The Masnavi I Ma'navi of Rumi: Complete 6 books

The general theme of Rumi's thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially that of the concept of tawhid – union with his beloved (the primal root) from which whom he has been cut off and become aloof – and his longing and desire to restore it The Masnavi weaves fables, scenes from everyday life, Quranic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry. In the East, it is said of him that he was "not a prophet — but surely, he has brought a scripture". Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry, and dance as a path for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine, and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the practice of "whirling" dervishes developed into a ritual form. His teachings became the base for the order of the Mawlawi which his son Sultan Walad organized. Rumi encouraged sama listening to music and turning or doing the sacred dance. In the Mevlevi tradition, sama represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes, and nations. In other verses in the Masnavi, Rumi describes in detail the universal message of love: The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries. Rumi was an evolutionary thinker in the sense that he believed that the spirit after devolution from the divine Ego undergoes an evolutionary process by which it 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. The French philosopher Henri Bergson's idea of life being creative and evolutionary is similar, though unlike Bergson, Rumi believes that there is a specific goal to the process: the attainment of God. For Rumi, God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence. However Rumi need not be considered a biological evolutionary creationist. In view of the fact that Rumi lived hundreds of years before Darwin, and was least interested in scientific theories, it is probable to conclude that he does not deal with biological evolution at all. Rather he is concerned with the spiritual evolution of a human being: Man not conscious of God is akin to an animal and true consciousness makes him divine. Nicholson has seen this as a Neo-Platonic doctrine: the universal soul working through the various spheres of being, a doctrine introduced into Islam by Muslim philosophers like Al Farabi and being related at the same time to Ibn Sina's idea of love as the magnetically working power by which life is driven into an upward trend.

About the Author:

"Mawlana Jalal-ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, also known as Mawlana Jalal-ad-Din Muhammad Balhi, but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, (September 30, 1207-December 17, 1273), was a 13th century Persian (Tadjik) poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian. Rumi is a descriptive name meaning "the Roman" since he lived most parts of his life in Anatolia which had been part of the Roman Empire until the Seljuq conquest two centuries earlier.

Modern scholars now believe that Rumi was probably born in 1207 CE in Wakhsh/Vakhsh (In modern day Tajikistan, then under rule of Ghurids), while traditional sources claim his father family had for several generations lived in Balkh (In modern day Afghanistan, then incorporated into the Khwarezm Empire around 1205 CE). Both these cities were at the time included in the Greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorasan, the easternmost province of historical Persia.

His birthplace and first language both indicate a Persian heritage. Due to quarrels between different dynasties in Khorasan, opposition to Khwarizmid Shahs who were considered devious by Rumi's father or fear of the impending Mongol cataclysm, Baha-e Walad (Rumi's father) decided to migrate westwards. Rumi traveled west with his father and family, first performing the Hajj and eventually settling in Konya (In modern day Turkey, then in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum), where he lived most of his life , composed one of the crowning glories of Persian literature and profoundly affected the culture of the area. New Persian (also called Dari-Persian or Dari), a widely understood vernacular of Middle Persian, has its linguistic origin in the Fars Province of modern Iran. A Dari-Persian literary renaissance (In the 8th/9th century) started in regions of Sistan, Khorasan and Transoxiana and by the 10th/11th century, it overtook Arabic as the literary and cultural language in the Persian Islamic world.

He lived most of his life under the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, where he produced his works and died in 1273 CE in Konya. He was buried in Konya and his shrine became a place of pilgrimate. The shrine is now known as the Mevlana Museum. Following his death, his followers and his son Sultan Walad founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Whirling Dervishes, who are known for their famous ceremony called the sema..." (Quote from wikipedia.org)