M6:1541 — کشته از ذوق سنان دادگر / می‌بسوزد که بزن زخمی دگر

Translation: Slain by the spear of the Just (God), / he burns with longing, crying, "Strike another blow!" Meaning: This verse illustrates the mystic's fervent desire for repeated annihilation in the divine path, perceiving every divine wound as a balm and yearning for more.

This verse presents a sublime and astonishing image of the lover's pinnacle in Rumi's mysticism. We encounter a death here that is sought not out of coercion, but with delight and fervent longing. This slain one is killed by the spear of the Just; meaning, the wound is inflicted by God, who is the very essence of justice. This in itself is a crucial point: this pain is not meaningless or accidental; it comes from the hand of a Beloved who is both just and merciful, and this source transforms the pain into pleasure. Rumi explicitly speaks here of the Sufi's voluntary death and repeated annihilation. This is precisely the death by which the ghāzī (warrior) in the story from the fifth book of the Masnavi would kill his nafs (ego) a hundred times a day. His ego would tell him: "Here, in this cell, you kill me a hundred times a day; go kill me once and be done with it." This "killing a hundred times" is the same as the "repeated blows" in this verse. For an ordinary person, death occurs once, but for the seeker, every day and every moment is an opportunity and an event for dying to the self and coming alive to the divine life. Rumi calls this "three hundred thousand deaths" in the mystic's life, each yielding countless recompense. This slain one not only does not flee death, but burns with delight and passion, pleading, "Strike another blow!" This fervor extends to accepting even divine wrath. Rumi declares: "I am truly a lover of both His grace and His wrath / How wondrous, I am a lover of these two opposites." In the lover's view, both the Beloved's grace and severity are manifestations of the same being and are equally worthy of adoration. This wound is a balm, not pain. As Sheikh Bahai said: "You struck a wound, and the heart found peace from it; O physician of weary hearts, strike another balm." This passion reaches a point where the lover finds the Beloved's sword more alluring than a shield and welcomes it. Rumi here likens the seeker to George (Jarjis), the prophet who was killed and revived sixty times. This analogy emphasizes that dying and living for God is a continuous and repeated process, and each time the seeker dies to the self, he attains a new, more enduring life. One who is drowned in God constantly desires to be "more drowned"; this yearning is endless and insatiable. This self-sacrifice is the work of these great ones; this burning is out of pleasure, as he says: "By God, for the love of this life-cherishing existence / the one slain is more in love with a second killing." This is no longer the work of Azrael; "lovers are slain by love and passion itself." And ultimately, this giving of life is no loss, for "what was one life? You are my hundred lives."

Key takeaways

• Voluntary death and repeated annihilation represent the mystic's ultimate longing for the Divine.
• A wound inflicted by the Just God is not pain, but a balm of divine grace.
• The true seeker joyfully asks for more blows, eager to be more deeply annihilated in God.
• The mystic's love embraces both divine grace and wrath equally, seeing them as dual facets of the Beloved.
• This process of 'dying and coming alive' leads to eternal life and a hundred new souls.