M6:2242 — چونک حرفی برنتابد این وصال / واجب آید که کنم کوته مقال

Translation: Since this union cannot bear a single word, It becomes necessary for me to shorten my discourse.

Meaning: This verse articulates that at the peak of spiritual union and oneness with absolute Truth, language and words become deficient, leaving no room for further discourse; thus, the poet finds himself compelled to cut short his speech.

This verse originates from those moments of intense spiritual fervor where Mawlana’s language, confronted with a truth beyond words, is suspended, and he finds himself compelled to silence. When Mawlana reaches a point where concepts and words can no longer bear the weight of immense meaning, he is forced to shorten his discourse. This is not out of inability, but from the ultimate capacity and comprehension of limitless truth.

I have often stated that Mawlana, in those moments when his soul is in the tumultuous waves of divine knowledge, sees himself as a “reed” (ney); a reed whose breath causes him to lament and narrate, but at the zenith of union (wiṣāl), even lamentation yields to silence. This verse is uttered precisely within such a spiritual tempest. Just before this verse, Mawlana speaks of a “fire,” a fire that burns not only saplings but even “imagination” (khiyāl): “Neither imagination nor reality is safe / From such a fire that has flared from the soul.” This fire is the fire of tawhīd, the fire of unity. When this fire ignites, multiplicities, distinctions, and the conceptual frameworks of the mind are all effaced. Our mind is a creator of multiplicity, but in that station, even true and authentic concepts find no safety and are consumed equally in the fire. This state is the very wiṣāl that Mawlana speaks of.

In such a station, what meaning can a “word” (harf) possibly hold? A word itself arises from multiplicity and leads to multiplicity. To speak, there must be distinctions: distinctions between asker and answerer, between lover and beloved, between word and meaning. But in wiṣāl, these distinctions vanish. It is here that Mawlana, by admitting “it becomes necessary for me to shorten my discourse,” withdraws from speech, or at least intends to. He himself clarifies elsewhere: “I am silent from the abundance of my speech”; his silence is not from having little to say, but from having too much. This is an experience that even the philosopher Wittgenstein speaks of as “the unsayable”; what cannot be spoken, must be shown. Mawlana is not a man of discourses; he is a mirror: “My state will be seen if your ear becomes your eye.”

The Quranic confirmation of this state can be found in the verse: “Everything will perish except His Face.” This fire of unity renders everything “perishing” (hālik), meaning annihilated and transient. Not that it will perish (future tense), but that it is perishing right now, in the very present of existence. In this station, neither a lion nor a fox remains. All distinctions vanish. Mawlana likens this annihilation of multiplicities to the disappearance of the alif in Bism. Just as in Bismillah, the alif is omitted but its hidden presence is evident in the meaning, so too in wiṣāl do multiplicities seemingly cease to exist, yet the singular truth endures. Therefore, shortening the discourse is not a sign of inability, but an indication of entering the realm of wordlessness and beyond expression; the realm of the very Face of God that alone remains.

Key takeaways

• In spiritual union (wiṣāl) with Truth, language fails, and words lose their validity.
• This “shortening of discourse” is not due to inability, but to the abundance and intensity of the spiritual experience.
• The fire of unity consumes all concepts, imaginations, and multiplicities, leaving no room for speech.
• Mawlana views silence as a response to the boundless and unsayable truth, not merely a lack of words.
• The reference to “Everything will perish except His Face” indicates that at this level, all distinctions vanish, save for the Divine Essence.