“There is a secret hidden in the heart of God’s people. That secret even Gabriel cannot find. Seek it. “Rumi
RUMI tells us, man’s battle with his Nafs is his greatest jihad. It is hard to translate the word Nafs. One can call it, self, soul, or in plain words me. When you burn completely, there is nothing of Nafs, ego, or of me anymore. It is the selfish concept of me, which eventually leads one to hell. Rumi in Masanvi says, “Your self is hell, your Nafs is hell. Hell is not a place that you go to and say how I ended up there. Hell is something that we create. We hate and we create hell. When we experience unjustified anger, we create the fuel, which keeps the hell burning. If a person fights and blows himself in rage, the heat which he feels is the heat of hell fire.”
Our passions, anger and lust have made us prisoners. How can we save ourselves from these negative emotions? How can the humanity be saved, and can we achieve salvation? Rumi suggests, “Throw away the passion, envy and grudges from the heart, change your bad behavior and bad thoughts and stay away from material prosperity.” He laments the fate of powerful man, who has conquered the world, but has surrendered to the animals inside his own self. “Man,” he says, “Has become slave to the wolf of anger, the snake of lust, the dog of Nafs (ego and desires). “If you are hostage to lust and desire of the self, let me tell you that you will go empty handed.”
Rumi teaches us that happiness is a state of mind and thought. All people are prisoners of thought and that is the reason they are crestfallen, sorrowful and broken hearted. He says, “What you are, you are all thoughts and rest of you are bones and flesh. If your thoughts are a flower, you are a garden of flowers and if your thoughts are shrubs, you are a burning food for fire. If you are perfume, they are going to put you on the face and bosom. And if you are urine, they are going to throw you out in the toilet.” So the choice is simple, it is your thoughts, which create heaven and hell inside you. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” Milton Rumi also offers a solution; find out where we came from and what we are, and where we are destined to go? The ultimate place for the faithful and those who patiently, persevere is Janat (heavens) described 14 times in Quran, as Gardens watered by running streams. This is the reward, which God has promised to those, who are steadfast, follow the correct path and lead their lives in accordance with the prescribed divine order.
Human Spirit and Divine Ego. Rumi was an evolutionary thinker and believed that the spirit after devolution from the divine ego undergoes an evolutionary process, by which it ultimately comes nearer and nearer to the same divine ego. All matter in the universe obeys this law and this movement is due to an inbuilt urge, (which Rumi calls ‘love’) to evolve and seek enjoinment with the divinity from which it has emerged. Evolution into a human being from an animal is only one stage in this process. The doctrine of the fall of Adam is reinterpreted as the devolution of the ego from the universal ground of divinity and is a universal, cosmic phenomenon.
Rumi believes that the evolutionary process of universal consciousness has a specific goal i.e. the attainment of God. For Rumi, “God is the basis, as well as the goal of all existence.” Rumi says man not conscious of God is akin to an animal with baser instincts and only true consciousness makes him divine. This doctrine was introduced into Islam by Muslim Philosophers like Al Farabi and related to Ibn Sina’s idea of love, a magnetically working power by which life is driven into an upward trend. Ibn Sina known in Europe as Avicenna suggests that love has an ennobling power a doctrine advocating suppressing the lower parts of the soul, in an attempt to reach the perfection of the highest. On this basis, Ibn Sina doctrine of love allots to the love of external beauty, a role which remained positive, valuable and honorable, even when compared with the most exalted and unearthly love. “I died as a mineral and became a plant; I died as plant and rose to animal. I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar with angels blessed.” Rumi
For Rumi, creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, was the goal towards which everything moves.“The nation of love has a different religion of all religions. For lovers, God alone is their religion.” “On the seeker’s path, wise men/fools are one. In His love, brothers and strangers are one. Go on. Drink the wine of the Beloved! In that faith, Muslims and pagans are one.” All other considerations are set aside in the presence of love. Love is the true and only form of worship. Reason is cast aside and no learning is required. The worshipper is saved by his own devotion and desire. “If you are in love, join the congregation. If you still have a mind then stay away. If you are pressed for home and parched by fire, I’ll take you to a secret stream, I know. You can drink, satisfy your desire…..And if your eyes can’t see what’s hidden there. Just bring your thirst to serve our Messiah.” Rumi—Concluded
—The writer is author of various books based in Rawalpindi.
