Instilling God In Hearts

By Franklin Lewis, *Rumi's Masnavi, part 4: Rumi's Sufism* - Guardian.co.uk - United Kingdom
Monday, December 21, 2009

Sharia and the external observance of religious rules are only the beginning for the seeker after truth

You attain to knowledge by argument;
You attain a craft or skill by practice;
If voluntary poverty's your choice,
companionship's the way, not hand or tongue.
The knowledge of it passes soul to soul,
not by way of talk or reams of notes.
Its signs are writ upon the seeker's heart,
yet still the seeker cannot ken those signs
until his heart becomes exposed to light
Then God reveals His: Did We not expose? [Qur'an 94:1]
for We've exposed the chambers of your breast
and placed the exposition in your heart

Masnavi 5: 1062-7

Not every wayfarer who sets out on the path may attain the goal, but for Rumi it is the Sufi path which offers the best potential of attaining to true knowledge. But what exactly does Rumi understand by Sufism and the quest? And how does this mystical way relate to the path of Sharia, or religious law? Neither a separate religion nor a sect of Islam, the Sufi path (tariqa) is rather a mode of religious observance and a method of self-training and purification, the goal of which is to orient the believer to a religiously-informed spirituality of experience.

Rumi's Sufism rests upon traditional practices like prayer and fasting (eg, Masnavi 3:2147-74 and 5: 1749-51), pilgrimage (though the idea of 'interior' pilgrimage, and not the outward ritual of Hajj is emphasised, eg, Masnavi 2: 2231-2251), control of baser impulses, and following the example of the prophet. It also depends upon the companionship, or sohbat, of a guide who has progressed along the path and can initiate the novice, helping him establish a praxis and habitus above and beyond what is found in the sharia (eg, Masnavi 1:722-26, 2687-88). The brotherhood of Rumi's followers, the Mevlevis, established a rule requiring a novice perform three years of service to the community before engaging in the sama, or "spiritual concert" – the stylized motive meditation, or turning ceremony, performed as a group, which earned them the nickname of the "whirling dervishes".

This practice is not condoned by all Muslims. And to many Sunni Muslims, Rumi's belief in the spiritual axis mundi, or pivot, who sustains the spiritual universe with the aid of a hierarchy of saints, appears quite heterodox (Rumi himself distinguishes this from the Shia belief in hereditary imams).

So in every age, a saint arises ...
whether seated before you or hid from sight
He is like light and wisdom is his Gabriel
The lesser saints but lamps lit up by him ...
Light emanates in grades as per a scheme,
for seven hundred veils obscure Truth's light
and all these veils of light stack up in tiers.
Behind each veil there stands a certain folk –
these veils – rank after rank up to the top …

Masnavi 2: 815-22

Though some Muslims may find Rumi and Sufism unorthodox, Rumi does not reject the Sharia, but rather assumes that it is the rudiments of religion. As he explains in the prose introduction to book five of the Masnavi, the Sharia is like a candle that lights the way – without that candle we cannot even see to set foot on the spiritual path. But once the path is illuminated by the law, the wayfarer must begin the quest, and his action of walking along the way is the Sufi mode (tariqa). The goal of the quest is nothing short of truth (haqiqa). Rumi also uses the analogy of alchemy or medicine – Sharia is like the theoretical knowledge about transmutation of the elements, or about pharmacology that one reads in books or notes down from a lecture. It is in walking the Sufi tariqa that we gain the experience of applying the chemical reagents to the metal, or following the proper diet and medical regimen. Copper attains to truth in its transmutation to gold. Those who know only the theory revel in the theory; those who experiment with the substance revel in the experiment; whereas those who have been transmuted revel in being gold. The attainment of true health consists in dying to the passions of the world; having died to the world, both the law and the path fade into nothingness, and only the face of God remains in the field of vision (Qur'an 28:88)

Paradoxically, though, this dying to self opens up the possibilities of a theology of love, a vista onto the central animating feature of Rumi's Sufism and his Masnavi, which we will consider next.

In one description (Masnavi 1: 3151-56), Rumi tells why kings seat sufis in front of themselves, whereas they have the royal guards stand to the left, and ministers and secretaries stand at their right:

They give the Sufis pride of place in front
who like mirrors to the eye, reflect soul
Burnished by remembrance, contemplation,
their mirror-hearts receive pristine image …
Beauty's in love with its mirror image,
burnishing souls, instilling God in hearts.

[Click on the title of the article to the original with all the links and to Rumi's Masnavi part 1, 2, 3, and 5]