Rumi on the Transformation of a Soul through the Story of the Chickpea
In the collected sayings of Rumi from the Mathnawi III, 4159-421, he describes how a chickpea is consumed by fire to become another kind of food altogether.
Look at a chickpea boiling in the pot, leaping up when it feels the fire. “Why are you setting the fire under me?” it says. “ After all, you bought me, so why turn me upside down?”
The cook goes on hitting it with the ladle. “Boil nicely and don’t jump away from the one who makes the fire. It is not because I despise you but so that you may gain taste and savour, become nutriment, and mingle with the vital spirit: When you were green and fresh, you drank water in the garden: that water-drinking was for the sake of this fire.”
The Love of the Friend Consumes Us
God’s mercy precedes his wrath, for, without pleasure, flesh and skin do not grow; and unless they grow, what shall the love of the Friend consume?
“O chickpea, you fed yourself in springtime. Now Pain has become your guest. Please him well, that the guest on his return may relate your generosity in the presence of the King, Thus instead of the gift. may the Bestower of gifts himself come to you. ..Seek to give thyself up. Continue, o chickpea, to boil, that neither existence nor self may remain. You are the rose of the garden of the spirit and the spiritual eye. You came in the form of rain and heat, a part of the sun and the cloud and the stars: you became soul and action and speech and thoughts.”
From Plant to Animal to Soul
The existence of the animal arose from the death of the plant. Look! The words “verily, in my being slain there is a life” are true. Action and speech and sincerity became the food of the angel, so that by means of this ladder he mounted to heaven. Just as when that morsel became the food of Man, it mounted from the state of the inanimate and became possessed of soul.
“The caravan of spirits is incessantly arriving from heaven, that they may traffic on the earth and go back again. If I am speaking bitter words it is in order that I may wash you clean of bitterness.”
“O lady, f that is true, increase the heat!” cries the chickpea. “Smite me with the ladle, as you do so delightfully. I am as the elephant: beat and brand my head, that I may not dream of gardens in Hindustan; because Man, left alone, grows insolent and hostile, like the dreaming elephant. He does not heed to the driver and displays viciousness.”
“Formerly,” says the cook, “I, too, was a part of the earth. For a long while, I boiled in the world of Time; for another long while, in the pot of the body. Thus, I became a source of strength to the senses: first as spirit: then as your teacher. While in the inanimate state I used to say to myself, ‘You are being blown hither and thither so that you may become permeated with knowledge and spiritual qualities.’ Since I have become a vital spirit, now let me boil once more and pass beyond animality.”
Journey’s End
Pray continually that you may not stumble over these deeper truths and that you may arrive at the journey’s end, for many have been led astray by the Qur’an: by clinging to that rope a multitude have fallen into the well. There is no fault in the rope, O perverse man, inasmuch as you had no desire for reaching the top.