Poet and Pir

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

This is a lecture given at Shanti Sadan on 28th June 1974.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

 

Poet and Pir

 

THERE CAN BE few examples in history of someone who suddenly becomes a great

poet at the age of thirty-seven, having, as far as we know, not written any

poetry up to that time. After his short encounter with the wandering dervish

Shams ud-Din of Tabriz, Rumi became much more than that. Indeed, Professor R.A.

Nicholson and Professor A.J. Arberry of Cambridge, who were both steeped in

Persian literature and mysticism, claim that Rumi is the greatest mystical poet,

not only of Persia, but of any age or culture. The claim is a large one, but it

is certainly arguable.

 

After the mysterious disappearance of his Pir [Teacher], Rumi's inner

realisation poured out of him in a continuous stream of poems which he dedicated

to his Teacher and often wrote in his name, incorporating into them, in the

accepted form, the name of Shams where the hearer would expect the name of the

poet. Sometimes he uses the alternative name Khamush - 'the Silent One'.

 

In one of the poems Rumi says:

 

Shams-i-Tabriz is seated like a king

And before him, my verses are ranged like

willing slaves.

 

These poems were later collected in the monumental Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz, an

anthology which contains 3,502 separate poems. It was this book that that great

modern yogi, Swami Rama Tirtha, used to call 'grandfather' because of its size.

It was one of the very few books which he kept and took with him when he retired

to the Himalayas, and it was so heavy that he had to hire a special bearer to

carry it up the mountain to Vasishtha Ashrama, separately from the rest of his

scant possessions.

 

The majority of the poems in the Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz have still not appeared

in an English version, although Professor Nicholson translated forty-eight of

them in a collection originally published in 1898, and Professor Arberry

published a prose translation of 200, all taken from the first half of the

original, in 1968, and a further 200 in 1979. There is a selection being

published in French by Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch and Mohammed Mokri, although

the only volume which has so far appeared, published in 1973, contains versions

of only 408 chosen from the 1,081 odes included in the first two volumes of the

eight-volume Persian edition.

 

The other great work of Rumi's spiritual maturity is the 'Mathnavi' - perhaps

the greatest extended mystical poem in the world. After spending a lifetime in

translating this work, Nicholson wrote:

 

Where else shall we find such a panorama of

universal existence unrolling itself through time

into eternity? And apart from the supreme mystical

quality of the poem, what a wealth of satire,

humour and pathos! What masterly pictures drawn

by a hand that touches nothing without revealing its

essential character! In the Divan Jalal ud-Din soars

higher, yet we must read the Mathnavi in order to

appreciate all the range and variety of his genius.

 

Rumi's literary reputation rested until recently on these two works, but he has

left a third, of which virtually nothing was known until 1952, when it was

published for the first time. After his meeting with Shams-i-Tabriz, Rumi

remained in Konia, and much of his time was taken up with teaching in the sacred

college or Madrassa. Here he gradually collected round him a group of spiritual

enquirers and disciples whom he eventually formed into the special order of

dervishes, called the Mevlevis. They became known for the whirling dance,

carried out to the accompaniment of a reed pipe and drum, which formed part of

the ritual of their spiritual practices. Some of the discourses which Rumi gave

to his disciples were taken down by them and a collection of these was

subsequently made by his son, Sultan Valad. The contain commentaries, teachings,

stories and answers to questions, not written as a single artistic work like the

Mathnavi, but spontaneously given by the Teacher (Pir) in the assembly of the

dervishes as the occasion arose. This book is entitled Fihi ma fihi, which means

'In it, what is in it'. The title is a quotation from a line from a poem by the

mystic Ibn 'Arabi. One tradition says that its meaning is that 'there is to be

found in this book what is contained in that book', and that this signifies that

there is to be found in the Discourses the same spiritual teaching which is

contained in the Mathnavi. It was only in 1952 that these discourses, which had

been lying neglected in some forgotten manuscripts, were at last published in

Persian by an eminent Persian scholar, Professor Badi al-Zaman Furuzanfar. One

of the best surviving manuscripts is in England in the Chester Beatty codex, and

in 1961 Professor Arberry published an English translation of it.

 

All three of Rumi's works, the Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz, the Mathnavi and Fihi ma

fihi are expressions of his own spiritual realisation, but the practical

teachings that he gave to his pupils are perhaps most nearly represented by the

Discourses, because he is here speaking directly to them. It is in these pages

that he takes up and answers the kinds of question which occur to all seekers as

they approach the spiritual teaching. He deals, for instance, with those who

hold, like the rationalists or the logical positivists of today, that if you

cannot actually demonstrate something objectively, then it is meaningless to

talk about it - the people who ask: 'If the spiritual reality is really there,

why can't you show it to us?'

 

Someone else in the assembly raises the point that a certain astronomer has

said: 'You claim that there is something else apart from the heavens and the

terrestrial ball which I see. In my view, apart from that nothing exists. If it

exists, then show me where it is!'

 

Rumi replies that the demand is invalid from the outset. The spiritual reality

cannot be demonstrated objectively, but this does not mean that it is

non-existent. There are many things which have no definite place, but

nonetheless exist. Even the objection raised by the astronomer cannot be shown

to exist objectively. If you ask him to tell you from whence it comes or where

it actually exists, he will be unable to do so. It is not in the tongue, it is

not in the mouth, it is not in the breast; and if you search through all of them

and divide them piece by piece, atom by atom, you will never find this

objection, or the thought that gave rise to it, anywhere. But (says Rumi) if you

even fail to discover the place of your own thought, how can you expect to

discover the place of the Creator of thought?

 

So many thousands of thoughts and moods come over you without you having any

hand in them, for they are completely outside your power and control. If you

only knew whence these thoughts arise, you would be able to augment them. All

these things pass over you, and you are wholly unaware whence they come and

whither they are going and what they will do. Since you are incapable of

penetrating your own moods, how do you expect to penetrate your

Creator?...Heaven comprehends Him not, whilst He comprehends heaven. He has an

ineffable link with you. All things are in the hand of His omnipotence and are

His theatre and under His control. Hence He is not outside heaven and the

universe, neither is He wholly in them. That is to say, these comprehend Him

not, and He comprehends all.

 

Even thought has no definite place. But the Creator of thought must be subtler

than thought. Rumi develops the argument further, pointing out that the subtle

becomes evident from its manifestations in the physical world. The plan of a

builder is much subtler and more abstract than the house which he actually

builds from that plan, but you cannot fully appreciate the subtlety of the plan

until the house is built. Similarly, the subtlety of thought only becomes

manifest when it is materialised and displayed in the sensible world.

 

Rumi cites the striking example of the breath, which is normally invisible, but

may become visible in winter. This doesn't mean that the breath is only there in

cold weather; only that it is too subtle to be seen at other times. So there are

many qualitiies of mind in human nature which only show themselves through the

medium of some act. Clemency or vindictiveness are only manifest in merciful or

vengeful actions. The same is true of the spiritual reality. God cannot be seen

because of His extreme subtlety, but He is manifest through His creation.

 

In the course of this discussion Rumi suddenly says something very remarkable

about his own inspiration. One of the delightful things about the Discourses is

that, as in other real-life conversations, you suddenly get an unexpected change

of direction. Some new train of thought is introduced and it is not always clear

what connection it has with what has gone before. Rumi continues here:

 

My words are not in my control, and therefore I am pained: because I desire to

counsel my friends, and the words do not come as I would have them come,

therefore I am pained. But inasmuch as my words are higher than I and I am

subject to them, I am happy: for the words which God speaks bring to life

whatever they reach, and make a mighty impression.

 

Rumi quotes the well-known verse from the Koran:

 

And when thou threwest it was not thyself that

threw, but God threw. The arrow which leaps

from the bow of God, no shield or breast-plate

can repel it. Therefore I am happy.

 

What he is saying here is that the God-inspired utterances of the enlightened

man (or even of the unenlightened man, if they are inspired), have a power and

force which no contrivance or deliberation can possibly give them. The spiritual

Teacher is a channel for the divine wisdom; he brings about changes in the

hearts of his hearers even without intending it. One is reminded of the words of

Jesus: '...the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father

that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works...He that believeth on me, the works

that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do'. (John

14:10 and 12)

 

Rumi distinguishes between the saint who is absorbed in God and acts by divine

inspiration, and the man who is consciously trying to do the will of God:

 

A man is said to be absorbed when the water has absolute control over him and he

has no control of the water. The man absorbed and the swimmer are both in the

water; but the former is carried along and borne by the water, whereas the

swimmer carries his own strength and moves at his own free will. So every

movement made by the man absorbed, and every act and word that issues from him,

all that proceeds from the water and not from him; he is present there as the

pretext. In the same way when you hear words coming from a wall, you know that

they do not proceed from the wall but that there is someone who brought the wall

into speech.

 

The saints are like that. They have died before physical death and have taken on

the status of door and wall. Not so much as a hair's tip of separate existence

has remained in them. In the hands of Omnipotence they are as a shield: the

movements of the shield proceed not from the shield. This is the meaning of the

statement, 'I am the Truth': the shield says, 'I am not there at all, the

movement proceeds from the Hand of God.' Regard such a shield as God, and do not

use violence against God, for those who rain blows against such a shield have

declared war against God and ranged themselves against God.

 

The reference in this passage to the statement 'I am the Truth' is a reference

to the experience of self-realisation in the spiritually enlightened man, in

which the identity of the individual soul with God is realised. Rumi refers to

this experience elsewhere in the Discourses:

 

Take the famous utterance, 'I am God'. Some men reckon it as a great pretension;

but 'I am God' is in fact a great humility. The man who says 'I am the servant

of God' asserts that two exist, one himself and the other God. But he who says

'I am God' has naughted himself and cast himself to the winds. He says, 'I am

God': that is, 'I am not, He is all, nothing has existence but God, I am pure

non-entity, I am nothing'. In this the humility is greater.

 

The ordinary man does not understand this, says Rumi. But when someone does

something as an offering for the greater glory of God, he is still in the

position of a servant of God, and he still sees both himself and his own action

as well as God. He is not drowned in the water of God-realisation. 'That man is

drowned in the water in whom no movement, no action remains, all his movements

being the movement of the water.' The philosopher may be able to appreciate

this, but he understands it only intellectually. The delight and inner warmth

that he feels at the rational appreciation of this teaching has no permanence,

and when the intellectual appreciation is forgotten, the delight and warmth

vanish with it. It has only the same kind of force that the realisation that

where there is a house there must be a builder of that house has. But the lovers

of God, who have served the Lord, have come to know the Builder and to realise

Him with the eye of certainty; 'they have eaten bread and salt together and

mingled one with the other; the Builder is never absent from their apperception

and their gaze. Such a man as this passes away in God. In regard to him sin is

not sin, crime is not crime, since he is overwhelmed and absorbed in Him.'

 

Rumi says: 'Though the words of the great saints differ an hundredfold in form,

yet since God is one and the Way is one, how should there be two words? Though

in form they appear contrary, in meaning they are one. Differentiation is in the

form; in the meaning all is concord.' In fact, he goes further, and says that,

if you look into the matter carefully, everyone in the world is doing God's

service, both the sinner and the saint, the devil and the angel, the reprobate

and the righteous. But the knowledge which comes to the saint is the supreme

good in life. One certainty is better than a hundred doubts. What is the hopeful

compared with him who has arrived?

 

Rumi was never a recluse living quietly in a peaceful academic backwater The

pattern of his life was from its outset determined by the background of struggle

and conquest which dominated the contemporary world. Driven from his family home

in Balkh at the age of twelve by the Khvarizmshah's persecution of the Sufis, he

found, after much wandering, a resting place in the capital of the Saljuq

kingdom at Qaryn in Turkey. But this was only a short respite, for he was

pursued there by the advance westwards of the Mongol Army, which, under Hulagu

Khan, captured and sacked Aleppo and Damascus in 1259.

 

Most of the Mongol Khans had short reigns. A little earlier, in 1245, Kuyuk was

proclaimed great Khan of the Mongols in the line of succession to Genghiz and

Ogatai at a great convention. Six years later he was succeeded by Mangu Khan.

The previous ruler of Konia had left three sons, and one of them, Rukn ud-Din,

had shrewdly gone to attend Kuyuk's election and returned with the title Sultan

of Rum, on condition that he paid heavy tribute to the Mongols. When Mangu Khan

succeeded Kuyuk, there were local intrigues at Konia against the Mongols and

Rukn ud-Din was deposed by one of his brothers and thrown into prison. As a

punishment for this flouting of their authority the Mongols marched on the town

and occupied it. It is said by Aflaki that it was only because of the tremendous

respect that they had for Jalal ud-Din as a spiritual man that they did not

destroy the town completely, killing the male inhabitants and taking the women

and children into slavery, as was their wont with those who defied them. They

spared the citizens, but destroyed the fortifications and released Rukn ud-Din,

restoring him to the throne.

 

It is clear that Rumi was very much caught up in the events of his time. The

Prime Minister of Rukn ud-Din, the Parvana, appears as one of the important

participants in the Discourses, and it is sometimes his questions which start

the discussion. Occasionally he appears apologising for having been away on

State business. There are even some references in the Discourses to contemporary

events. One particularly interesting passage concerns the Mongols:

 

Someone said: When the Mongols first came to these parts they were naked and

bare, they rode on bullocks, and their weapons were of wood. Now they are sleek

and well-filled, they have splendid Arab horses and carry fine arms.

The Master said: In that time when they were desperate and weak and had no

strength, God helped them and answered their prayer. In this time when they are

so powerful and mighty, God most High is destroying them at the hands of the

feeblest of men so that they realise that it was through God's bounty and

succour that they captured the world, and not by their own force and power. In

the first place they were in a wilderness, far from men, without means, poor,

naked and needy. By chance certain of them came into the territory of the

Khvarizmshah and began to buy and sell, purchasing muslin to clothe their

bodies. The Khvarizmshah prevented them, ordering that their merchants should be

slain, and taking tribute from them; he did not allow their traders to go there.

The Tartars went humbly before their king, saying, 'We are destroyed'. The king

asked them to give him ten days' grace, and entered a deep cave: there he fasted

for ten days, humbling and abasing himself. A proclamation came from God most

High: 'I have accepted your supplication. Come forth: wherever you go, you shall

be victorious.' So it befell. When they came forth, by God's command, they won

the victory and captured the world.

 

Rumi speaks a great deal about what the yogis call 'karma', and often enlarges

on the theme that we reap what we sow. Though God has promised that good and

evil shall be recompensed at the resurrection (he says), yet a good sample of

the same reward happens to us all the time and at every moment. Certainly

contraction is the recompense of disobedience of the spiritual laws and

expansion is the recompense of obedience. Even great and terrible events, like

the Mongol conquest, have their seeds in what has gone before.

 

In the Mathnavi Rumi has a verse: 'O such-and-such, you know not the value of

your own soul, because God bountifully gave it to you for nothing.' Like Plato,

he holds that in the inner being of man all sciences and knowledge are

contained. And he likens the human spirit in its pure and unsullied state to a

pool of limpid water, which shows not only everything that is underneath it -

pebbles, broken sherds and the like - but also everything that is reflected in

it from above. It is the nature of water to reveal and it does so without

training or treatment; but when it becomes mixed with earth or other colours it

loses its clarity and the knowledge is lost. The prophets and saints come from

God like a great outflowing of limpid water which has the power of delivering

from the accidental colouration and darkness every mean and murky water which

enters into it. They do not implant anything new in man; they remind him of his

former state. The human soul sees that it was itself unsullied in the beginning

and recognises that these shadows and colours are mere accidents. It says: 'I

come from this and I belong to this' and mingles with the ocean of pure water.

But if it does not recognise it and thinks of it as something foreign to itself,

it takes refuge in the darkness of ignorance of its own nature.

 

Like the yogis, Rumi teaches that the real path is to turn inward. 'God is

mightily nigh unto you (he says)...Only He is so exceedingly near that you

cannot see Him. What is so strange in that? In every act you perform your reason

is with you and initiates that action; yet you cannot see your reason. Though

you see its effect, yet you cannot see its essence.' We have therefore to look

within for God, to seek spiritual vision within our own being. What matters is

not the outer form of worship, but the inner enlightenment of the mind:

 

Prayer is not ordained so that all the day you should be standing and bowing and

prostrating; its purpose is, that it is necessary that this spiritual state

which possesses you visibly when you are at prayer should be with you always.

Whether sleeping or walking, whether writing or reading, in all circumstances

you should not be free from God's hand, so that They continue at their prayers

will apply also to you.

So that speaking and keeping silence, that sleeping and eating, that being

enraged and forgiving - all those attributes are the turning of the water-mill

which revolves. Undoubtedly this revolving of the mill is by means of the water,

because it has made trial of itself also without any water. So if the water-mill

considers that turning to proceed from itself, that is the very acme of

foolishness and ignorance.

Now this revolving takes place within a narrow space, for such are the

circumstances of this material world. Cry unto God, saying, 'O God, grant to me,

instead of my present journey and revolving, another revolving which shall be

spiritual; seeing that all needs are fulfilled by Thee, and Thy bounty and

compassion are universal over all creatures!' So represent your needs

constantly, and never be without the remembrance of Him. For the remembrance of

Him is strength and wings and feathers to the bird of the spirit. If that

purpose is wholly realised, that is Light upon Light. By the remembrance of God,

little by little the inward heart becomes illumined and your detachment from the

world is realised. For instance, just as a bird desires to fly into heaven,

though it does not reach the heaven, yet every moment it rises farther from the

earth and outsoars the other birds. Or for instance, some musk is in a box, and

the lid of the box is narrow; you insert your hand into the box, but cannot

extract the musk, yet for all that your hand becomes perfumed, and your nostrils

are gratified. So too is the remembrance of God: though you do not attain the

Essence of God, yet the remembrance of Almighty God leaves its mark on you, and

great benefits are procured from the recollection of Him.

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 150-162