M6:2907 — وقت آن شد ای شه مکتوم‌سیر / کز کرم ریشی بجنبانی به خیر

Translation: The time has come, O King whose journey is hidden, That out of grace, you shake your beard for good. Meaning: This verse encapsulates a plea from a servant to the divine. Having exhausted all personal efforts, the servant recognizes their own inadequacy and implores the Beloved to intervene with ultimate grace and assistance.

This beyt, drawn from the story of Sultan Mahmud and the thieves, transcends a mere narrative for me. It is a perfect parable for the human condition in the cosmos and our encounter with the divine. The thief, having recognized the Sultan in the darkness of the night, now confronts him with a peculiar boldness when the Sultan's power is revealed. Mowlana here sets the stage for this audacity, explaining that mystics, too, are the very soul of the Lord of nature amidst the night of earthly existence, and thus speak boldly to Him—not in contention, but in supplication.

I see this as the absolute embodiment of the point that we humans, trapped in the prison of nature, each imagine ourselves to possess an 'art,' a cleverness, a stratagem. But Mowlana decisively states that these 'arts' often lead to our misfortune and heedlessness: 'Those arts have bound our neck / From those offices, we are inverted and base.' These become chains around our necks; they engross us in ourselves and fatten our self-admiration. Much like the philosopher Mowlana critiques: 'The philosopher killed himself with thought / Tell him his back is to the treasure.' He believes he reaches his goal through thought, but these very thoughts entrap him in a veil of words and concepts, distancing him from the vision of the Beloved. Worldly 'arts' do the same to us; people become infatuated with their own cleverness and remain heedless of what lies beyond them.

However, only one 'quality' is truly good, the one the thief in the story possessed: 'Except for that quality of the fortunate / Whose eye, in the night, was King-recognizing.' That is, in this dark night of the world, in the obscurity of nature, to be able to recognize the Lord of this world. This is the 'eye' that Mowlana speaks of elsewhere: 'I desire an eye that is King-recognizing / So it may recognize the King in every guise.' This insight is the sole 'art' that is not a highwayman, but a guide.

When a human reaches this station, and with this very insight, after having tried all their 'arts' and realizing that 'those arts all augmented misfortune,' they plead from the depths of their soul, 'That out of grace, you shake your beard for good.' This means, O King of hidden ways, we have shown all we possess, but we have seen that 'Without God's favors, we are nothing, utterly nothing.' Now is the time for your grace and favor. As Mowlana says, 'Without the favors of God and His chosen ones / Even if one is an angel, their scroll is black.'

And the deeper point is when Mowlana states: 'The King felt shame before him on the day of audience / Because in the night, his gaze was upon the King.' The King felt shame before the one who had recognized him in the night and could not refuse his request. This is a rare and astonishing statement; that a servant sometimes reaches a station where God feels 'shame' before them and is obliged to them, as mentioned in the fifth book of the Masnavi: 'What do you know, O jealous one, / That God, too, is obliged to him?' This indicates the exalted status of a mystic who, with their truth-seeing eye, has unveiled the hidden and recognized the realities. Such a person speaks boldly to God, for they have, as it were, become His tongue and soul, and their requests are granted—not out of God's compulsion or helplessness, but out of His ultimate generosity and grace towards His knowing servant.

Key takeaways

• Worldly efforts and cleverness often lead to deeper entanglement and heedlessness, rather than spiritual proximity.
• The only true 'art' is the recognition and vision of the divine presence amidst the darkness of this world.
• This profound insight elevates the servant to a station where God, out of grace, fulfills their requests and, as it were, feels 'shame' to deny them.
• After all human endeavors, divine grace and favor (symbolized by the 'shaking of the beard') are essential for resolving difficulties and transmuting the 'copper of deeds' into 'gold.'
• Mowlana, through this verse, offers a profound critique of self-admiration and reliance on individual capabilities, inviting humanity to acknowledge its limitations and lean upon divine generosity.