M6:2205 — آن حسی که حق بر آن حس مظهرست / نیست حس این جهان آن دیگرست

Translation: That sense upon which the Truth (God) is manifest, Is not a sense of this world; it is another. Meaning: This couplet posits that the faculty through which God can be perceived is not our ordinary five external senses, but a distinct, inner perceptive power.

Here, in this couplet, I discern Rumi’s precise and profound discussion about the perception of Truth. He initiates it by stating that the “sense upon which the Truth (God) is manifest,” that is, the perceptive faculty through which God appears and reveals Himself, is undoubtedly “not a sense of this world; it is another.” This declaration is clear and categorical; Rumi explicitly states that our ordinary external senses of this world are not the necessary instruments for perceiving divine reality.

As I have frequently emphasized, we possess two kinds of senses: “There are five senses beyond these five senses / Those are like red gold, and these are like copper.” This distinction between the five external senses, which are like copper, and the inner senses, which are golden and precious, is a crucial point. The perceptive faculties of animals, though enabling them to exist in this world, can never grasp “those forms” of the Divine. If they could, then “If the animal sense perceived those forms / The cow and donkey would be a Bayazid of their time.” This illustrates that within humans, there is something beyond the sensory perceptions shared with animals.

Elsewhere, Rumi beautifully articulates that God, the “Truth presiding over all” and the “proximate cause” of everything, is not “perceptible to the senses of this house,” meaning this natural world. His existence is “perceptible in a hidden place” (makhmanī); He is felt in secrecy and concealment, not through the outward senses. It is these inner senses that open the eye of our heart to that reality. Just as we turn to a “physician” for bodily health, for the healing and awakening of our inner senses, we must seek refuge with the “Beloved” (Ḥabīb) and the saints of God.

This concept of “manifestation” (mazhar) must be correctly understood. It is the very term Rumi uses in describing the relationship between the soul and the body: “He who made the body a manifestation for every soul.” This statement is extremely precise; the soul does not “inhere” or “reside” within the body, but rather the body is a “signifier” and a “locus of manifestation” for the soul. A living body indicates the presence of a soul. This relationship between the transcendent and the natural, this mysterious intersection, is not something that can be unveiled by sensory perceptions or empirical scientific investigations. It can only be observed and comprehended through a profound philosophical analysis, and beyond that, through the “opening of the inner eyes.” This couplet, building on this foundation, asserts that the sense for perceiving reality is likewise; it is neither an inherence nor something comprehensible by the three-dimensional senses of this world, but another faculty, of a different kind, upon which God manifests Himself. We ourselves are a confluence of nature and the transcendent, and this “other sense” is the aperture that opens the transcendent within us.

Key takeaways

• Perceiving divine reality is not possible through the external senses of this world.
• Rumi distinguishes between 'golden' inner senses and 'copper' outer senses.
• Understanding inner truth requires turning to the 'Beloved' (saints of God), not the 'physician' (bodily healers).
• Only humans possess this inner faculty for perceiving the unseen; animals lack it.
• God is the proximate cause and ruler of existence, but not perceivable through worldly senses.
• The relationship between soul and body exemplifies 'manifestation' (mazhar); the soul does not inhabit the body, but the body is its locus of revelation.