What if someone said to an embryo in the womb,
‘Outside of your world of black nothing
is a miraculously ordered universe;
a vast Earth covered with tasty food;
mountains, oceans and plains,
fragrant orchards and fields full of crops;
a luminous sky beyond your reach,
with a sun, moonbeams, and uncountable stars;
and there are winds from south, north and west,
and gardens replete with sweet flowers
like a banquet at a wedding feast.
The wonders of this world are beyond description.
What are you doing living in a dark prison,
Drinking blood through that narrow tube?’
But the womb- world is all an embryo knows
And it would not be particularly impressed
By such amazing tales, saying dismissively:
‘You’re crazy. That is all a deluded fantasy.’
One day you will look back and laugh at yourself.
You’ll say, ‘ I can’t believe I was so asleep!
How did I ever forget the truth?
How ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness
Are anything other than bad dreams.’
In this one of his many other magnificent pieces the great Persian poet, Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi evoked his philosophical thoughts through this melancholic poetry - The Universe. His deep and thought-provoking message depicts the Islamic belief in the afterlife, a story told so simply yet eloquently. Life is a journey, not merely a destination and metaphorically he explained it from an embryo’s perspective. This is a colloquial style between an embryo in the womb and an unseen person’s voice, or maybe an angel. It was originally written in Farsi, and translated into many languages, including English.
What if someone said to an embryo in the womb,
‘Outside of your world of black nothing
is a miraculously ordered universe;
a vast Earth covered with tasty food;
mountains, oceans and plains,
fragrant orchards and fields full of crops;
a luminous sky beyond your reach,
with a sun, moonbeams, and uncountable stars;
and there are winds from south, north and west,
and gardens replete with sweet flowers
like a banquet at a wedding feast.
In this first stanza of the poem, Rumi makes us think by saying “What if someone said to an embryo in the womb” as we cannot remember if it had ever been told to us when we were an embryo in our mother’s womb. Our universe would mean only the safe shelter of our mother’s womb, where we might have gotten too comfortable living. A thought of a miraculously ordered nature or a vast earth covered by tasty food wouldn’t have excited us much, because we had no idea what it was like to live in this world. Everything we see as reality now, from the range of mountains, oceans and plains to a field full of crops or the luminous sky would be beyond our imagination from the darkness of the womb we lived in. Gardens and orchards full of flowers or the sweetness of our world would not seem real to us as an embryo. Similarly, when we are told about heaven, it is unthinkable and unbelievable to us, just like this world was not believable to an embryo.
What are you doing living in a dark prison,
Drinking blood through that narrow tube?
Aforementioned lines are the metaphor of a mother’s womb, even though an embryo feels extremely safe inside the womb, but it is dark and it is like a prison, since it cannot go anywhere else until the time comes. Mother’s blood forms life organism and it survives through it as the poet says- “Drinking blood through that narrow tube”. It is not said literally, as drinking means what we take from our mouth.
But the womb- world is all an embryo knows
And it would not be particularly impressed
By such amazing tales, saying dismissively:
‘You’re crazy. That is all a deluded fantasy.
It wouldn’t be possible for an embryo to comprehend a universe outside its own universe, and all these amazing tales would sound like a deluded fantasy. A thought of heaven's afterlife may sound the same for us living in our world. This is again the words from an embryo to the voice.
One day you will look back and laugh at yourself.
You’ll say, ‘ I can’t believe I was so asleep!
How did I ever forget the truth?
How ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness
Are you anything other than bad dreams?
In this final part of the poem, the angel voice gives a prediction of the future when these deluded fantasies will become reality and we will look back to our worldly life and laugh at ourselves. We may feel that we are asleep now and not open to the possibility of the truth being revealed to us. Our sadness and sickness are nothing but a temporary feeling. And we may feel that this life was a dream, and we will wake up when we die.
This entire poem is full of rhythmic lines, phrases and metaphorical words to make us think about our universe, through the example of our previous one to make us think about our next one. The biggest truth of life is death, and nobody could ever escape from it. However, maybe we are more than just our body, but our spirits carry on. This poetry was a representation of the Quranic verses of life and beyond our vision. In the Quran, it is written that every living thing will taste death and our souls will return to where they belong. Our life is merely a stoppage in our everlasting journey where we are being tested here for our deeds. This poem eloquently indicates that the state of reality is from a different dimension to make us think about our journey and to not make it to our final destination. This philosophical belief and style of the poetry make it special.
Sources:
The Universe (Embryo in the Womb) ~ Rumi. (2016, April 17). Retrieved June 04, 2020, from https://somathread.ning.com/groups/poems/forum/the-universe-embryo-in-the-womb-rumi
