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(Masnavi Book 4: 60) Paradise and Hell are the effects of Divine Mercy and Wrath





Explaining that one who knows the power of God will not ask, Where are Paradise and Hell?”

God makes Hell to be wheresoever He will: He makes the zenith to be a snare and trap for the bird.
Likewise from your teeth arise pangs of pain, to the end that you mayst say, It is Hell and the dragon.”
Or He makes the water of your mouth to be (sweet as) honey, that you mayst say, “It is Paradise and the robes (of Paradise).”
He makes sugar to grow from the roots of the teeth, that you mayst know the power of the ordinance of the (Divine) decree.

2815. Do not, then, bite the innocent with your teeth: bethink you of the stroke that is not to be guarded against.
God makes the Nile to be blood for the Egyptians; He makes the Israelites safe from calamity, That you mayst know that with God there is discrimination between the sober (traveller) on the
Way and the intoxicated.
The Nile has learned from God to discriminate, for it opened (the door) for these (Israelites) and shut fast (the door) against those (Egyptians).
His grace makes the Nile intelligent; His wrath makes Cain foolish.

2820. He, from kindness, created intelligence in lifeless things; He, because of
His wrath, cut off intelligence from the intelligent one.
By (His) grace an intelligence appeared in lifeless matter, and through (His) chastisement knowledge fled from the intelligent.
There, by (His) command the rain-like intelligence poured down; here, intelligence saw God's
anger and took to flight.
Clouds and sun and moon and lofty stars, all come and go according to arrangement. None comes but at its appointed hour, so that it neither lags behind the time nor (arrives)
before.

2825. How have not you understood this from the prophets? They brought knowledge into stone and rod,
That thou, (judging) by analogy, might’st undoubtingly deem the other lifeless things to be like rod and stone (in this respect).
The obedience (to God) of stone and rod is made manifest and gives information concerning the
other lifeless things,
That (they say), “We are cognisant of God and obedient (to Him): we all are (bearing witness to
His wisdom) not by chance and in vain.
As (for example) the water of the Nile: you knowest that at the time of drowning it made a distinction between the two peoples;

2830. (And) as the earth: you knowest it to be possessed of knowledge, at the time of (its)
sinking, in regard to Qárún whom He subdued and swept away;
(And) as the moon, which heard the (Divine) command and hastened (to obey) and then became two halves in the sky and split;

(And) as the trees and stones which everywhere overtly made the salaam to Mustafá
(Mohammed).

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