M6:3740 — فاعل مطلق یقین بی‌صورتست / صورت اندر دست او چون آلتست

Translation: The Absolute Agent is surely formless; Form is in His hand like a tool. Meaning: This verse asserts that the ultimate Creator is inherently formless, and all existing forms and phenomena in the world are merely instruments or manifestations through which He expresses His will and power.

This profound verse offers a fundamental insight into Rumi's worldview: the Absolute Creator is formless and shapeless, and all forms—that is, the material phenomena and structured existences of this world—are merely tools in His hand. This 'formlessness' (bī-ṣūratī) must be understood as the essence, the nature, and the Universal Intellect from which all 'forms' (ṣūrat-hā) originate. The world, in truth, is a 'thought' (fikrat) emanating from the Divine Universal Intellect, which has materialized into physical forms. Much like an architect who holds a formless idea (a mental blueprint) and then, using tools like stone and wood (which are themselves forms), gives that idea the external form of a building, God actualizes His 'thought' through the forms of the world.

Rumi emphasizes that these forms are not only created by the formless but also serve as instruments for returning to the formless. He states: "Form came forth from the formless / And returned, saying, 'To Him we shall return.'" All forms follow a circular path: they emerge from the formless and ultimately revert to it. In this process, forms act as instruments or 'tools' (ālat) in the hand of the Absolute Agent to establish and regulate the order of the cosmos.

A crucial point is that we, as humans, can naturally perceive the formless only through forms. This world is, in a sense, "a form God has given Himself, a mask He has placed upon His formless self." We lack the power to remove this mask and directly behold the formless; indeed, we are compelled to seek divine meanings within the very words and phenomena of this world. Just as one must refer to words and linguistic structure to grasp the meaning of a speech, one must look to the forms of this world to understand the Divine 'thought.' The formless, in its sheer grandeur, bewilders, and its manifestation in forms is a way for our limited perception to apprehend it.

Here, Rumi challenges naturalists and materialists who content themselves solely with forms and deny the formless essence. He states that such a group becomes "idol-sculptors and idol-worshippers" (but-tarāsh va but-parast), for they worship the singular 'form' of nature, forgetting that it is merely one of countless possible forms that existence can assume. Even the denial of the formless itself arises from the manifestation of that very formless; "Even His denial gains appearance from Him / This deed of His is naught but His own reflection." This demonstrates the absolute encompassment of the formless over all existence, from affirmation to denial.

Key takeaways

• The Absolute Creator of existence is inherently formless.
• All phenomena in the world (forms) are tools in the hand of the formless Creator.
• The cosmos is the external manifestation of a Divine 'thought' or idea.
• We can only perceive the Formless through forms; the world is a mask on the Divine formless face.
• The meaning of existence must be sought within the forms of the world, not by discarding them.
• Materialism, which confines itself to mere forms, constitutes a form of 'idolatry' by ignoring the formless essence.