The Essence of Rumi

LOVERS, IT IS TIME TO FORSAKE THE WORLD

O lovers, lovers, it is time to forsake the world: heaven’s departure drum is sounding in my soul’s ear.

The camel driver has risen, made ready the caravan, and asks us to forgive him: ‘O travellers, why are you asleep?’

All around us are the sounds of departure and camel bells; at every moment a soul and a spirit leaves for the Placeless.

The stars shine like candles behind a deep-blue veil, and a wondrous people issues forth to make the invisible visible.

You have been in a deep sleep beneath the turning spheres; Be warned! Sleep is heavy but life is light and brief.

O heart, go seek the Beloved! O friend, seek the Friend! O watchman, wake up! A watchman is not here to sleep.

Everywhere there is noise and movement, candles and torches; for tonight this pregnant world gives birth to the Eternal.

You were clay, now you are spirit; ignorant, now wise. That which has drawn you this far will draw you yet further.

As He draws you to Himself, how sweet your suffering becomes; His fires are like water; do not be troubled by them.

His mission is to dwell in the heart and break your vows of contrition. Through His diverse designs, these atoms tremble to the core.

O arrogant fool, jumping up from your hole to cry ‘I am lord of all’. How long will you remain jumped-up? Bow down, or else be bowed.

You have nurtured the seeds of hypocrisy and indulged in derision. You denied the existence of Truth, you whoremonger!

Like an ass, you crave for straw; like a cauldron, you are black; you are better off at the bottom of a well, you disgusting creature.

Within me there is Another who makes my eyes spark; If water scalds, it is because of the fire. Let this be known!

I have no stone in my hand; I have no quarrel with anyone; I rebuke no one, for I possess the sweetness of the rose garden.

My eye is from that Source, from another world. One world here, another there – I am sitting on the threshold.

Only those on the threshold know the eloquence of silence. Enough has been said. Say no more. Hold the tongue.

(D 1789: A2:222)

A dervish once had a disciple who used to beg for him. One day, from the proceeds of his begging, he took a morsel to his master. The dervish ate the morsel, and that night experienced a nocturnal emission.

‘From whom did you get that food?’ he asked the disciple.

‘It was given to me by a beautiful girl,’ replied the disciple.

‘By God!’ said the dervish. ‘It’s twenty years since I had a nocturnal emission. This is the effect her morsel had on me.’

Dervishes must therefore be mindful and not eat the food of just anyone, because dervishes are subtly refined and easily affected by things. Things have an effect on them, showing up in the way a speck of grime shows up on a clean white robe. With a dirty robe, one that has become soiled from years of being exposed to grime and dirt and lost all its whiteness, regardless of how much dirt and grease are rubbed into it, nothing will show. This being the case, dervishes should not eat any morsel from wrongdoers, those who live basely, or materialists. Morsels from such strangers have an effect on the dervish, influencing his thoughts and corrupting them, just as the dervish experienced nocturnal emission from eating the morsel of that girl.

(F 27: A131–2/T126–7)

I HAVE RELINQUISHED DUALITY . . .

What am I to do, O Muslims? for I no longer recognize myself.

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Magian, nor Muslim.

I am not of the East nor of the West, not of the land nor the sea;

I am not from nature’s mine, nor from the circling spheres.

I am not of earth, nor water, nor wind nor fire.

I am not of the heavens, nor dust, nor existence, nor entity.

I am not of India nor China, not of Bulghar, nor Saqsin;

I am not of the kingdom of Iraquain, nor the land of Khorasan.

I am not of this world, nor the next, not of Paradise nor Hell;

I am not of Adam, nor Eve, not of Eden nor Rizwan.

My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless;

I am neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.

I have relinquished duality and seen the two worlds as one;

One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

He is the First, He is the Last, He is the Outward, He is the Inward;

I know of nothing but Hu [He], and none besides He Who Is.

Intoxicated with the cup of Love, the two worlds slip from my hands.

Now I have nothing to do but carousing and celebration.

If I so much as pass one moment of my life without You,

I will repent my whole life from that moment on.

If I so much as win one moment in this world with You,

I will trample the two worlds underfoot in a never-ending dance of joy.

O Shams of Tabriz, in this world I am so intoxicated that apart from drunkenness and celebration I have no tale to tell.

(after Nicholson, Selected Poems
from the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, p. 31)

I AM A PAINTER, A PICTURE-MAKER . . .

I am a painter, a picture-maker.

Every moment I create beautiful idols,

but in your presence I erase them all.

I conjure up a hundred images and fill them with spirit,

but when I behold your image

I throw them in the fire.

Are you the winemaker’s cup-bearer,

or the enemy of every sober man?

or is it you who lays to ruin every house I build?

My soul pours forth and mingles with yours.

Because my soul bears your fragrance,

I will cherish my soul.

Every drop of blood I spill tells the earth,

‘The Beloved and I are of one colour,

we are conjoined in love.’

In this house of clay and water,

my heart lies waste without you;

Enter this house, my Beloved, or I will leave it.

(D 1462: A1:178))

THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE LOVER

The intellectual is always showing off;

The lover is always losing his self.

The intellectual runs away, afraid of the water;

Love is all about drowning in the ocean. Intellectuals devise ways to repose; Lovers find no comfort in rest.

The lover is always alone,

even when with others:

like oil floating on water,

the two do not mix.

The one who seeks to advise a lover gains nothing.

He is passion’s fool.

Love, like musk, is reputed for its scent.

Can musk escape its reputation?

Love is like a tree, and lovers are its shade;

the shade spreads far, but can never quit the tree.

To be an intellectual, a child must grow old,

whereas love gives old men back their youth.

(D 1957: A2:241)

But the fire of passion was lit in her mistress, whose vagina was now singing like a nightingale. Dizzy with excitement, she set a chair as she had seen the maid do, and lay down under the ass. She raised her legs and drew him into her. The ass’s member fanned the flames of her desire, and as she urged him on the ass obligingly pushed himself further into her, right up to his testicles. He tore into her intestines, and without uttering a word she died. The chair fell in one direction, she in the other. The room was smeared with blood, and the woman lay prostrate on the floor. O reader, have you ever seen anyone make a martyr of themselves for an ass? . . .

When the maid returned, she saw her dead mistress lying under the ass. ‘O stupid woman!’ she said. ‘Look what has happened to you. You saw only the outward appearance of what I did and my secret remained hidden from you. You went into business without mastering the tricks of the trade! Either you only saw the ass’s member which appeared so sweet and tempting that you didn’t see the gourd, or you were so enamoured of the ass that the gourd remained hidden from your sight.’

(M V: 1333–62, 1403–4, 1382–90, 1417–22)

To ensure that we are left in no doubt as to his purpose in telling this tale, Rumi explains that ‘the male ass is the animal or carnal self: to be under it is more shameful than the behaviour of that woman. If you are a martyr to your carnal self, you are acting just like her’ (M V 1392–3). The woman’s greed for the ass was her undoing, whereas the maid had mastered the art of intercourse with the carnal self, using it to her own ends rather than becoming a martyr to it. Moreover, having mastered it, her ass grew thin and was becoming like the lean ass of Jesus (see here).

The maidservant, the ass, and the gourd

Several passages in the tales told in the Mathnawi contain sexually explicit language, and when Professor Nicholson translated Rumi’s book into English he saw fit to translate these passages into Latin. In the following version of the tale of the maidservant, the ass, and the gourd, these passages have been rendered into English.

A lady’s maid had trained an ass to perform the sexual functions of a man. Using a gourd, she had made a device to prevent the ass’s penis from penetrating too far during intercourse: had the whole of the ass’s member gone into her, it would have wreaked havoc in her womb and intestines. The maid, who had fashioned the gourd to perfection, gained much satisfaction from the arrangement and enjoyed herself so often that the ass began to lose weight. The mistress of the house was puzzled as to why the ass was looking thin, so she took him to the blacksmith and asked, ‘What sickness has caused this ass to become so thin?’ As the blacksmith was unable to help, she decided to investigate the matter for herself. Then one day, through a crack in the door, she saw the little narcissus lying under the ass. It was mounting her in exactly the same way as a man takes a woman. Marvelling at the size of the ass’s member, she said to herself, ‘Since this is possible, I have the greater right since it is my ass. It has been perfectly trained: the table has been laid and the lamp is lit.’ Pretending to have seen nothing, she knocked on the door, calling to the maid to open. The maid hid the gourd and, taking up a broom in her hand, opened the door, pretending she had been cleaning the room.

‘You cunning vixen,’ said the mistress under her breath. ‘You’ve put on a prim face and picked up a broom, depriving the ass of his food.’ Concealing her lust, the mistress acted the innocent, sent the maid on an errand, closed the door behind her, and said, ‘Now I can enjoy myself in private.’ . . .

The maid went on her errand, thinking to herself, ‘O mistress, you’ve sent the expert away. You were too embarrassed to ask me about the device of the gourd, and without my expert knowledge you will foolishly put your life at risk.’ . . .

To explain the reason for the wise man’s seemingly strange behaviour, Rumi quotes the Prophet Muhammad, ‘If I were to describe the true nature of the enemy within the human soul, even the bravest of men would lose hope. No one would do anything any more. They would not even have the strength of will to pray or fast. I therefore attend to your needs without speaking, so that the bird that has lost its feathers may regain its wings’ (M II: 1911–12, 1917). ‘This is the nature of the enmity of the wise,’ says Rumi. Unlike the snake that poisons us from within, ‘the venom of the wise brings joy to the soul’ (M II: 1930).

The man who swallowed a snake

In the following tale, the wise man can be equated with the Sufi shaykh, and the sleeping man with our unenlightened state. The beating the sleeping man receives is an allegory for the suffering that we experience as we awaken to reality.

One day a wise man was riding along the road when he came across a man who was fast asleep. As he passed by, he saw a snake sliding into the sleeping man’s mouth. The wise man dismounted quickly and tried to scare the snake away, but to no avail. Taking up his club, he struck the sleeping man with several powerful blows. Awakened abruptly from his sleep, the man fled for safety to a nearby tree. It was an apple tree, and the ground around it was covered with rotting fruit. ‘Eat them!’ ordered the wise man, stuffing the mouth of the terrified man with apples until no more would go in.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ spluttered the man. ‘What have I done to offend you? If you have a deep-seated quarrel with me, settle it with your sword! Oh, cursed was the hour that you first saw me, and blessed is the man who never sets eyes on you! No guilt, no sin, not the slightest misdemeanour – even heretics wouldn’t approve of punishment this severe. Look! My mouth is pouring with blood and words! O God, I beg Thee, repay him in like manner!’ Yet however much the man cursed, the wise man continued to shower him with blows.

‘Keep running!’ shouted the wise man, and the man kept running from his pursuer, picking himself up off the ground whenever he fell flat on his face. Stuffed with apples, his body covered in cuts and bruises, he was chased backwards and forwards by the wise man until nightfall when he was seized by a violent bout of vomiting. Everything came up, including the snake.

When the man saw the ugly black reptile, he forgot all about the beating he had received and fell on his knees at the feet of the man who had saved him. ‘Truly’ he said, ‘You are either Gabriel or God, for you are the lord of beneficence! Oh, blessed is the hour that you first saw me, for I was dead and you have given me new life . . . Had I known, how could I have said such foolish things? I would have praised you, had you given me the slightest hint as to what you were really doing. Instead, you kept quiet, and carried on beating me in silence.’

‘Had I told you about the snake,’ replied the wise man, ‘you might have died of fright . . . You would have been so terrified that you would not have been able to eat, nor to vomit. I heard your abuse but carried on with what I had to do, repeating to myself, “O Lord, make it easy!”‘

(M II: 1878–96, 1904–6, 1910, 1922–3)

Food unfit for a dervish

Rumi’s frequent references to fasting apply to more than just physical food. By fasting, he means abstaining from the things of this world that satisfy the hunger of our lower nature. Such things are fodder for the ass. In this brief discourse, he offers us another analogy in which he equates the ‘food’ of this world with the food offered by a beautiful young girl, who is herself a metaphor for the ‘world of attraction’ or ‘world of appearances’. The effect her food has on the dervish in the story illustrates the extent to which we need to be aware of the ‘food’ we eat.

It is better not to ask questions of a dervish, for to do so is to oblige him to invent a lie. Why? When a materialistic person asks him a question, he has to reply. He cannot answer him with the truth, since the questioner is not worthy of such an answer, nor is he able to receive it. His mouth and lips are not worthy of such a morsel. So the dervish has to answer him according to the questioner’s capacity, by inventing a lie in order to be rid of him. Even though everything a dervish says is truth and not a lie, when compared with what the true answer is for the dervish, the answer he gives the questioner is a lie; yet for the person who hears it, it is right, and even more than right.