Did Rumi Say: “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing// and Rightdoing There Is a Field. // I'll Meet You There”?

In this reflection, I will examine Coleman Barks’ translation of one of Rumi’s poems:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing// and rightdoing there is a field. // I'll meet you there”, and will show the translation is completely misleading.   

The Bigoted Nafs

Ah, my measure of distinguishing right from wrong, how much I need you and how much I suffered from you!  Without blurring the line between good and evil, historically we have learned how evil can manipulate this line in two distinct ways: 1) excessive righteous indignation and losing oneself in the prison of identity ("my" ideology and religion); 2) To rise an iniquitous system of exclusion, corruption, and oppression hypocritically in the name of good and piety.

Pay attention to our time, which in reaction to intolerance of moral absolutism, blurs the line between “right” and “wrong”.  We are living in the age of ethical relativism coming to its end.  We are inclined to level off good and evil and ascribe this poem to Rumi, without understanding:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.

Now this poem is loved by so many in the West, I am afraid for wrong reasons and indeed for indulging in the desires of body and soul, giving in to one’s whims.  [Brad Pitt, the famous actor, tattooed the above words on his arm recently.]  But whoever knows Rumi, knows well that Rumi was a devote Muslim and Sufi whose body of poetry “Mathnawi” is a guidance for discerning the right from the wrong, overcoming bane and vile desires and incontinent ego (nafs), and purifying the self to attend unity with God—the goal of all Sufis.

Coleman Barks words are indeed loose translation of the rubai (quatrain) 157 by Rumi:

از کفر و ز اسلام برون صحرائیست

ما را به میان آن فضا سودائیست

عارف چو بدان رسید سر را بنهد

نه کفر و نه اسلام و نه آنجا جائیست

A rough translation is something like this (though as you know we re-interpret poems as we translate them):

Out beyond infidelity and Islam is a desert,

We enter into a melancholic trance amid that liminal space[2].

This is the Sufi’s resting place:

It is neither infidelity nor Islam; there is no there in that nowhere.

To translate this poem in a way as if there is no difference between “good” and “evil” is a complete misreading of the poem, because in two rubaiyat before (155), Rumi says:

از دیدن اغیار چو ما را مدد است

پس فرد نه‌ایم و کار ما در عدد است

از نیک و بد آگهیم و این نیک و بد است

هردل که نه بی‌خود است زیر لگد است

Again, a rough translation would be:

Essentially, we need the Other for help,

So, we are not an isolated individual and our working principle is in numbers.

We are aware of good and bad and this is good and bad: 

A heart that is not relieved from the self (ego) is trampled.

It is obvious that Rumi doesn’t mean there is a place in which rightdoing and wrongdoing are the same, but why does he say outside Islam and infidelity there is a nowhere which is the resting place of Sufis? 

This ensnarement within ego (nafs) is the point of the previous rubai: good is overcoming the vile desires of nafs (ego) and if one doesn’t overcome this evil, it doesn’t matter if one calls oneself Muslim or disbeliever.  Rumi doesn’t promote beyond good and evil, but he wants to show that evil of ego can hide itself under the banner of religion.  The Quran holds that “nafs” (carnal self) can turn any good thing into its opposite:

Nafs (نَفْس) is an Arabic word occurring in the Qur'an and means self, psyche, ego or soul. In the Quran, the word is used in both the individualistic (e.g. verse 2:48) and collective sense (verse 4:1), indicating that although humanity is united in possessing the qualities of "soul/nafs/consciousness" they are individually responsible for exercising the agencies of their "free will" that it provides them. Much of the popular literature on nafs, however, is focused on the Sufi conceptions of the term. According to the Sufi philosophies, the nafs in its unrefined state is "the ego", which they consider to be the lowest dimension of a person's inward existence - his animal and satanic nature.  The inciting nafs (an-nafs al-ʾammārah):

In its primitive stage the nafs incites us to commit evil: this is the nafs as the lower self, the base instincts.  In the eponymous Sura of the Qur'an, Yusuf says "Yet I claim not that my nafs was innocent: Verily the nafs incites to evil."[Quran 12:53] Islam emphasizes the importance of fighting the inciting nafs in Quran as well as in hadith. 

The Qur'an enjoins the faithful "to hinder the nafs from lust", [Quran 79:40] and another traditional narration warns that "the worst enemy you have is [the nafs] between your sides." Rumi warns of the nafs in its guise of religious hypocrisy, saying "the nafs has a rosary and a Quran in its right hand, and a scimitar and dagger in the sleeve."

Animal imagery is often used to describe the nafs. A popular image is a donkey or unruly horse that must be trained and broken so that eventually it will bear its rider to goal.  Rumi compares the nafs to a camel that the hero Majnun, representing the intellect ('Aql), strains to turn in the direction of the dwelling-place of his beloved.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafs

Indeed, Sufism is a reaction to the hypocrisy and pretentiousness of “zahed” (the one who hypocritically claims, ‘I am too pure’).  In Mathnawi, Rumi extensively criticizes religious hypocrisy and bigotry and the verse above: "the nafs has a rosary and a Quran in its right hand, and a scimitar and dagger in the sleeve,” is from Nicholson’s translation of one of the pieces taken from the book III of Mathnawi:

مدعی گاو نفس آمد فصیح     

صد هزاران حجت آرد ناصحیح

شهر را بفریبد الا شاه را

ره نتاند زد شه آگاه را

نفس را تسبیح و مصحف در یمین

خنجر و شمشیر اندر آستین

مصحف و سالوس او باور مکن

خویش با او هم‌سر و هم‌سر مکن

سوی حوضت آورد بهر وضو

واندر اندازد ترا در قعر او

And Nicholson accurately translates the above verses this way:

The claimant for the cow, the fleshly soul [nafs], is eloquent and brings forward hundreds of thousands of unsound pleas.
He deceives (all in) the city except the king: he cannot waylay the sagacious king.

The fleshly soul [nafs] has glorification of God (on its tongue), and the Quran in its right hand; (but) in its sleeve (it has) dagger and sword.

Do not believe its Quran and hypocritical ostentation, do not make yourself its confident and comrade;

(For) it will take you to the tank to perform the ritual ablution, and will cast you to the bottom thereof.

If we reflect on the above poems and the Rumi’s rubai: “out beyond infidelity and Islam is a desert// We enter into a melancholy trance amid that liminal space”, then we will understand Rumi’s point better.  It is not that Rumi intends to say infidelity is permissible or equal to Islam.  On the contrary, he wants to show that in bowing down to one’s carnal desires infidel and Muslim hypocrites (zahed: those who pretend to be pure but are not) are the same.  Hence, for Sufi the task is to overcome the prison of false thoughts and identities.  If I am entangled in my self-image and identity, as Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist, Materialist, Atheist, whatsoever, and see myself better than others and wish to dominate others, if I hide my dagger under my “glorification of God” and while pretending to do ritual ablution, my carnal ego wants to overcome others, then I ought to let go of the mask and move to the “nowhere” place, where my nafs-ego doesn’t rule or is nullified.  Rumi never says “rightdoing” and “wrongdoing” are the same or one ought to go beyond both of them.

In the Prison of Nafs in the Name of “My Salvation”

Now, I need to go back to this: “Ah, my measure of distinguishing right from wrong, how much I need you and how much I suffered from you!”

In the course of human history, there is no good idea that is not turned into bad by abuse and excess.  The internal mechanism of turning the discernment between good and evil into evil is where one forgets to empathize with people and forcefully wishes to rectify wrongdoings.  As Hegel puts it: Evil resides in the very gaze that perceives evil all around itself. 

If it was the case that God wanted to forcefully convert or set straight the wrongdoers with sword, so why did God give Adam and all human beings the respite up to the Day of Judgement?  Why did God send the prophets and scriptures to guide us?  Is it not the case that we were all lost and the Merciful sent “words” of conduct to help us to find our way?  Surely, in the time of aggression, oppression, and persecution armed resistance is justified in the Quran; however, unlike fanatic’s interpretation, the body of the holy Quran forbids indiscriminately killing people or trying to forcefully convert others to Islam.

The Quran holds that “there is no compulsion in religion: true guidance has become distinct from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believe in God has grasped the firmest hand-hold, one that will never break” (2:256).  Does it say whoever doesn’t believe in Islam should be banned, excluded, or killed?   The Quran states: “Truly those who keep the faith, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabaeans — whoever believes in God and the Last Day and performs virtuous deeds — surely their reward is with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, neither shall they grieve” (2:62).

If the meaning of the words, “there is no compulsion in religion” is clear, it means we cannot force anyone to convert.  If you look at the passages after rejecting compulsion in religion, you will see that the Quran talks about a man who disputed with Abraham about the power of God, and Abraham didn’t kill him for disagreement but argued how God is powerful by challenging him to bring the sun from the west out instead of the east.  Next, the text brings the example of another dispute about the possibility of the Day of Judgment and again God didn’t kill or punish the man who questioned the Day of Judgement, but instead put him to sleep for a hundred years to see for himself how the resurrection after death is possible, and the man agreed with God after awakening and said: “Now I know that God has power over everything” (2:259).  Third, Abraham argued with and asked God “show me how You give life to the dead.”  And again, God didn’t punish him for disbelief and instead showed him how four trained birds on different hill tops, similar to souls, come back to Abraham (2:260).  These and more verses show that in the Quran dispute and disagreement are not sins and people can express their views openly, though respectfully. 

The psychological mechanism of turning the discernment of good and evil into evil is where the mask of self-righteousness and enmity permeates into one’s flesh [this reminds me of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander].  One can see this mechanism at work in the condescending, degrading, and accusatory language that some of believers use in persuading others to their views.  One doesn’t see empathy and care in them, but harsh judgment, as if they themselves are perfect.  They forget or don’t fathom what Jesus meant against dry legalism by saying: “"Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." (John 8:7).  As well, some Muslims forget that God asks the Prophet to repel evil with good:

"Good and bad deeds are not equal. Repel evil by that which is better, and then the one who is hostile to you will become as a devoted friend. But none is granted it except those who are patient and none is granted it except one having a great fortune." (41:34-35)

Or:

“Far better and more lasting is what God will give to those who believe and trust in their Lord; who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry; respond to their Lord; keep up the prayer; conduct their affairs by mutual consultation; give to others out of what We have provided for them; and defend themselves when they are oppressed. Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself—He does not like those who do wrong. There is no cause to act against anyone who defends himself after being wronged, but there is cause to act against those who oppress people and transgress in the land against all justice—they will have an agonizing torment—though if a person is patient and forgives, this is one of the greatest things. (42: 36-43)

We see that God insists that good and evil are not the same and we shouldn’t blur the boundaries.  However, it is as well good to be forgiving and repel evil with good.  Tenderness, gentleness, kindness, empathy, these are Islamic values in dealing with adversary.  The question is: how does Satan turn the measure of good and evil against itself?  What happens?  Satan can abuse fear of God and turn it into extreme egotistic desire for salvation in a way that we forget that salvation happens at the micro level and at the level of state of mind-body-being-psyche-emotions-soul.  I remember, when in fear and trembling, I experienced the presence of God and realized I have been one of disbelievers for long and lived amongst them, my first reaction was reptilian flight or fight. 

If you google it, you will know our reptilian brain controls the body's vital functions such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature and balance.  Humans and all other vertebrates have two instinctive ways to defend themselves when threatened or injured. Their reptilian coping brain instincts are either attack to protect one's life, or we can hide. Since we are born with these response options, humans may act like lizards or alligators when threatened or wounded, if they didn’t have the other Coping Brain functions, limbic and neocortex, to help control reptilian brain instinctive impulses.

Fear of God and damnation is one the foundations of faith; however, one has to digest this faith-love-awe connection in a proper way, because in excess it can distance us from God, by reptilian alienation and reactive hostility to disbelievers, even with believers who don’t think like us.  For example, if I am Jew, Christian, or Muslim, I might think everyone else is damned but me and my religion, and in fear of damnation, Satan can push me to forget that the Destiny is in the Way and fall into reptilian anger and assault on whoever is doing wrong according to my measure of good and evil.  In one word, I may forget love, compassion, empathy, and care.  However, this is not what the Quran says: as long as other authentic religions acknowledge that Islam is a divine religion, disagreement is a dispute about basic spiritual-conceptual effect of variations of idolatry and worshiping the nearest—God as Krishna? Shiva? Christ? Buddha? — within perennial family of religions.

If we ponder the kernel of religions as Golden Rule, we will realize that religions seek to distance us from the reptilian brain: to be just, compassionate, empathic, caring, understanding, open, and giving.  But why does it turn into its opposite?  In another reflection, I wrote:

The raw rapture of faith without proper reflective initiations and ethical growth, for strange reasons, can potentially turn into its opposite. It is like a nuclear fission within soul which can be productive or destructive, if it is not harnessed and trained properly. The experience of faith creates a sense of oneness which defies definition. It is usually the result of a long deep longing and prayers. It is a psychosomatic transformation which starts from a need, a desire, a calling inside (immanent) and then moves to outside (transcendence), to the transcendental, to the divine, God, Nameless, Merciful, Ineffable Awareness. And it roams for life in spiral spheres inside-outside, which constitutes one’s codes of behavior and ethical projection. What is important about this experience is that one is relieved from duality. When we were child, we used to act to please our parents, siblings, then friends and classmates, then spouse, colleagues, and co-workers. We mutually pleased each other, but if we had Plato’s “Ring of Gyges” to be invisible, probably or certainly we would act differently, because no one could see us. But the experience of faith, if it doesn’t get placid and pale due to lack of practice or focus, is this intense feeling that God can see us. This is another stage in which one experiences the constant presence of God from without.

But this ethical behavior is still immature and deficient. It doesn’t come fully from a source within. In the course of time, the intense awareness of God, through practice and prayers, gradually becomes a constant: an internal predisposition in which God is constantly present. In this stage, one can connect to God from within and so one becomes who one is. One becomes one’s ethical comport, not only because of fear of God, but because in oneness with God (as present, not identity), one overcomes all duality. One doesn’t need punishment and reward, fear and encourage, I and You, the duality will be over. One is one’s judge, and then judgement is also over. It is sheer psychosomatic oneness with the universe, the Merciful, aware and alive, ethical, dense, intense, compassionate and empathic, and without any shadow of doubt, while one is constantly open to act uniquely, contextually, and authentically, sui generis, not always based on a kind of situation, or a generic formula.

The resoluteness here is not to get closed off or see oneself as infallible or dogmatic, though it is the very place that danger, the seduction, the schismatic, and the falling lurks. Faith is to be resolute and open to observing oneself, to see one’s mistakes without and beyond the veil of vanity, in constant resort to God, and making amends without time lapse. And if experience of faith turns out to close oneself off to the world, rather than opening up, to see evil all around oneself rather than loving people, then it is very likely that we have a touch of Mara and Iblis on this seeming faith.

Heidegger hyphenates the term “ent-schlossenheit” (resoluteness) in German to show two sides of the same coin of resoluteness: to be close and open. Etymologically entschlosseneheit drives from the word schliessen (to close, shut, fasten) and the prefix ent indicates opposition or separation. So entschlossenheit means to open, unlock, or to be unclosed and opened up. It is interesting that within the phenomenology of Heidegger, “resoluteness” (entscholossenheit) is related to dis-closedness (erschlossenheit), and this dis-closedness is related to Truth, alethia.

In this interconnectedness of an authentic comportment in the world to “resoluteness” and “truth” and “opening up”, one can see that “resoluteness of faith” doesn’t require to be closed off or dogmatic. In resoluteness of faith one is acting in truth and openness. And to be open resolutely is not a one-time act of will but requires constant vigilance and self-observation. This is the same about resolute faith in God and overcoming duality from within and without.

It is interesting that this overcoming of “duality” is not to become “dogmatic” but to be true to oneself, to drop the veil of conceit and mask of pretentiousness. In most original cases of emergence of faith, such as Axial Age sages (Socrates, Upanishad mystics, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, and then in Jesus and Muhammad), we won’t see that sectarian zeal and excessive self-righteousness. Why? To my estimation, it is so because of two reasons: first, they are predisposed to be affected directly and originally by the divine, and in the divine there is no sense of hostility, insecurity, bigotry, schism, and narrow-mindedness. Second, these sages have overcome the duality within and without. Ethically and spiritually, they have arrived at the level of righteousness in which they can defy the evil with good, to love the enemy, to be patient and forgive wrongdoers.

Conclusion

My thesis is that the major point of the Quran and consequently for Rumi as a Muslim and Sufi is discernment between good and evil.  This is an intricate point and I will come back to it again and again: Evil is not the dialectical counterpart of Good; they do not coincide (coincidentia oppositorum); they are not complementary; God has not created evil to measure us: We did it.  And God created freedom of the will.  

It is difficult for us to digest the relation between God’s omniscience, omnipotence, prescience and predestination, to the rise of evil.  We assume, as I used to, that if God has mastery over everything, then also God created evil for a purpose: to teach us.  This way of thinking gives a function to evil and devils and is inclined to redeem them in the Day of Judgement, as they just performed their task.  The Sufi Mansur Hallaj[1] and variations of Kabbalah mysticism fell into this trap.  This way of thinking makes the same mistake as all reductionism: it levels off all meaningful differences into the “same”.  It homologizes choice and choicelessness and ignores the fact that I become what I do; whatever we do, we do to our own body and soul. 

It is false to say devils are doing what God asked them to do and they have a function for God.  We don’t understand that God is not toying with us: we are not choiceless and clueless beings.  Devils choose to be devil, and we are harmed by them and as well learn from them.  But whoever chooses the path of deception and wrongdoing will corrupt its nature and divine essence and will end up in Hell.  I wish to highlight that if God gives respite to evil, wrongdoing, and corruption up to the Day of Judgement, even if God sees and brings about the outcome clearly, it doesn’t mean good and evil are the same or only serve pedagogical purposes.  God gave some creatures such as us and jinns the freedom to do good and evil, it is up to us to choose one or the other.  We, individually and as a species, will be trained and cultivated in this choosing and the Day of Judgement is the ultimate fruition of this cultivating process, but we individually are responsible for our choices and will pay the price for it: if I choose the path of hedonism and following my lowest desires (nafs=carnal soul) in the long run I have corrupted my soul.  Of course, for God anything is possible, but if God takes away my freedom to choose between rightdoing and wrongdoing, then I will lose all tinctures of individuation and will be turned into an object or robot.  Good and evil are separate and the point of creation of universe is to obliterate evil with good:

“We did not create the heavens and the earth and everything between them playfully. If We had wished for a pastime, We could have found it within Us– if We had wished for any such thing.  No! We hurl the truth against falsehood, and truth obliterates it– see how falsehood vanishes away! Woe to you [people] for the way you describe God!  Everyone in the heavens and earth belongs to Him, and those that are with Him are never too proud to worship Him, nor do they grow weary; they glorify Him tirelessly night and day.” (21:16-20)

In this spirit, God sent the prophets to remind us of the Day of Judgment and to help us to choose rightdoing and reject, resist, and fight wrongdoing:

“We gave Moses and Aaron [the Scripture] that distinguishes right from wrong, a light and a reminder for those who are mindful of God, those who stand in awe of their Lord, though He is unseen, and who fear the Hour.  This [Quran] too is a blessed message We have sent down– are you [people] going to deny it?” (21:48-50)

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[1]

http://www.muslimsforjesus.org/Taqiyya/Hallaj,%20The%20Devil%20and%20The%20Proximity%20of%20Distance.htm

[2] I had difficulty translating the poem 157, especially the second line, because in the first line Rumi says: Out beyond infidelity and Islam, there is a place. And in the second verse ما را به میان آن فضا سودائیست, he intentionally makes an ambiguous play on the word "soda", which has so many meanings, but most likely here he might want to combine "melancholy", "fantasy", "thought", "inclination", "yearning". One might interpret it as "beyond infidelity and Islam is a place and the place itself is a melancholic inclination, a thought, a desire". Or "in this place we enter into a melancholic trip or trance". Through this double meaning, in the last line, he concludes that it is "nowhere", it is a zone of non-identity. So, maybe a better translation would be: We enter into a melancholic trance amid that liminal space.