The Daily Star.net
Syed Rezaul Karim
Published On: 2007-10-12

Hazrat Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi (b 1207), hailed as "the greatest mystic poet of the world" by the German poet philosopher Wolfgang Von Goethe for his Mathnawi and Divan-e-Kabir, was surprisingly depreciative of writing poetry. He made a remark in his Discourses (Fihi-Mafihi) that he spouts verses for entertaining his friends, "as if someone was to put his hand into tripe to wash it because his guests want to eat tripe. Hence it has become necessary for me to recite poems since others have wished for this."

But the Mathnawi, his magnum opus, comes up with this remarkable preface: "This is the book of the Mathnawi, which is the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) religion in respect of its unveiling the mysteries of attainment (of the truth) and of certainty; and which is the greatest science of God and the clearest (religious) way of God and the most manifest evidence of God" (translation -- Nicholson).

The late Harvard Professor of Indo- Muslim Culture, Anne Marie Schimmel remarked, "Mawlana's poetry and prose are an attempt to circumambulate Him whose work is so evident in the universe and who has promised mankind that He will hear his prayers (Sura 60/42 Koran)."

Could it be otherwise? Did not the venerable Mawlana declare in unequivocal terms, "I am the servant of the Koran as long as I have life. I am the dust on the path of Mohammad The Chosen One." For Rumi, God is the living, self-subsisting, the supporter of all, as revealed in the Koranic verse, Ayatul Kursi.

Is it possible to know God? There is a divine Hadith, God, the Almighty says: "I was a hidden Treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the creation so that I may be known." Rumi says: "Whatever notion you have of God, He must be something like that because He is the Creator of all of your notions." God's creatures are not like Him in any way yet they cannot be other than Him either, says Rumi.

Mawlana also explains that one can only know a thing through its opposite, and since it is unthinkable in terms of "Towhid" -- "Unity of Being" -- for God to have an opposite in substance, He remains unknowable. It is possible to acknowledge God through His manifestations -- the created world.

"The believer manifests the attributes of faith and positive testimony to God's existence, the unbeliever also manifests God by his denial of God's existence; which provides the opposite against which faith becomes knowable." (Introduction to Fihi-Ma-Fihi-by Thackston)

How to comprehend God? God manifests Himself in hundreds of ways, but no two are the same. Mawlana quotes the Koranic verse Ar Rahman: "Everyday in (new) splendour doth He shine" (Translated by Yusuf Ali). In time of joy there is one manifestation, in time of sorrow another, in time of fear another, and in time of hope another.

As God's acts, and the manifestation of His acts, are varied, so are the manifestations of his essence. He further says: "You too, who are God's power, appear in a thousand different ways every moment and never remain fixed in one fashion." "Reason is that which is ever restless and without peace day and night from thinking and worrying and trying to comprehend God, though God is incomprehensible and beyond our understanding."

Mawlana here imagines "reason" as a "moth" and "beloved" as "candle." A true moth will ever immolate itself and burn in pain in the fire of the candle; therwise it will not be a true moth. The candle, in order to be true to its fire, must burn the moth. So is the dance of the reason circling around the essence of God, the Beloved.

"Before God brought this cosmos into existence by His fiat, undifferentiated souls of the potential mankind slumbered as an idea within God." Rumi tells us why we have been journeying from God to this guest house of this world by using a beautiful pun on the Arabic word "bala" (meaning "yes" in one sense and 'suffering misfortune' in another).

He asked: "Am I not your Lord?" And you responded "Bala" (Yes)! How can one thank Him for that "bala" (Yes)? By "bala" (suffering misfortune)."

The soul that was separated from its source suffers pain for a human being's innate covenant in his conscience as well as in his quest for God after being sent to the world. Hence, the Mawlana's metaphor of a reed-flute's plaintive note to travel back to its source, The Reed Bed -- which was so beautifully penned by Rumi at the beginning of Mathnawi -- says:

Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale complaining of separation saying "ever since I was parted from the reed bed my lament has caused man and woman to moan" (translated by Nicholson).

One has to set out and travel on the path of finding God; he or she may not know the exact destination or station but will be rewarded with the achievement of covering a distance, "whoever labours for the glory of God is never lost, though he shut both his eyes." Here, the Mawlana quotes the Koranic verse, "whoso doeth a particle of good shall see it." "You are veiled," says Mawlana, to see how far one has progressed, and at the end you will see this world as a seedbed of hereafter.

Man has the capability for spiritual development as God has breathed His "Spirit" into him, even though he shares animality with beasts and materiality with inorganic things. He, the Almighty, brought man from non existence into being, then from being into the state of minerality, and from the state of minerality into a state of vegetation, and from the state of vegetation into the state of animality, and from animality into the state of humanity, and from humanity into the state of angelicity -- ad infinitum. Cries Mawlana Rumi, "At what stage I was less in my development?"

"The man," says Rumi, "is the donkey into which angel's feathers were stuck in the hope of his becoming angelic." Man must, therefore, shed his animal nature in order to sharpen and perfect his spiritual awareness. "One must abandon the ego and be born again to the spirit."

Prayer occupies a special feature in Mawlana's work. There is no way to approach God other than prayer. Koran reveals that God created humans and jins to worship Him. But outward ritualistic prayer is just a "shell." Its "soul" is, however, unqualifiable and infinite, without beginning and without end. It is a state of total absorption and unconsciousness during which these external forms remain outside.

Mawlana sings in one of his ecstatic ghazals: "My ablution is with weeping/ thus my prayer will be fiery/And I burn the mosque's doorway when my call to prayer strike it/Is the prayer of the drunken, tell me, is this prayer valid?/For he does not know the timing and is not aware of places." (Translated by Anne Marie Schimmel).

Syed Rezaul Karim is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.