M1:653 — الوَداع ای دوستان من مُرده‌ام / رخت بر چارم فلک‌ بَر بُرده‌ام

This couplet is the climax of the devious vizier's performance of extreme asceticism. Having established a reputation for sanctity among the Christians he secretly aims to subvert, he now feigns a final, divine command from Jesus to enter absolute solitude. His declaration, "I have died," is a classic Sufi metaphor for the annihilation of the ego (fanā) and the death of worldly attachments. By claiming to have moved his "belongings" (rakht) to the "fourth sky" (chārum falak), he is using specific cosmological imagery to make his withdrawal seem like a holy ascension.

In the traditional Ptolemaic system adopted by many Islamic thinkers, the fourth heaven is the sphere of the Sun and, crucially, the celestial station of Jesus (ʿĪsā). The vizier is therefore not just claiming to be dead to the world; he is claiming to have joined Jesus himself in a sublime, unreachable state. This serves his manipulative purpose perfectly: it makes his seclusion appear not as a rejection of his followers, but as the ultimate spiritual attainment, rendering any attempt to contact him a sacrilege. For Rumi's audience, this is a moment of high dramatic irony, as they know the vizier's pious language masks a destructive, worldly scheme.