Warriors of Love by Mevlana Rumi

Author:Mevlana Rumi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Warriors of Love: Rumi’s Odes to Shams of Tabriz
ISBN: 9781786780294
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2017-07-27T04:00:00+00:00

As far as Shams was concerned, the science of purification is the simplest science of all. He would have done away with theology, as well as the science of philosophy and metaphysics, if he could. Speaking of Plato’s remark, justifying his existence as a philosopher, when he said, ‘If everyone was like us, there would be no need for prophets’, which Shams considered a nonsense given that a pure intellect was superior to sophistry, he maintained that the sage or sheikh was the cleverest of all because his actions are often perplexing. Intellect was superior to reason because it allowed for paradox and contradiction to flower in the midst of such actions. A man should feel free to wander about the hidden valleys of his interior life and seek out alternative vistas if it might help him to break up the patterns of a lifetime.

Shams was aware that only one man in a generation can become a perfect adept. Though he might not have put himself in such a category, he was prepared to honour Rumi as the perfect adept. It was for this reason that he journeyed to Konya in the first place – to become Rumi’s friend and teach him all that he knew. His own life depended on it: the life of a pir was predicated on the prospect of continuing to nurture God-realized men in the community. They, after all, were the pillars of the mystical life. Without them in men’s midst, society would decline into a mish-mash of competing and conflicting ideologies. Indeed, Islam needed the seer and the Sufi adept if it was not to become an empty shell dominated by literalism and oppressive ritual for its own sake. Here is how he viewed Rumi’s presence in the life of Konya:

This generation is not without a grand tree [perfect adept].

For example, there is a huge tree here, full of fruit. Its shade covers the universe, and it is planted in the middle of a barren land scorched by a hot sun. Under this tree, there are a hundred flowing streams. You can imagine the rest.

Would no one ask from which tree the sapling of this one has come, or of which branch has been this tree’s origin?

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