M6:604 — گفت شاه ما همه صدق و وفاست / آنچ بر ما می‌رسد آن هم ز ماست

Translation: He said: "Our King is all truthfulness and faithfulness; What reaches us, that too is from us." Meaning: This verse captures the lover's realization that whatever befalls him from the Beloved, whether seemingly a reward or a reprimand, is a direct reflection of his own inner state and merit, rather than any flaw in the Beloved's truthfulness or fidelity.

This verse is the utterance of a lover who, in his longing for union with the Beloved, sat awaiting a rendezvous but fell asleep. The Beloved arrived, saw him slumbering, placed a few walnuts in his pocket, and departed. Upon waking and discovering the walnuts, the lover grasped the profound message: "You are still a child; go play with walnuts!" This verse, then, is his conclusion from that experience. It is neither a complaint nor a lament, but a deep insight.

He realizes that "Our King is all truthfulness and faithfulness." The Beloved is the absolute essence of perfection and truth. There is no flaw, no deficiency in Him. His fidelity is complete, and His truthfulness is unblemished. Therefore, if something reaches us from Him that does not align with our expectations – for instance, we are promised union but receive walnuts – the root of that discrepancy must be sought within ourselves. "What reaches us, that too is from us." This is the very essence of Tawhid al-Af'āl (the Oneness of Divine Acts), which traces every event back to the Divine essence, yet immediately implicates human agency. If we perceive crookedness, it is because we ourselves are crooked in our perception. As Rumi implies elsewhere, if the world appears askew, it is due to the crookedness of your own eye, not the world's. This is the very core of self-knowledge and direct gnosis of the Truth.

This is a lesson in human responsibility for one's destiny and the events that unfold. Rewards and reprimands, graces and reproofs, all are manifestations of divine justice and wisdom, arriving in proportion to our capacity, readiness, and inner state. The lover saw walnuts because he was not yet worthy of beholding the Beloved's face; and this deficiency stemmed not from the Beloved, but from the lover's own receptivity. The Beloved fulfilled His promise, but in a manner consistent with the lover's actual state.

Immediately after recounting this story, Rumi distinguishes himself from such sleeping lovers. He declares: "O sleepless heart, we are safe from this / For we beat our sticks on the roof like guards." He maintains constant vigil over his heart and soul, keeping himself prepared for union. He is the one whose "walnuts were crushed in this mill"; meaning, the childish walnuts of his being, his immature attachments, have been ground away in the mill of love and gnosis, leaving no trace of such childish games. This marks a fundamental difference between the awakened seeker and the slumbering one.

Key takeaways

• Divine justice and faithfulness are absolute; whatever befalls us is a reflection of our own state and merit.
• This verse exemplifies the principle of 'self-knowledge'; the root of any perceived flaw must be sought within oneself, not in the Beloved.
• In the path of love, attaining the knowledge of one's own deficiencies is itself a form of union.
• Through this story, Rumi distinguishes between the 'awakened seeker' and the 'slumbering seeker'.