Mowlana is not merely theoretical; it articulates a distinct epistemological methodology. He states: “The philosopher killed himself with thought / Tell him, his back is to the treasure / Tell him, the more he runs / The further he gets from his desire.” The more you run, the more you traverse the path of thought and logic, the further you move from the true treasure, for you have turned your back to it. The treasure is right here, within you, in this very moment. Truth resides not at the end of intellectual pursuit, but at the origin and destination of presence. This aligns with the Quranic concept of bayyinah (clear proof), as in “that those who perished might perish by clear proof, and those who lived might live by clear proof.” For people of spiritual insight, this bayyinah is the direct vision of truth, not its philosophical demonstration. Philosophers have complicated the path with loads of arguments and proofs, but mystics assert that God “is on the roof of our house, in our rooms, in our bed, everywhere.” This verse is a distillation of this entire mystical thought, juxtaposed against abstract reasoning.

Key takeaways

• Truth is immanent and near, not transcendentally distant.
• Over-reliance on intellect and elaborate reasoning often hinders direct apprehension of truth.
• The path to God is inward, achieved through self-knowledge.
• Mowlana critiques complex philosophical and theological approaches for complicating the journey.
• Our own 'self' often serves as the primary veil between us and reality.