You ordered it, so answer now this prayer!

Yes — there is a very good conceptual connection, although I would distinguish what Rumi is saying in that particular passage from the stronger doctrine of predestination that you are drawing out of it.

Rumi’s line around 2325–30 is essentially an argument of “You commanded me to ask, therefore answer what You yourself commanded.” The logic is beautifully paradoxical:

God creates the prayer → God commands the prayer → therefore the fulfillment of the prayer is also already contained within God’s intention.

That gets quite close to the idea you’re describing from Rajinder Singh: meditation isn’t merely a technique for getting somewhere; the fact that you have been given the impulse and initiation to meditate is itself part of the destination.

Rumi’s logic

The surrounding passage is making a subtle point about prayer. The faqir says, in effect:

“You ordered it, so answer now this prayer.”

He’s turning God’s own command back toward God.

It resembles:

“If You have caused me to seek You, then You must also intend that I find You.”

That’s a much deeper proposition than simply:

“If I meditate hard enough, I’ll eventually reach God.”

The first says that the impulse to seek God is itself evidence of God’s prior movement toward you.

And that is very close to the Sant Mat conception you’re describing.

The interesting reversal

Normally we imagine spiritual practice as:

I → meditate → become purified → reach God.

Rumi can reverse the entire causal chain:

God → awakens the longing → causes the seeker to pray → causes the seeker to seek → eventually reveals Himself.

So what appears from the human perspective to be my spiritual effort can simultaneously be understood from the divine perspective as God drawing me toward Himself.

That makes your phrase “you might as well just do it” surprisingly apt.

Not:

“I have to achieve enlightenment.”

but:

“If this longing to return to God has already been planted in me, why resist it?”

And this fits Rumi’s treasure-scroll story extremely well

The treasure-scroll section you’ve just been reading contains this same paradox.

The seeker thinks he is searching for the treasure.

But gradually Rumi suggests that the search itself is being directed by the treasure.

The person thinks:

“I am seeking God.”

The mystic discovers:

“God is seeking God through me.”

That formulation isn’t a literal translation of Rumi’s line, but it captures an important mystical logic running through the Masnavi.

And it explains why Rumi can simultaneously emphasize effort and surrender.

You have to seek.

You have to pray.

You have to meditate.

You have to turn toward God.

But you don’t have to manufacture the destination.

The fact that you are turning toward it is already part of the movement.

Where Rajinder Singh’s formulation becomes especially interesting

If Rajinder Singh says, in effect, that meditation is itself the destination, then meditation ceases to be merely a means to a future mystical experience.

It becomes an expression of the relationship that already exists.

That gives you this progression:

Initiation → longing → meditation → inner experience → realization

But from another perspective:

God’s call → God’s seeking → God’s meditation through the seeker → God’s revelation

Those are the same journey seen from opposite ends.

And that makes sense of a very old mystical paradox:

You are seeking something that has already sought you.

One important qualification

I wouldn’t quite say that Rumi teaches “an initiated person is predestined to return to God” in the precise Sant Mat sense.

Rumi frequently emphasizes human choice, struggle, repentance, spiritual discipline, and the danger of turning away. His theology isn’t simply:

“Once chosen, salvation is guaranteed.”

Rather, he repeatedly plays with a more mysterious idea:

Your capacity to seek God is itself a gift from God.

So you can preserve human participation while still saying that divine grace precedes and enables the seeking.

And that makes the line you noticed especially powerful:

“You ordered it, so answer now this prayer.”

The seeker isn’t bargaining with God.

He’s saying:

“This desire to find You came from You. You told me to ask. Therefore my asking is already inside Your purpose. So complete what You began.”

That is very close to the mystical intuition you’re hearing in Rajinder Singh’s statement that meditation is the destination itself.

In fact, I think that may be one of the best ways to read the treasure-scroll episode: the treasure isn’t merely what you eventually find after the search; the divine impulse that makes you search is already a manifestation of the treasure.