Rumi: The Light of Life 
 

Steven E. McDaniel, Editor

The universe and light of the stars comes through me.   -Rumi

Rumi: Master of awakening.  A slave to love. 

He was the original whirling dervish and the most famous Sufi.  Many scholars consider the Persian poet Rumi to be the greatest mystical poet of all time.  Today, he is popular in the Middle East and in much of the world although some Islamic followers disavow that Sufism is the ‘infinite heart’ of Islam.  When the renowned religious scholar Huston Smith was interviewed ten years ago by Bill Moyers on the PBS Language of Life poetry series, Smith stated that he thought Rumi was the most widely read poet in America.  By the numerous translations and books of Rumi found in stores and bookshelves it is probably true to this day.  The reason he is so popular is that his work is beyond the chains of time and speaks to a vast audience of love and recognition for the ultimate truth in things.  It just doesn’t get better than Jalaluddin Rumi if you are seeking insights and pathways to the Divine.  He is an exemplary spiritual guide.

Rumi was born in a region of Persia in 1207 in the country we know as Afghanistan.  He came from a lineage of scholars and mystics.  His father was a deeply spiritual man of Islam.  The family moved many times always a few steps ahead of the invading Mongol Empire led by the notorious Genghis Khan.  As a boy, Rumi was recognized as having great insights and understanding.  One of the famous stories of this recognition of Rumi involves the well-known poet of those times, Attar, when upon meeting the teenage boy walking behind his father, quipped, “Here comes a lake followed by an ocean!”

The family finally settled in Turkey where the father began a school and was headmaster of the area dervishes.  Rumi became schooled in theology, poetry, and other arts and sciences.  When his father died, Rumi took over the duties of the school that had over ten thousand students.  Rumi became known as a highly respected scholar and theologian as his fame spread far and wide.  He developed his spiritual understanding through fasting (many were 40 day fasts) and meditations.  He taught his students to open their hearts through poetry, music, and theological study.  Rumi married twice over his lifetime as his first wife died at an early age.  He was a highly respected man of the community who many times would settle disputes helping others to communicate and to act with integrity. 

In 1244, a profound experience happened to Rumi.  He met the strange and mysterious wanderer Shams (Light) of Tabriz.  It is purported that Shams had been praying to God for a friend to share his spiritual being and understanding.  Shams was considered very odd by villagers due to his sudden disappearances and other strange behaviors including his ecstatic states of consciousness.  Students of spirituality followed him around the country where, at times, he worked as a mason.  There are a few different stories about how the two met but the most accepted one is that Rumi was reading from spiritual books to a crowd in the town square by a fountain.  Shams suddenly appeared and came up to Rumi and took the book out of his hands and threw it in the water along with some other books.  Rumi was appalled that anyone would do such a thing.  Shams replied that if Rumi really wanted the learning of books and beliefs of others and not his own personal experience with God then he would retrieve the wet books.  He proceeded to pull one of the books from the water and it was miraculously dry!  Rumi, astonished, replied, “Let them be.”  Thus began Rumi’s true spiritual journey from words and theory to the infinite heart of understanding and love’s intoxicating joy. 

Shams and Rumi retreated into a great friendship of universal love and understanding.  Rumi ended his scholarly pursuits and became a student of spirit and wisdom on a rare scale. As their relationship evolved many students of Rumi became jealous of Shams and their almost exclusive time they spent together.   It has been written from various sources that a few students plotted and murdered Shams and hid his body.  Whatever occurred, Shams disappeared and was never heard from again.  With a broken heart, Rumi began spinning round and round expressing his bewilderment as to what happened to his dear friend and as if to openly display his confusion and grief.  It is said that this was the beginning of Rumi’s whirling that produced most of the poems.  The deluge of poetry emanated out of whirling and ecstatic states prompted by Rumi’s longing for his friend who was God incarnate to Rumi.   Coleman Barks, poet and major translator of Rumi’s works writes, “It is good to remember that Rumi’s ecstasy began in grief.”  A broken heart is an open heart.  And Rumi wrote years later, “ It is the burning of the heart which is everything- more precious than a worldly empire because it calls God.” Longing is at the core of Rumi’s message to summon the Truth and revelation of God.  Without it, there is nothing; only a wasteland of no movement, ill comfort and stagnation. 

For years, Rumi’s grief took him on an enlightened journey to love.  He spoke his poems whirling in ecstasy and scribes recorded them.  A scribe and close confidant, Husam, was the most favored.  Rumi would, at times, revise poems in the privacy of his nights.  A very extensive collection of poems called ‘Divan-i Kebir, also known as the  Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, or The Works of Shams of Tabriz were the culmination of many years of Rumi speaking poems while whirling in ecstatic states.   These ghazals, or odes, are individual couplets that have a rhyme scheme that varies in length of lines.  The rhyme has been abandoned in the English translations for the want of accuracy.  The complete Divan consists of a very thorough translation by Nevit Ergin.  His work, consisting of twenty-two volumes, was in cooperation with the Turkish government, which holds the original manuscripts in Farsi, or the Old Persian language.  A more fundamentalist government came into power toward the end of this cooperation to translate the Divan and blocked the work most recently.  Ergin managed to publish the last volume this year entitled, ‘The Forbidden Rumi’.  Ergin laments that in today’s world of gross fundamentalism and sectarian violence in the Middle East and elsewhere, Rumi would not have lived such an open, illustrious life.  His total lack of dogma and non-religious mysticism and Truth (the path to love) would probably have gotten him assassinated in the climate of recent years.  Certainly, he, like Jesus, would be labeled as a heretic and misfit by the established religious order and considered a threat.  Rumi was fortunate in his time to be highly revered by many.

It leads one to believe that in some ways the world has regressed.  But in the same understanding of Jesus and other true conduits of Spirit, the teaching of love and its unconditional Truth that includes all is always a threat to those who literally hear with the head and without real understanding of the heart.   Religions have mistakenly created exclusionary dogma for their own agendas from various prophets and their teachings of love with no boundaries.  For centuries, the foolhardy have been turning the simplicity of love into long and dramatic lessons of sectarian madness and self-righteousness coupled with church politics and ego.  Only love is right and never wrong.  And only love is real as God.  Nothing more, or less.  And all the rest is just the dance of longing.  This is Rumi’s message as he stated it time and time again in his poems.  Thought-world must transform into the no-thought absolute experience of love with no object.  The spirit of God.   Rumi once wrote, four years from his final death to the world, “For forty years, mind kept me busy with thought.  At age sixty two I was hunted and freed from thoughts and measures.”  The last ten years of Rumi’s life were spent writing one very long poem known as the Masnavi consisting of sixty-four thousand lines over six volumes.  At the age of sixty-six he passed away whereas religious leaders from many countries came to pay tribute.  Rumi called his final dying, “My wedding day with God.”

When you read the Divan and many poems from the Masnavi it is difficult at times to distinguish whether Rumi is talking to himself, Shams, God, love, or you.  That is the power of his truth; that all is one.  Over and over, Rumi, like other great seers and prophets, united the many so-called differences into one incredible presence of love.  Many of his poems talk about annihilation and going to “the land of absence.”  This was the invisible fountain of creation to Rumi whereas the stars, world, things, its mere spray of light.  And here was the ecstasy and infinite joy, for this place of no place is composed of love and freedom from the sufferings of the world.  Rumi’s rare comprehension of truth has been delegated to a small number of humans on this planet and even more rare is the prolific poetry born out of this man’s life.  He taught that reasoning and thought must be abandoned to know God, that a leap must be taken into love and that only a quiet mind can see with the heart the great distance of this sea.  In effect, Rumi stated that a no-thought mind is God as infinite Love, the universal ecstatic being at the source of all.  So simple, but so hard.  Yet, supported by all the great prophets and sages of the ages.  You must choose to die to the Love-God was his paramount message.  There is no love without dying.  This synonymous quality of love and death helps to unravel one of the great mysteries of mystical understanding.  As Rumi wrote many times, death is love and that death is the least thing to worry about.   His writings are really about how to live in the world and be ecstatic with love.

Rumi has written, “My religion is love.”  Again, nothing more or less. Too simple to the mental dogmatic minds with little hearts who want to trap you into their own fancy of thought-worlds which, too often, has nothing to do with love or God.  Love is liberating and in us all and cost nothing but our illusions, or dreams.  And ‘dreams are for those who sleep’ the saying goes.  The spiritual path of awakening is for the seeker turned to finder.  Rumi explains the path in simple terms.  Of the numerous books of his I have read, the epitome of Rumi can be condensed into his one statement, “I am sick and tired of everything but love.”  He pulls no punches.  The truth never does.  And he reveals the greatest secret of all: “annihilation is bliss.”  He is the master of life through dying to the world and the ecstasy that comes with it.  This waking up to the truth has been echoed by many enlightened souls including the great American poet Walt Whitman who wrote, “ Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”   Rumi pounds this home time and time again in his poetry.  But Rumi is talking of mastering the art of dying to love and seeing beyond with the eternal heart into everlasting life and joy while consciously alive.  The heaven of here and now.  Not tomorrow in some pie in the sky.  Here, inside you!  As Jesus taught and others too.  Rumi assures that heaven is here and now, on earth, by waking you to the transitory nature of the world and its objects and letting it all go.  He prompts you to the only ultimate reality of love as God: the true Beauty of Love that is selfless and pure. Reading Rumi is to feel Rumi’s truth and to discover your own ecstasy of Being Love in all things.  It is living in the eternal Now without the pretense and illusion of past and future.

I could go on and on about Rumi and his splendor. I urge anyone on a spiritual journey to read him and to surrender your theories and mere beliefs to his light of love and understanding.  You will grow light-years and find that all the answers to your questions dwell inside you, full of ecstasy.  It’s really too bad that religious fundamentalists don’t just throw away all the books and follow the path of love that Christ and Rumi taught.  It would transform the world in a flash for them to follow the real teachings that profess a non-judgmental God with nothing but Love. 

As Johnathon Star points out in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, “Rumi’s story shows us that the longing and emptiness we feel for a lost loved one is only a reflection, a hologram, of the longing we feel for God; it is the longing we feel to become whole again, the longing to return to the root from which we were cut.” Time and time again, Rumi’s works will transport you to see the metaphor of everything played out.  Light, darkness, loss, union, nature, birdsong, stars, on and on, the creative energies are all metaphors of God that Rumi unravels.  He expounds upon this dance and reveals the mystery of life as an endless joy of discovery.  

I would highly recommend ‘The Essential Rumi’ by Coleman Barks as a primer is your are not already familiar with Rumi.  I have come to know Coleman over the years, and more recently, Nevit Ergin.  Both, are fine dedicated translators of Rumi’s works.  Coleman once wrote me “Remember, Rumi said it is all in the longing.”  Over the years, that statement has taken on a certain blossoming.  Enclosed is an excerpt from something Nevit sent me as I know he would approve of sharing.  Nevit is a medical surgeon who spent most of his life in the throes of Rumi’s works and translating the Divan.  There are other fine translators including the English scholar and writer Andrew Harvey, Kabir Helminski and even Deepak Chopra has a book or two out on Rumi.  Harvey’s ‘The Way of Passion- A Celebration of Rumi I recommend along with reading any Rumi your light of heart leads you toward.   You cannot go wrong!

Here is the paper to share that I received from Nevit Ergin on Rumi just this year.

ANNIHILATION AND ABSENCE IN MEVLANA, (offered by Nevit Ergin)

Absence in Nothingness is my religion,

Annihilation from existence is what I worship.

-Mevlana Rumi [1]

Don't stay idle in this world,

Be annihilated, so you can see my face.

If you want to be like this,

You have to be like that.

My business is in Absence.

-Mevlana[2]

“Annihilation” and “Absence” are vague, abstract terms for some, but they are the most important Truths for a Sufi. Sufism without Annihilation of self is nothing but a bird without wings, it never gets off the ground.

As long as the bird stays in the cage,

It always stays under someone’s control.

-Mevlana[3]

Traditional wisdom, books, discussions, interpretations and existential monism can not replace the joy of Ecstatic realization. The most tragic irony of mankind is to leave this world without knowing what we came for, and where we are going to. Maybe the answers to the questions that bother us the most, such as life, death, God, man, destiny, etc., are beyond human perception.

Since we are the children of our perceptions, more so than of Adam and Eve, it is only natural to look for salvation by changing perception. We will never see the true nature of this cosmic illusion, fiction of the mind and memory, this magnificent lie which we call “Life”, unless we die with the death of annihilation. This way, one beats the chronological death, and acquires immortality.

The Divine Truth has never been restricted in any geographical way, or constrained in any time span. Anyone who can be born from “Self” could realize this. The “Love” is the Divine midwife in this Holy birth.

This Love is not metaphorical love, for example between two people or between an individual and God. Even though a human has a drop of this ocean when they fall in love.

In spite of the great publicity he has received through the past several decades, Rumi is still very much unknown. Part of this paradox results from the difficulty to cover his immense treasure entirely, also the limits of resources have been reached.

Ahmet Eflaki wrote two well written volumes titled “Menakibu’i Arifin” (1353). These are the most popular books about Rumi’s life. A partial English translation of this work was published in the early 20th century under the name “Legends of Sufis”. But Eflaki put more fiction in his book than fact, especially in the chapters coving Mevlana’s life. Unfortunately these “facts” are being recycled in our time.

Mevlana is very elegant, accurate and generous in giving information about himself and his surroundings.

Our source is again, the Divan, and the subjects he brings up in it.

Through the verses of these metric poems, we brought up some of his sayings about Absence and Annihilation the last time. The following are his verses about Love.

You are such an ocean of Love,

That you have no boundary.

The desire man and woman

Feel for each other,

Is only a drop from that ocean.

-Mevlana[4]

Real Love and Pure Love manifests itself as an ecstasy and as different stages of annihilation.

It appears that Love was born from me,

But don't believe that.

In fact, I was born from that Love.

-Mevlana[5]

The one who is not aware of the beginning,

Is the one who is first

On the road of Love.

-Mevlana[6]

This so called “Creation” and its product, “Existence”, are the major curses that haunt us throughout our lives. Accepting this beginning as a façade our mind makes us aware that we are all on a death row. The only way we can feel comfortable is if we can deny our mortality.

Seldom do we have the suspicion that maybe our own time and space bound perception is the one that put us in this predicament.

Love is the only panacea that saves humans:

I was dead, and then came back to life.

I was a cry, then I became a smile.

Love came, and turned me into everlasting glory.

-Mevlana[7]

Without question, this journey which we find ourselves on is long, hard, and lonely. As another of Mevlana sayings goes, “As long as we stay here, God is there. The Soul goes back and forth and stays in the pocket of existence as counterfeit money.”

Annihilation happens through:

    * Remembrance (Dhikr)

    * Austerity (Fasting)

    * Contrition (Inkisar)

    * And a little help from Fellowship[8]

These have all been tried successfully since many centuries in the past. The footsteps of many sages and saints have mapped this secret land. Duality is the double vision of the Self.

Mind, reason and faith are all man’s custom made clothes, that humans wear until a certain point in time, and usually outgrow and change.

Since the endowment of eternity set the

Seminary for the Love,

The difference between lover and Beloved

Has become the most difficult subject.

There are other ways besides causality,

And deductive reasoning to solve the problem,

But they are closed to jurists, doctors,

And someone who thinks he is a cosmologist. 

They all talk about their differences, but

Everyone ended up at a dead end.

Then, they turned toward the mosque.

There, everything became more confused. 

The thoughts were limited,

But the one who gathers and separates them is endless.

The limited disappeared in the unlimited.    

Annihilation is the drunkenness,

Realization comes after annihilation.

It doesn't matter how long the shade becomes,

There is sun afterwards.

-Mevlana[9]

Note: These translations are from the Divan-i Kebir, registered under the numbers 68 and 69 in the Mevlana Museum in Konya, Turkey. Its 44,829 verses (contained in 2 volumes) were compiled in 1368. Its original language is 13th century Farsi spoken in Anatolia.

This Divan was translated by the late Turkish scholar Golpinarli, into Turkish (contained in 7 volumes). My 22 volume English translation comes from that.

There are 200 poems at the end of the Divan that don’t fit into any standard meter. These poems are mentioned as “Original Divan Volume 2”. Hopefully these poems will be published in the following year.

Nevit Ergin

Now, for a few more poems and poem excerpts from Rumi.  Some of these are my favorites: 

THE LIVING

The living word of pure consciousness-you are that!

The reflection of the King’s Face-you are that!

There is nothing outside of yourself,

Look within,

Everything you want is there-you are that!

PATIENCE

Patience is crowned with faith:

Where one has no patience,

One has no faith. 

The prophet said, : God hasn’t given faith to anyone

In whose nature has no faith. 

(Editors note:  Rumi said more than once that impatience is a great evil because it

takes an ego full of expectation separate from the way things are.)

THE WEDDING

Our death is our wedding with eternity.

What is the secret? "God is One."

The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.

This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;

It is not in the juice made from the grapes.

For he who is living in the Light of God,

The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.

Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,

For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.

Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,

So that he may place another look in your eyes.

It is in the vision of the physical eyes

That no invisible or secret thing exists.

But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God

What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?

Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light

Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";

It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,

The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.

...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!

The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

(Mystic Odes 833)

FAST FROM THOUGHTS

Fast from thoughts, fast:

Thoughts are like the lion and the wild ass:

Men’s hearts are the thickets they haunt.

LOVE IS THE MASTER

Love is the One who masters all things;

I am mastered totally by Love.

By my passion of love for Love

I have ground sweet as sugar.

O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you;

How could I know where I will be blown next?

Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny

Reveals himself a liar and a fool;

What is any of us but a straw in a storm?

How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane?

God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection;

How can we pretend to act on our own?

In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack;

Sometimes Love hoists me into the air,

Sometimes Love flings me into the air,

Love swings me round and round His head;

I have no peace, in this world or any other.

The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;

They have surrendered themselves to Love's commands.

Like mill wheels they turn, day and night, day and night,

Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.

LESSON

God created pain and sorrow

That happiness might show itself by contrast.

For hidden things are made manifest

By means of their opposites:

Since God has no opposite, He is hidden.

(Editors note: this is a profound piece replete with incredible insight!)

STAY CLOSE, MY HEART

Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways;

Come into the shade of the tree that allays has fresh flowers.

Don't stroll idly through the bazaar of the perfume-markers:

Stay in the shop of the sugar-seller.

If you don't find true balance, anyone can deceive you;

Anyone can trick out of a thing of straw,

And make you take it for gold

Don't squat with a bowl before every boiling pot;

In each pot on the fire you find very different things.

Not all sugarcanes have sugar, not all abysses a peak;

Not all eyes possess vision, not every sea is full of pearls.

O nightingale, with your voice of dark honey! Go on lamenting!

Only your drunken ecstasy can pierce the rock's hard heart!

Surrender yourself, and if you cannot be welcomes by the Friend,

Know that you are rebelling inwardly like a thread

That doesn't want to go through the needle's eye!

The awakened heart is a lamp; protect it by the hem of your robe!

Hurry and get out of this wind, for the weather is bad.

And when you've left this storm, you will come to a fountain;

You'll find a Friend there who will always nourish your soul.

And with your soul always green, you'll grow into a tall tree

Flowering always with sweet light-fruit, whose growth is interior.

ON THOUGHT

Everyone is overridden by thoughts:

That’s why they have so much heartache and sorrow.

At times, I give myself up to thought purposefully:

But when I choose

I spring up from those under its sway.

I am like a high-flying bird

And thought is a gnat:

How should a gnat overpower me?

THE AWAKENING

In the early dawn of happiness

you gave me three kisses

so that I would wake up

to this moment of love

I tried to remember in my heart

what I’d dreamt about

during the night

before I became aware

of this moving

of life

I found my dreams

but the moon took me away

It lifted me up to the firmament

and suspended me there

I saw how my heart had fallen

on your path

singing a song

Between my love and my heart

things were happening which

slowly slowly

made me recall everything

You amuse me with your touch

although I can’t see your hands.

You have kissed me with tenderness

although I haven’t seen your lips

You are hidden from me.

But it is you who keeps me alive

Perhaps the time will come

when you will tire of kisses

I shall be happy

even for insults from you

I only ask that you

keep some attention on me.

WHISPERS OF LOVE

Lover whispers to my ear,

"Better to be a prey than a hunter.

Make yourself My fool.

Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!

Dwell at My door and be homeless.

Don't pretend to be a candle, be a moth,

so you may taste the savor of Life

and know the power hidden in serving."

HOLD ON

Hold on to the reigns of love and don’t be afraid.

Hold on the real behind the false and don’t be afraid.

You must know-

That the Beloved you seek is none other than you.

Hold onto this truth and don’t be afraid.

HOW LONG

How long

can I lament

with this depressed

heart and soul

how long

can I remain

a sad autumn

ever since my grief

has shed my leaves

the entire space

of my soul

is burning in agony

how long can I

hide the flames

wanting to rise

out of this fire

how long can one suffer

the pain of hatred

of another human

a friend behaving like an enemy

with a broken heart

how much more

can I take the message

from body to soul

I believe in love

I swear by love

believe me my love

how long

like a prisoner of grief

can I beg for mercy

you know I'm not

a piece of rock or steel

but hearing my story

even water will become

as tense as a stone

if I can only recount

the story of my life

right out of my body

flames will grow.

 AND FINALLY FOR NOW. .  .

I have found the truth of the Unseen world

I have come upon the eternal ecstasy.

I have gone beyond the ravages of time.

I have become one with you!

Now, my heart sings

“I am the soul of the world.”

 



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Steven McDaniel is an award-winning video producer, writer and graphic artist.  His upcoming documentary project on the mystic Richard Francis is slated for production in Spring 2008.