Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi

“ I would say, "Of all these the love of such an One for me!"
"THOU ART THE SOUL OF THE WORLD"
Eternal Life, methinks, is the time of Union,
Because Time, for me, hath no place There.
Life is the vessels, Union the clear draught in them;
Without Thee what does the pain of the vessels avail me?
I had twenty thousand desires ere this;
In passion for Him not even (care of) my safety remained.
By the help of His grace I am become safe, because
The unseen King saith to me, "Thou art the soul of the world."
"THE VOICE OF LOVE"
Every moment the voice of Love is coming from left and right. ”

“ Is but a weed plucked up;—a rose blooms where ’twas set.
The night He promulgates; day’s work refrains from act.
Consider! Mind becomes like inorganic fact.
Again, night disappears; the light of day is spread;
And nature shows its marvels; reason wakes from dead.
With darkness comes the sleep that locks our reason fast,
But spirits know not darkness; life’s stream still goes past.
Is’t not that mind’s refreshed in darkest hours of night?
Its silence ’tis gives birth to every voice of light.”145
By contraries are contraries brought forth to view,
From out of darkness was the light created new. ”

“ This is how Fehîm Efendi, the Turkish Historian of the Persian Literature, himself a Poet, begins his Sketch of the Life of the great poetic Mystagogue:—
'As the ideal of Searchers after Truth here below, as the pattern of the Pure, the Mevlana is honoured by great and small among the people, by the aristocrat and the common man. In all circles his words are held in high honour; among all the wise his knowledge is greatly esteemed; and no pen has had the power to praise him, and to celebrate his excellence worthily, or to describe it in fitting terms. ”

“ The nine spheres of heaven were all merged in that moon,
The vessel of my being was completely hidden in the sea.
The sea broke into waves, and again Wisdom rose
And cast abroad a voice; so it happened and thus it befell.
Foamed the sea, and at every foam-fleck
Something took figure and something was bodied forth.
Every foam-fleck of body, which received a sign from that sea,
Melted straightway and turned to spirit in this Ocean.
LIFE IN DEATH
When my bier moveth on the day of Death,
Think not my heart is in this world.
Do not weep in the devil's snare: that is woe. ”

“ The charmer first is caught in toils of greed and lust.
And sees not ’tis the snake has charmed him, bound him fast.90
The snake addresses him: ‘O charmer! See now! Look!
Thy own work thou perceivest, my wiles hast mistook.
Thou charmest in God’s name to make me thy bond-slave,
And lead me captive, make me sport for fool and knave.
The name of God it is that holds me fast enchained;
That name thou usest as my trap. Art not soft-brained?
That name will one day vengeance on thee for me take. ”

“ Yes; that is surely the sweetest, the tenderest, the heavenliest of all the Persian Nightingales, come back to us in our sorest need, and singing to us amid the glory of the Resurrection of Life, in the Festival of another Spring, as he never sang in the English air before. It is a Western youthful Poet's Dream of Jeláleddín renewing the first notes of his immortal song, and chanting again the Hymn of Eternal Life, solemn yet joyous, mystic yet clear: stirring what is deepest in our heart and driving away our sorrow, till 'all the pulses of our being, reanimated, beat anew!' ”

“ It may be questioned that if the earthly object of Love was a mere passing shadow of God, the man who loved that object was equally insignificant. And again, how can God be the All-One when, according to the Súfí thesis, He divided Himself into creation? The part is not equal to the whole. These questions are easily answered. The stars shine in the sky, and on the bosom of the sea without diminution. Let the sea pass away, and the star-shadows pass away too; but the stars are still there. So when the world shall pass away it will only be the fading of innumerable shadows we call Humanity. ”

“ Strike not, then, so rashly, fire’s sparks from thy tongue,
In message or talk, feeble hearers among.
The night is pitch dark; strewn around, cotton beds.
Amongst beds of cotton, ’tis, sparks one most dreads.
He sins who, unmindful of dire consequence,
Lets fall spoken spark,—fires a whole world, immense.50
One rash word may set an assembly ablaze.
Molehills into mountains, and higher, it can raise.
In basis, our souls would appear Jesus-like.
To kill, to resuscitate, words are godlike.
If lifted could be from our souls the dark veil,
Each word of each soul would with miracles trail. ”

“ Increase in knowledge. Wisdom ’tis shall light thy way.
Though night be dark, and darkness be of woe the doom,
Much good is in it. Fount of Life’s in land of gloom.404
How can a mortal hope to raise his head from sleep,
When seeds of slothfulness are all he cares to reap?
The dead man’s sleep’s the body-snatcher’s open door.
Householders slumber, robbers rifle every floor.195
Thou knowest not who are thy foes around thee placed.
The imps of hell are enemies to man high graced.
The fire’s the foe of water and of water’s brood;
As water’s foe to fire, and drowns it in a flood. ”

“ Oh, ye miserable mystics! when will ye know that all God's truths and all man's blessings lie in the broad health, in the trodden ways, and in the laughing sunshine of the universe, and that all intellect, all genius, is merely the power of seeing wonders in common things!'
With this impressive appeal we pause, for the present. The standpoint and genius of Jeláleddín could not possibly be better expressed than in Ferrier's closing words. ”

“ The Masnavi has all the pantheistic beauty of the Psalms, the music of the hills, the colour and scent of roses, the swaying of forests; but it has considerably more than that. These things of scent and form and colour are the Mirror of the Beloved; these earthy loves the journey down the valley into the Rose-Garden where the roses never fade, and where Love is. ”

“ The prince looked about, right and left; but saw no one. He replied accordingly. Kīgātū answered: “What? How sayest thou? I see by thy side, seated, a tall man with a grisly beard and a sallow complexion, a grey turban, and an Indian plaid over his chest, who looks at me most pryingly.”
The prince sagaciously suspected forthwith that Jelāl’s shade was there present by his side, and made answer: “The sacred eyes of majesty alone are privileged to witness that vision. It is the son of Bahā’u-’d-Dīn of Balkh, our Lord Jelālu-’d-Dīn, who is entombed in this land.” ”

“ The Persian Scholars have been amazed, and earnest Critics who still believe in the spiritual purpose of Poetry, have been distressed by this infatuation of the young free English mind, whose issue can only be the humiliation of convicted ignorance, spurious idolatry, and vain remorseful regret after the mad midnight debauch. All that is highest and noblest and truest in manhood is not to be thus wilfully flung away for nothing, or to be foolishly bartered for the smart Epigrams of the rudest wit and shallowest reflection. ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn tells us, in his inimitable way, that earthly love is brought about by the memories of innumerable loves in the past, a host of the phantoms of you seeking in your momentary ego the joy of Love over again. Schopenhauer, with much pride, quotes Rochefoucauld as having said that "love may be compared to a ghost since it is something we talk about but have never seen." Precisely; but this is no antagonistic statement, as Schopenhauer supposed. Rather than belittling the beauty of Love, it is an unconscious defence of a very great truth. Love can only be compared with Love. ”

“ Give signs of life, though slight;—as babes do in the womb;
So may God grant thee inward light to cheer thy tomb.
And when thou ’scapest from dark and narrow prison there,
Then mayst thou soar from earth beyond the realms of air.
“The spacious land of God” ’tis named in holy writ,344
The land to which the prophets all have gladly flit.
The heart is never lonesome in that vast abode;
Its green trees never wither, frosts no leaves corrode.
If now thou load thyself with sensual burden’s weight,
Fatigued and jaded, faint thou’lt prove beneath their freight.35
In sleep thou bearest no burden ”

“ O Nightingale to Rose trill, sounding: Allah hu!
O Soul, what if one Star should falter in the Dance?
His Will is Order ever founding: Allah hu!
Who knows Love's mazy circling, ever lives in God;
For Death, he knows, is Love abounding: Allah hu! ”

“ Our wits in love’s affairs stand sore perplexed;
Love only can elucidate love’s text.
The sun alone can well explain the sun.
Wilt see’t expounded? Turn to him alone.85
A shade, ’tis true, of him gives some small hint;
The shining sun surpasses all comment.
A shade, like evening chitchat, sends to sleep,
From sun’s effulgence does full knowledge leap.
That day-orb, still, each eve sets, here below;
The soul-sun, God, shines in eternal glow.
’Mong things extern that orb has not a peer;
But mock suns we can make, our nights to cheer. ”

“ Love God's light in men and women, and not the lanterns through which It shines, for human bodies must turn to dust; human memories, human desires, fade away. But the love of the All-Good, All-Beautiful remains, and when such is found in earthly love it is God finding Himself in you, and you in Him. That is the supreme teaching of Súfíism, the religion of Love. ”