A History of Spiritual Love
By Osman Mir

New York, April 2004
The Whirling Dervishes of Turkey finished their last gyration and the audience broke into applause. As we spilled out onto the New York City sidewalk, a feeling gnawed at me for failing to understand the understated magnificence of it all. The gap between my expectations of instant enlightenment and the reality of prolonged mystical deliberation stared back at me. Standing beneath a cold street light and gasping to understand over 700 years of thinking after a temporal visual whirl was futile. It eluded me and yet was one of those fleeting moments that leave an indelible ember behind. It was not the time for that specific cinder to combust but, nonetheless, the seeds of the thought had been planted. There was another encounter, one with an irresistible lure, that left at least one participant wondering of its purpose; a chance encounter took place several hundred years ago in present day Turkey.

Konya, Turkey, November 1244
Face to face stood two strangers, Maulana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Rumi) and Shams al-Din of Tabriz; Rumi, a young demure scholar and Shams, a spiritual wayfarer with a penchant for the uncertain. The repercussions of each word spoken at this encounter would reverberate through the fabric of spiritual and lyrical history forever. They met when both were ready --Shams to share; Rumi to seek; and both, to develop into a spiritual oneness. By the young age of forty, Rumi was a brilliant scholar. Shams, at sixty, was a free-spirited wanderer. The transformation was instant. The sheer opposition of their innate temperament may have been the flicker that caught the coal. The encounter, subsequent relationship and resulting consequences demonstrate the absolute unimaginability of fate in mythic proportions. Where does a chance encounter, a whispered conversation, a bold question to a stranger take someone on their quest of personal discovery? By some unverifiable accounts, Shams had initially noticed Rumi in Syria when the latter was 21 years old but had deemed the scholar not yet disposed for their partnership and that he chose to wait for 16 years before approaching him again.

On the streets of Konya that night, Rumi was on his path home with he came across the strange and hypnotic Shams. The latter, without any introduction, asked him pointed philosophical questions intended to fluster Rumi’s concepts of enlightenment. While Rumi responded, mustering the collective strength and wit of his years of devotion to religion and jurisprudence; the flicker in Shams’ words, his speech, mannerism and conduct compelled Rumi to explore further by inviting the wanderer along and into his home. The drifter’s words had heated dormant embers that Rumi may or may not have been aware of, and which certainly dictated his actions for time to come. From that day forward, Shams possessed him. Shams grasped Rumi’s understanding of religion and infused it with a love and devotion that elevated him from scholar to philosopher; He went into seclusion with the stranger, leaving aside all that composed his life – family, students, and disciples. This detachment lasted for three months and inspired him for a lifetime. His heart engulfed his systematic, controlled mind with the message of humanity and oneness with God, a result of his pointed discourses. Rumi’s professorial sermons were replaced with ecstatic soliloquies of God, love and humanity. Furthermore, the indelible mark of this change began filtering through; first in Rumi’s actions, evidenced in his seclusion and fanatic devotion, and secondly in his poetry which continues to enchant readers across a palette of backgrounds, cultures, and religions today.

Rumi was a force in jurisprudence and religious interpretation at the time of this encounter, with a coterie of disciples that respected and digested his views. By 1244, he had spend a decade exploring his knowledge with the thirst of a student --under esteemed tutelage, traveling to Aleppo and Damascus, meeting with Sufi mystics, and generally following in his father’s respected footsteps as a teacher, preacher and center of learning. His exposure had enlightened him to mystical connections across cultures and religions, including an understanding of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. However, in this pursuit his mind was still void of nourishment for the love of humanity, while overflowing with the jurisprudence gleaned from books and scholars; something that left him in the infancy of his awakening. The elderly Shams, on the other hand, existed in a state that was the polar opposite of the respected, societal and worldly Rumi. Antisocial, volatile and spiritually adrift, he was seeking a student that could master what he could impart. The quest was complementary for he represented to Rumi, the divine essence that Rumi sought unknowingly and could not locate in the texts and lectures of his time.

Following their seclusion and Rumi’s unequivocal devotion to his “master”, the jealousy of Rumi’s disciples intervened. Sufi’s had a tradition of intimate platonic relationships based on intertwined spiritual pursuits and Rumi and Shams were truly inseparable in their joint contemplation of humanity and God. For Rumi, particularly, Shams became the embodiment of God's beauty and humanity. This canvas of purity was soon doused with the jealousy of Rumi's disciples who repeatedly threatened Shams' life. Rumi’s singular devotion led him to deeply neglect his disciples and students. Following pressure in the form of violence and death threats by Rumi’s jealous disciples, Shams left Rumi and Konya behind him in [February of 1246].

His departure prompted many rumors and conspiracy theories and Rumi traveled several times in search of his departed mentor while falling into a state of unfathomable grief. A few months later Shams returned to Konya, for a brief respite driven by the desired well-being of his student and companion. However, the return brought with it again, the magical allure of secluded mystic deliberation and this sowed the seeds of Shams’ final departure from Rumi’s life. In December 1248, Shams walked out the door to answer a voice as Rumi and he spoke. He was never seen again and the calm oneness of their relationship was terminated amidst rumors of assassination and jealousy. Rumi felt this departure like the pain of flesh extracted from a single being. The result was an agony that engulfed Rumi’s soul and the only refuge was poetry that celebrated the fleeting moments when Rumi and Shams had been spiritually united.

Following Sham’s departure from his life, and concomitant with his mourning, Rumi developed expressiveness for his ecstatic love of humanity and God. In Shams, Rumi had finally understood God (the Beloved). “Shams” became Rumi’s poetic signature, his pseudonym, his path to a world he sought but could not attain without him. Devoid of this relationship, Rumi would have continued in his scholarly pursuits. Perhaps he would have developed a mystical understanding approaching other masters of his day. But the world would never have known the poet that penned the “Lyrics of Shams of Tabriz.” It was a symbiotic relationship; Rumi found in Shams a spiritual master that elevated him to the next plain of thinking, while Shams found in Rumi, the master student through which could channel his understanding. Rumi would not have been a poet without his relationship with Shams and it is quite appropriate, in this recognition, that he named his collection after him and signed them with this name. Perhaps this is moot as, in Rumi’s view, they became one and the same. Perhaps it didn’t matter, as long as God’s humanity was captured and expressed. The “Lyrics of Shams of Tabriz” were Rumi’s odes to humanity and embodied the message of Shams, and Rumi’s quest for answers. The volume approached 30,000 verses and led the ever-searching Rumi to his consciousness:

Why should I seek? I am the same as he.
His essence speaks through me.
I have been searching for myself!

Their relationship was also symbiotic on another level. Rumi was overflowing with knowledge, brimming at the rim with wisdom and yet thirsty for more; while Shams had a simple all-encompassing message for humanity that could satisfy his thirst. Rumi became the artisan and Shams the elixir. It was only the explosive balance of their relationship that could have ever erupted into the poetry we read today.

Furthermore, it was Shams’ departure that combusted Rumi into flames of verse and left the world with the poet that immortalized his love. Rumi states, “Shams Tabriz was it, who led me to the path of reality, for the earth I have is simply his bounty.” [confirm] In fact, there was no distinction for Rumi, between himself and Shams or, for that matter any forces that were united; platonic, divine or otherwise:

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learnings,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself ... I love you.
I love you ... I love myself.

Another aspect of this relationship is the humility that it imparted to Rumi. Having exhausted traditional paradigms of learning, Rumi could intellectually surrender himself in Shams, and emerge with the prospect of being dazzled with what he discovered. Yet this was not a case of intellectual superiority or inferiority but of simple spiritual elevation and understanding his Beloved (God), as captured in an essence that Shams exuded and Rumi savored. The impact of this relationship on Rumi was completely transforming. The scholar was a spiritual adolescent consumed by Shams:

I am amazed by meeting you
I am an idea, like many that you have
My image and my ideas are by your existence
It seems, that I am your words and the meanings (as well)…
A pleasant moment makes me like a flower garden,
A moment makes me like withered winter,
By one breath he makes me scholar and instructor
In another, he makes me a school child”

Yet this state of emotional convulsion was a long way from the Rumi that encountered Shams on that November evening. Rumi’s pure, cold logic had been replaced by pursuit of his heart and of spontaneous lyrics celebrating life. This was the legacy of Rumi and Shams and the generations of humanity that have benefited from its poetic and timeless themes.