Conclusion, Into the Soup Summary

Barks says some say Rumi is to Persian as Shakespeare is to English, but Barks says Rumi is bigger than just a nationality. Barks is hesitant to put meaning to Rumi's words but says that part of the philosophy is that God is man and man is God. He sees Rumi as celebrating kinship with the soul. He introduces Rumi's next poem, which uses a metaphor of a chickpea and a cook.

In the poem, the chickpea leaps up and asks the cook why it's being boiled, but the cook puts it down into the water saying he's making something great out of the chickpea. The chickpea will become part of the cook. In the metaphor, the human soul suffers torture but only to transform into something great and become one with something greater. In the poem...