SOURCE: Afzal Iqbal, "The Poet as Thinker," in The Life and Work of Muhammad Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, revised edition, Institute of Islamic Culture, 1964, pp. 157-85.

[In the essay below, originally published in 1956, Iqbal examines the message of Rumi's Mattinavi and discusses such concepts as the relation between love and intellect, the nature of the self, evolution, determinism and responsibility, knowledge of God, and the Ideal Man.]

When we talk of Rumi's thought, we should not be taken to mean that he had a systematic and coherent philosophy. His thoughts lie scattered and unconnected like broken threads but a patient effort can weave them into an almost consistent pattern. The point is that we should not approach Rumi's thought in the same spirit as we approach the thought of a systematic thinker.

Another point of difference between Rumi and systematic thinkers is that whereas the latter usually support their contentions with arguments, Rumi generally makes assertions and tries to invest them with power by means of analogies.

As Whinfield points out, the Mathnavi is an exposition of 'experimental' mysticism, and not a treatise of 'doctrinal' mysticism. Hence Rumi does not set out all this Sufi gnosis with the logical precision of a systematic thinker but rather assumes it all as known to his readers.¹

Muslim philosophers used to employ a priori reasoning in order to establish the truth of metaphysical dogma. This method, however, does not elicit ready approval from the average individual whose mind is not trained for abstract thinking of a high order. Rumi, therefore, employs analogies in order to drive home a subtle point—analogies from this matter-of-fact, sensible world of ours. Analogy used in poetry often assumes the form of a didactic story; and a didactic story in order to be successful should possess three characteristics: the moral should entice our imagination by its originality, uniqueness and importance; the moral should appear like the 'soul' and the story like the 'body'; and both should be interwoven into each other, and during the perusal of the story the reader should not even think of the moral. It should come as a complete surprise, an original experience.

There are numerous stories in Rumi which aptly illustrate this method. In fact it is the effective employment of this method which has given unique influence and popularity to his Mathnavi. For example, here is an interesting story. There was a muezzin who had an extremely unpleasant voice. The people of his village offered him a lump sum with the request that he should proceed to Mecca for a pilgrimage. This was obviously a pretext to get rid of him. The muezzin, on his way to Mecca, halted in a village. There he went into the mosque and called the faithful to prayers. After a short while, a Zoroastrian came, laden with presents, and asked for the muezzin. People were naturally surprised. 'What is it?' they asked. 'What has he done for you that you bring him such valuable presents?' 'I am greatly indebted to him,' said the Zoroastrian, 'he has saved my daughter.' 'How?' came the anxious query, and this is what the Zoroastrian told the curious crowd. 'I have a young and beautiful daughter. Much to my embarrassment, of late she has been showing a growing inclination towards Islam. I tried my best to dissuade her; all the influential members of my community helped in bringing pressure to bear upon her, but our efforts not withstanding, she persisted in her designs of conversion. Today she heard the muezzin call the faithful to prayers; she was so much disgusted with his voice that she has now decided to abandon her plan. This decision has brought me great relief, and it is in recognition of this unique service that I bring these rich presents to the muezzin'.

The moral of this story does not seem to be evident. It becomes evident only when Rumi points it out, and administers an effective rebuke to the so-called Mussalmans who are bringing discredit to their religion by their wrong example.

It is by means of such delightful stories that Rumi discusses and analyses profound truths:

Now hear the outward form of my story, But yet separate the grain from the chaff.

A systematic thinker usually has a set of ideas which he either wants primarily to communicate to others or he wants just to express in words. Expression in words may ipso facto mean communication to others, but a thinker might only aim at expression and not at communication. It seems that Rumi is certainly not a thinker of this type. He does not primarily aim at communication; he is not thinking of conveying his ideas as such. On the contrary, it seems that Rumi is giving expression to an experience or a series of experiences. There is an enormous difference between giving expression to an experience and giving expression to an idea—and this difference is the difference between Rumi and the systematic thinkers. Our experiences do not follow one another like premises in a syllogism. We can deduce one thought from another but we cannot deduce one experience from another. While reading the Mathnavi we find ourselves not in the presence of a mind but in the presence of a personality. Experiences of a personality cannot possess a logical sequence, since logical sequence is a characteristic only of thoughts. Therefore, when thoughts are interwoven with experiences, and it is the expression of experiences which is primarily intended, thoughts have to be scattered and unconnected as they are in Rumi's Mathnavi. Any attempt, therefore, to summarise his thought will inevitably damage the spirit of his work.

The nature of Rumi's experience is essentially religious. By religious experience is not meant an experience induced by the observance of a code of taboos and laws, but an experience which owes its being to love; and by love Rumi means 'a cosmic feeling, a spirit of oneness with the Universe.' 'Love,' says Rumi, 'is the remedy of our pride and self-conceit, the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish.' Love, according to him, is the motive force of the universe; it is because of love that everything restlessly travels towards its origin; it is love which animates music and gives a meaning to life. It is in love that the contradictory forces of nature achieve a unique unity. And love is not logic; it eludes reason and analysis and is best understood by experience. It does not ask why before it makes the supreme sacrifice for the Beloved, it jumps into the battlefield regardless of consequences.…

It is love, not reason, which is heedless of
  consequences,
Reason pursues that which is of benefit.
(Love) never puts God to the test,
Nor does it weigh profit and loss (in its
 pursuit).

Love is a mighty spell—an enchantment. Reason dare not stand against it. Love puts reason to silence.

When those Egyptian women sacrificed their
 reason,²
They penetrated the mansions of Joseph's
  love;
The cup-bearer of life bore away their
  reason,
They were filled with wisdom of the world
  without end.
Joseph's beauty was only an offshoot of
  God's beauty;
Be lost, then, in God's beauty more than
  those women.³

The more a man loves, the deeper he penetrates into the divine purpose. 'Love is the "astrolab of heavenly mysteries," the "eye salve" which clears the spiritual eye and makes it clairvoyant.' Rumi compares it to the love of an affectionate child which divines the reasons for its father's severity, and to the love of a lover who finds excuses for the cruelty of his mistress.⁴

Love endures hardships at the hands of the Beloved with pleasure.

Through love bitter things seem sweet,
Through love bits of copper are made gold.
Through love dregs taste like pure wine,
Through love pains are as healing balms.
Through love thorns become roses, and
Through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.
Through love the stake becomes a throne,
Through love reverse of fortune seems good
  fortune.
Through love a prison seems a rose bower,
Through love a grate full of ashes seems a
  garden.
Through love burning fire is pleasing light.
Through love the Devil becomes a Houri.
Through love hard stone becomes soft as
  butter,
Through love soft wax becomes hard iron.
Through love grief is a joy,
Through love Ghouls turn into angels.
Through love stings are as honey,
Through love lions are harmless as mice.
Through love sickness is health,
Through love wrath is as mercy.
Through love the dead rise to life,
Through love the king becomes a slave.⁵

And true love, he says, is ashamed to demand proofs of his beloved, and prides himself on trusting her in spite of appearances telling against her. 'Not only is faith generated by love, but, what is more, faith generated by any other motive is worthless. Faith, like that of respectable conformists, growing from mere blind imitation and the contagion of customs, or like that of scholastic theologians, consisting in mere intellectual apprehension of orthodox dogmas and all mere mechanical and routine professions of belief,—is summed up by the poet under the general name of the "yoke of custom" (taqlid). They only produce the spiritual torpor called by Dante accidia. To be of any value, faith must be rooted and grounded in love. The mere external righteousness generated by taqlid—the mere matter-of-course adoption of the virtues of the age, the class, the sect,—is compared to a "veil of light" (formal righteousness) which hides the truth more entirely than the "will of darkness" (open sin). For self-deluding goodness is of necessity unrepentant, while the avowed sinner is always self-condemned, and so advanced one step on the road to repentance.'⁶ Love is the essence of all religion. It has three important characteristics:

1. Any form in which love expresses itself is good—not because it is a particular expression but because it is an expression of love. Forms of love are irrelevant to the nature of religious experience.
2. Love is different from feelings of pleasure and pain. It is not regulated by any consideration of reward and punishment.
3. Love transcends intellect. We do not live in order to think, we think in order to live.

Rumi admits the utility of the intellect and does not reject it altogether. His emphasis on intuition as against the intellect is explained by the fact that some of his outstanding predecessors had placed an incredible premium on reason. Since the tenth century, those Muslim thinkers who are called 'philosophers' entrusted themselves completely to the guidance of Aristotle. Al-Farabi, the tenth-century philosopher, was so fanatical in his admiration of Greek thought that he considered it the final word in wisdom. For him Plato and Aristotle were the 'Imams or the highest authority in philosophy.'⁷ For Ibn Rushd, 'that fanatical admirer of Aristotelian logic'⁸ (born in Cordova 1126), Aristotle is the supremely perfect man, the greatest thinker, the philosopher who was in possession of infallible truth. It was upon Aristotle that his activity was concentrated and it was because of this that he has been assigned the title of 'the commentator' in Canto IV of Dante's Commedia.

Neoplatonism, which wielded such tremendous influence on Muslim thinkers, is theistic in teaching a transcendant God, and pantheistic in conceiving everything, down to the lowest matter, as an emanation of God. It is a 'religious idealism';⁹ the final goal of the soul is to find rest in the mind of God, and though this is impossible of attainment in this life, man should prepare for it by keeping his mind on God, by freeing himself from the shackles of the senses.

The doctrine of reason emerged for the first time with Kindi. According to him, all knowledge is acquired by reason; that which lies between is either fancy or imagination. The faith in the capacity of the human mind to attain knowledge had become so great that philosophy itself had become dogmatic. Reason had presumptuously arrogated to itself functions which it was not fit to discharge.

The entire system of philosophy which had been built up in the East on Greek foundation was attacked and shattered by Ghazali. He did in the East what Kant did in the West. Both started a crusade against the monopoly of reason in apprehending Reality. Ghazali went a step further and formulated that Kashf (intuition) alone is the surest way to Reality. 'How great is the difference between knowing the definition, causes, and conditions of drunkenness and actually being drunk! The drunken man knows nothing about the definition and theory of drunkenness, but he is drunk; while the sober man, knowing the definition and the principles of drunkenness, is not drunk at all.'¹⁰

It is against this background that we must consider Rumi's overwhelming emphasis on intuition rather than on reason. Rumi gives an important place to knowledge, and makes a clear distinction between 'knowledge' and 'opinion'.

Knowledge has two wings, Opinion one
  wing:
Opinion is defective and curtailed in flight.
The one-winged bird soon falls headlong;
  then again it flies up some two paces or
  (a little) more.
The bird, Opinion, falling and rising, goes
  on with one wing in hope of (reaching the
  nest).
But when he has been delivered from
  opinion, knowledge shows its face to him
  that one-winged bird becomes two-winged
  and spreads two wings.
After that, he walks erect and straight, not
  falling flat on his face or ailing.
He flies aloft with two wings, like Gabriel
  without opinion and without peradventure
  and without disputation.¹¹

In another place he says that opinion, imagination or wahm is the counterfeit of reason and in opposition to it, and though it resembles reason it is not reason. He then defends reason against imagination. 'Reason is the contrary of sensuality: O brave man, do not call reason that which is attached to sensuality. That which is a beggar of sensuality call it imagination.'¹²

But with all this he regards vision as superior to knowledge. 'Knowledge is inferior to certainty but above opinion, know that knowledge is a seeker of certainty, and certainty is a seeker of vision and intuition—Vision is immediately born of certainty, just as fancy is born of opinion.'¹³

Experience shows that truth revealed through pure reason is incapable of bringing that fire of living conviction which personal revelation can bring. That is the reason why pure thought has so little influenced man, while religion has always elevated individuals and transformed whole societies.¹⁴ Even today, 'religion, which in its higher manifestations is neither dogma, nor priesthood, nor ritual, can alone ethically prepare the modern man for the burden of the great responsibility which the advancement of modern science necessarily involves, and restore to him that attitude of faith which makes him capable of winning a personality here and retaining it hereafter. It is only by rising to a fresh vision of his origin and future, his whence and whither, that man will eventually triumph over a society motivated by an inhuman competition, and civilization which has lost its spiritual unity by its inner conflict of religious and political values.'¹⁵

The apparent belittling of the intellect, it will be clear by now, is only a protest against the gross exaggeration of its role in life. Like Goethe, Rumi looks upon Satan as the embodiment of pure intellect, which, though valuable in itself, is likely to become an instrument of terrible destruction without the guiding hands of love. Satan passionately defends himself in his meeting with Amir Mu'aviya in Vol. II of the Mathnavi, and as you read his defence you feel that the sympathetic poet has striven very hard indeed to do justice to his hero. Again, Hallaj, in his dialogues, asserts Satan's superiority to Adam and to Moses, though he raises Muhammad above him. For this Satan, Rumi has a soft corner but he realises that unless his powers are wedded to those of Adam, humanity cannot achieve its full development. Iqbal, the greatest commentator of Rumi, elucidates this point in his famous Lectures:

The modern man with his philosophies of criticism and scientific specialism finds himself in a strange predicament. His Naturalism has given him an unprecedented control over the forces of nature, but has robbed him of faith in his own future.… Wholly overshadowed by the results of his intellectual activity, the modern man has ceased to live soulfully, i.e., from within. In the domain of thought, he is living in open conflict with himself; and in the domain of economic and political life he is living in open conflict with others. He finds himself unable to control his ruthless egoism and his infinite gold-hunger which is gradually killing all higher striving in him and bringing him nothing but life-weariness.¹⁶

Rumi's philosophy is at once a description, and explanation and a justification of his religious experience— where description, explanation and justification should be regarded as different notes combining and merging into a higher unity—Rumi's symphony of Love.

In order to understand Rumi's philosophy,¹⁷ I think, we should begin by understanding what he says about the nature of the self. A spiritualistic philosophy has to start with the nature of the self, for the only thing which we can call spirit and of the existence of which we claim to have an immediate awareness is the self.

Rumi divides Reality into two realsm: the Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Nature. Material objects belong to the realm of nature but soul is the realm of spirit. Soul is one and undifferentiated—the 'that' of all being. It is what Spinoza calls substance and defines as 'that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing from which it must be formed.' It is a pertinent question to ask here: How does one (Transcendental) Soul differentiate itself into so many (Phenomenal) Souls inhabiting the bodies of different human beings? Rumi, true to himself, gives a characteristically spiritual answer. One and many, he says, are categories of the understanding. Soul is substance and its nature is super-sensual and super-rational. Therefore the popular belief that the soul was created by God is totally false; soul is itself the ultimate reality, how can it be created by something else?¹⁸

The realm of nature consists of the attributes of the eternal substance. Spinoza defines an attribute as 'that which the intellect perceives of substance as if constituting its essence.' The most important difference between the realm of spirit and the realm of nature is that the former is out of time (since time is a category of the understanding) and the latter is in time. Rumi does not tell us clearly whether time is a mode (as Spinoza thought) or a category of the understanding (as Kant thought). Khalifa Abdul Hakim is of the view that Rumi used it in the latter sense. It is not clear whether time is itself an attribute of substance or it is the category of time which is an attribute of substance. If time itself is an attribute of substance, then it is as much real as substance—a conclusion which contradicts Rumi's assertion that time is a characteristic only of the phenomenal world and not of the ultimate Reality. If, on the other hand, time is a category of the understanding only, then time, as such, can in no sense be an attribute of the substance. This conclusion is quite in accordance with Rumi's utterances about time—but this is certainly a precarious position to hold. Rumi is a firm believer in evolution. But can evolution and the unreality of time go together?

Evolution, according to Rumi, started with matter. But matter is not what it appears to be. Khalifa Abdul Hakim tells us that Rumi does not regard matter as 'independent of mind' and Rumi himself tells us that 'my body is a product of my soul, not my soul a product of my body.' … It seems, therefore, that Rumi not only regards matter as having been produced by mind but also as being dependent for its existence on mind. Not only that. He regards mind as independent of matter. The question, how matter, which is an attribute of the soul, can be also a product of the soul is left unanswered by Rumi. The other question, how matter, which is an attribute of the soul, can be dependent for its existence on the soul, without the soul being dependent for its existence on matter, is also left unanswered.

An attribute is as real as the substance. Attributes without substance are as unreal as substance without attributes. We may even go so far as to say that 'the what' without 'the that' is conceivable but not 'the that' without 'the what.'

Matter is the foundation-stone of Evolution. There was 'fire and water as wind and cloud' until the emergence of a new form of existence—the plant life. From plant life emerged animal life which assumed its highest form (so far) in human life. Rumi does not believe that the process of creative evolution has ended with the emergence of man in the existing spatio-temporal order. He has a contagious faith in the unlimited possibilities of man's development.

I died as 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 blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel soul,
I shall become what no mind ever
  conceived.

Life is a passage through a series of deaths¹⁹—which cannot, however, quench its surging flame! It is open to every individual not only to become a saint but to become a prophet for a nation—a highly shocking assertion for the orthodox yet very much consistent with the thought of Rumi.…

Evolution takes place, not as Darwinians thought, by 'mechanical and passive natural selection' but according to the will of the organism to live a higher and fuller life, by assimilating the qualities of the higher organism. 'That a mystic should have shown the way to the scientists and the philosophers, is one of the rarest phenomena in the history of thought. But the mystic neither begins with naturalism nor ends with it. His matter, to start with, is not the matter of the materialists or the Darwinists. It was from the beginning only the outer form of the spirit; it consisted rather of the monads of Leibniz than the atoms of Democritus. Then again Darwin ends with man but Rumi does not stop there. Nor do the mystic and scientist agree about the forces that lead to this evolution. Darwin's doctrine consists of struggle for existence, chance variations and natural selection.… With Rumi there is no development by chance variations. For him development consists in the creation of an ever-increasing need for expansion and by assimilation into a higher organism.'²⁰

But this conception of evolution suffers from three difficulties. Firstly, how can the new species assimilate the other unless it is already in existence? This difficulty has also been pointed out by Dr. Hakim but he brushes it aside with the remark 'As his [Rumi's] purpose was not scientific so he has neither put nor tried this question.' I am inclined to believe that this conception cuts at the root of the conception of evolution as being creative. If the new species is somehow already in existence, then the whole course of evolution is pre-arranged. Teleology in this sense, as Bergson has pointed out, becomes inverted mechanism.

Secondly, the conception of a definite cyclic order runs counter to the conception of creative evolution. A truly creative organism is one which has infinite possibilities of growth and expansion and none of the forms it assumes can ever be predicted. We cannot say for certain that man in his development will become an angel. For a creative individual the future exists as an open possibility and like a work of art it is unpredictable. No fixed order of events with definite outlines can, therefore, be visualised consistent with the theory of creative evolution.

'Every act of a free Ego creates a new situation and thus offers further opportunities for creative unfolding … every moment in the life of Reality is original, giving birth to what is absolutely novel and unforeseeable.'²¹ And does not Rumi himself declare:

Every instant I give to the heart a different
  desire,
Every moment I lay upon the heart a
  different brand.
At every dawn I have a new employment.²²

The third difficulty follows from the second. Rumi admits that evil does not exist for angels and yet he talks of angels as being the next stage in evolution after man. It means that the higher stage of life is bereft of choice and responsibility, two characteristics which constitute the essence of creative individuality.

Everything else, according to Rumi, is controlled by influence outside it; man alone carries his star, his destiny within him.

'Tis wonderful that the spirit is in prison,
and then, (all that time) the key of the
prison is in its hand!

That youth (the spirit) is plunged in dung
from head to foot, (whilst) the flowing
river is (almost) touching his skirt!²³

This world is a stage where man—the principal actor—continues his experiment in living. In the words of the Qur'an he is the 'trustee of a free personality which he accepted at his own peril.' This freedom is at once most dangerous and most valuable. 'Freedom to choose good involves also the freedom to choose what is opposite of good. That God has taken this risk shows his immense faith in man; it is for man now to justify this faith.'²⁴

Free will is as the salt to piety,
Otherwise heaven itself were matter of
  compulsion.
In its revolutions rewards and punishment
  were needless,
For 'tis free will that has merit at the great
  reckoning.
If the whole world were framed to praise
  God,
There would be no merit in praising God.
Place a sword in his hand and remove his
  impotence,
To see if he turns out a warrior or a robber.

Rumi does not believe in the decadent theory of predetermination which absolves men of their responsibilities and tends to work for the decay and degeneration of nations and individuals. He, however, believes that the universal laws of nature are unalterable. It is predetermined, for example, that if you take a few steps, you will be walking, but the direction in which you walk is certainly a question of your choice; it is entirely left to your discretion and judgment. It is predetermined, for instance, that if you aim a pistol at somebody that person will be mortally wounded. It is now your free choice to select the object—he can beyour dear brother, he can be your most deadly enemy.

It is to this extent that Rumi believes in predetermination. He goes thus far and no further. Man is the paragon of existence only because he and he alone has the freedom of choice. For animals lower than man, good and evil do not exist. Therefore the question of their choice does not arise. It is man alone who is confronted by both good and evil. 'Here a world and there a world' says Rumi, 'I am seated on the threshold.'²⁵

Man is potentially lower than the brutes and higher than angels.

Angel and brute man's wondrous leaven
compose
To these including, less than these he
grows,
But if he means the angel, more than those.

Evil indeed plays an extremely important role in the development of man's personality; without it, realisation of values would become impossible. Things are known through their opposites, and had evil remained uncreated divine omnipotence would have been incomplete.

He is the source of evil, as thou sayest,
Yet evil hurts Him not. To make the evil
Denotes in Him perfection. Hear from me
A parable. The heavenly artist paints
Beautiful shapes and ugly: in one picture
The loveliest women in the land of Egypt
Gazing at youthful Joseph amorously;
And lo, another scene by the same hand,
Hell fire and Iblis with his hideous crew:
Both master-works, created for good ends,
To show His perfect wisdom as confound
The sceptics who deny His mastery,
Could He not evil make, He would lack still;
Therefore he fashions infidel alike
And Muslim me, that both my witness bear
To Him, and worship One Almighty Lord.

But why, it may be asked, has God created that to which man has given the name of evil? And since He is the only real Agent, who are we to blame for the actions that we are caused to commit? It is characteristic of Rumi that he finds the answer to this old riddle not in thought but in feeling, not in theological speculation but in religious experience. We can feel as one what we must think as two. Everything has an opposite by means of which it is manifested; God alone, whose being includes all things, has no opposite, and therefore He remains hidden. Evil is the inevitable condition of Good: out of drakness was created light. From this standpoint it possesses a positive value: it serves the purpose of God, it is relatively good.²⁶

Rumi, therefore, welcomes evil as being helpful for the development of man's personality. In fact, the conflict of good and evil is inherent in man and his greatness depends to the extent to which he resolves this conflict.

While Rumi certainly concedes that everything is not good in this world, he refuses steadfastly to adopt an attitude of quietude and renunciation but urges, on the contrary, a relentless war against all forces of evil, which, he believes, man by his very nature is capable of overcoming. Indeed, he would be betraying the very ingredients of his nature by refusing to recognise in evil a golden opportunity to carry his personality a step further on the path of development. The existence of evil has, therefore, a positive contribution to make and the development of a man's personality is reflected proportionately to his success in this struggle. Man is, therefore, not left with any justification to complain on this score, for how could he hope to be the paragon of creation without the presence of evil?

Where there is no enemy, there is no Holy War and the question of success does not arise; where there is not lust, there can be no obedience to the Divine Command. And has not the Holy Qur'an made this position abundantly clear with the declaration 'And for trial will We test you with evil and with good'?²⁷ Good and evil, therefore, though opposite, must fall within the same whole.²⁸

Moses and Pharaoh are in thy being: thou must seek these two adversaries in thyself. The (process of) generation for Moses is (continuing) till the Resurrection: the Light is not different, (though) the lamp has become different.²⁹

Nothing, however, is absolutely evil: what is bad for me may be good for you. And what is more important, evil itself can be turned to good for the righteous. But the soul of goodness in evil can be discerned by love alone.

The freedom of choice, however, is not an end in itself; the end of all freedom is to freely determine to live according to your higher self. So the end of all freedom is self-determination on a higher plane. At the end freedom and determination are identified. Life starts with determinism at the lower plane, develops to the capacity of Free Choice in man, in order to rise to a Higher Determinism again, where man makes a free offer of his freedom.³⁰ Kant perhaps is the first thinker of the West who believed that it is the innermost self of man that expresses itself in the moral law: the moral law is his command, he imposes the law upon himself, this is his autonomy.

While Satan considers it a servitude of the worst order to serve somebody other than his own self, the loyal angel recognises quite clearly that servitude comes when you serve your own baser self and not when you bow to God's command. Milton has beautifully brought out this point in Paradise Lost.³¹

This is servitude
To serve th' unwise, or him who hath
 rebelled
Against his worshipper, as thine now serve
 thee,
Thyself not free, but to thyself enthrall'd.

Man's love of God is God's love of man, and in loving God, man realises his own personality:

The word 'compulsion' makes me impatient
  for Love's sake,
 'Tis only he who loves not that is fettered
  by 'compulsion.'
 The shining of the moon, not a cloud
 Or if it be 'compulsion' exerted by self-will
  inciting us to sin.³²

And again:

When the predestination of God becomes
  the pleasure of
His servant, he (the servant) becomes a
 willing slave to His decree.
Not (because of) tasking himself, and not on
 account of the (future) reward and
 recompense;
Nay, his nature has become so goodly
He does not desire his life for himself nor
 to the end that
He may enjoy the life that is found sweet
 (by others).
Whatsoever the Eternal Command takes its
 course, living and dying are on to him.
He tries for God's sake, not for riches; he
  dies for
God's sake, not from fear and pain,
His faith is (held) for the sake of (doing)
  His will, not for the sake of Paradise and
  its trees and streams.
His abandonment of infidelity is also for
  God's sake, not for fear but he goes into
  the Fire.
That disposition of his is like this originally:
 it is not (acquired by) discipline or by his
 effort and endeavour.
He laughs at the moment when he sees the
  Divine pleasure: to him Destiny is even as
  a sugared sweetmeat.³³

And if such a state be called compulsion, it is not 'common compulsion,' as Rumi puts it:

They possess free will and compulsion
   besides,
As in oyster shells raindrops become pearls.
Outside the shell they are raindrops, great
 and small;
Inside they are precious pearls, big and
  little.
These men also resemble the musk deer's
 bag;
Outside it is blood, but inside pure musk.³⁴

To be united with the world-soul is, therefore, the most exhilarating bliss for man.

And mind you, man does not attain this union with perfection by contemplation but by a consistent effort at creating in himself all the attributes of Perfection.

Whether one be slow or speedy (in movement),
  he that is a seeker will be a finder.
Always apply yourself with both hands
  (with all your mightt) to seeking, for
   search is an excellent guide on the way.
  (Though you be) lame and limping and
   bent in figure and unmannerly, ever creep
   towards Him and be in quest of Him.³⁵

Greatness or smallness are meaningless in themselves. We are great or small because of the greatness or smallness of our ideals and because of the varying strength of faith and determination with which we seek to achieve them. Given love, faith, determination and an effort at consistent search, our frailty and infirmity can move mountains.

Do not regard the fact that thou art
  despicable or infirm; look upon thy
  aspiration, O noble one.
In whatsoever state thou be, keep
  searching;
For this seeking is a blessed motion; this
  search is a killer of obstacles on the way
  to God.³⁶

Iqbal who freely admits his debt to Rumi amply elucidates this point in a letter to Professor Nicholson. He says, 'Physically as well as spiritually man is a self-contained centre, but he is not yet a complete individual. The greater his distance from God, the lesser his individuality. He who comes nearest to God is the completest person. Not that he is finally absorbed in God. On the other hand, he absorbs God in himself. The true person not only absorbs the world of matter; by mastering it he absorbs God Himself.… Life is a forward assimilative movement. It removes all obstructions in its march by assimilating them. Its essence is the continual creation of desires and ideals, and for the purpose of his preservation and expansion it has invented or developed out of itself certain instruments, e.g., senses, intellect, etc., which help in to assimilate obstructions.… The ego attains to freedom by the removal of all obstructions in its way. It is partly free, partly determined, and reaches full freedom by approaching the individual who is most free— God.'³⁷

Farabi offers an interesting contrast to this attitude. About three centuries before Rumi he declared in vigorously accentuated terms that if a man knew everything that stands in the writings of Aristotle, but did not act in accordance with his knowledge, while another man shaped his conduct in accordance with Aristotle's teachings without being acquainted with it, preference would have to be assigned to the former. Rumi completely reverses the emphasis. For him development does not consist in idle metaphysical speculation. He completely rejects the pseudo-mystic quietism which produces a class of irresponsive dervishes who 'remain unmoved in the midst of sorrow, meets praise and blame with equal effect, and accepts insults, blows, torture and death as mere incidents.'³⁸

He also rejects the idea of a closed, predetermined universe which is subject to Nietzsche's gloomy law of 'eternal recurrence.' 'There is nothing more alien to the Quranic world than the idea that the Universe is a temporal working out of a preconceived plan—an already completed product which left the hand of its Maker ages ago and is now lying stretched in space as a dead mass of matter to which time does nothing and consequently is nothing.'³⁹

Like Iqbal in our own days, Rumi's entire philosophical thought is an eloquent plea for a life of strenuous activity and endeavour in which the self interests with its material and cultural environment and utilises it, first to realise its rudimentary grouping purpose and later, through the process of creative self-expression, to form greater purposes and attain to new reaches of power. He condemns a life of seclusion, withdrawal and passivity.⁴⁰ He is emphatically opposed to those pseudo-mystics, other-worldly idealists, and self-centred aesthetes who would cheerfully ignore the evils, injustices and imperfections of this world, and abandon all active effort in behalf of its reconstruction and seek a cowardly compensation in obliterating their own selfish interests—intellectual, artistic and spiritual—in seclusion. It is only by flinging ourselves like good crusaders into the struggle that we can fulfil the purpose of our life—not by shunning the struggle on earth because our head is in the clouds.

The motive behind creative evolution is love. It is love which compels matter to become life, and life to become mind. 'The striving for the ideal is love's movement towards beauty which is identical with perfection. Beneath the visible evolution of forms is the force of love which actualises all striving, movement, progress. The determinate matter, dead in itself, assumes by the inner force of love, various forms, and rises higher in the scale of beauty. All things are moving towards the first Beloved—the Eternal Beauty. The worth of a thing is decided by its nearness to, or distance from, this ultimate principle."⁴¹

Life is a journeying back to God; it proceeds according to a process of evolution. The minerals develop into plants, and plants into animals, animals into man and man into superhuman beings ultimately to reach back the starting point—a glorious interruption of the Qur'anic verses 'God is the beginning and God is the end' and 'To Him do we return.'⁴²

Rumi compares the soul to a moaning dove that has lost his mate, to a reed torn from its bed and made into a flute whose plaintive music fills the eye with tears; to a falcon summoned by the fowler's whistle to perch upon his wrist; to snow melting in the sun and mounting as vapour to the sky; to a frenzied camel swiftly plunging in the desert by night, to a caged parrot, and fish on dry land, a pawn that seeks to become a king.⁴³

Love, according to Rumi, is the motive force of the universe; it is because of love that everything travels towards its origin. And love is not logic, it eludes reason and analysis, it is best understood by experience. It brings with it not reasoned belief but intense conviction arising from immediate intuition.

How can a man know God? 'Not by senses, for He is immaterial, nor by the intellect, for He is unthinkable. Logic never gets beyond the finite; philosophy sees double; book learning fosters self-conceit and obscures the idea of the truth with clouds of empty words.' Rumi addressing the sceptics asks:

Do you know a name without a thing
  answering to it?
Have you ever plucked a rose from R, O, S, E?
You name His name; go, seek the reality
 named by it;
Look for the moon in the sky, not in the
  water!
If you desire to rise above mere names and
  letters,

Make yourself free from self at one stroke,
Become pure from all attributes of self,
That you may see your own bright essence.
Yea, see in your own heart knowledge of
 the Prophet,
Without book, without tutor, without
 perception.

This knowledge comes by illumination, revelation, inspiration and inward co-operation. Those who have reached the highest degree of perfection—Muhammad topping the list—have not reached it through logical calculation or laborious cogitation. They have discovered the truth and reality by means of an inward and Divine illumination.

For Rumi, revelation is not a historical fact of the past; it is a living reality and it is open to everyone. To those who are sceptical about the possibility of revelation, Rumi puts a pertinent question. Wherefrom, asks he, did the first man learn to dispose of the dead body of his brother? Was it through reason and instructed knowledge or was it through revelation and intuition? …

When was grave-digging, which was the
 meanest trade (of all), acquired from
 thought and cunning and meditation?

Reason, in fact, is blind and unimaginative, and argument at best is a weak support. Sense-perception does not carry us far and is certainly no equipment for probing the deep realities of nature.

If any one were to say to the embryo in the
  womb,
  'Outside is a world exceedingly well—
A pleasant earth, broad and long, wherein
  are hundred delights and so many things
  to eat,
Mountains and seas and plains, fragrant
 orchards, gardens and sown fields,
A sky very lofty and full of light, sun and
  moon-beams and a hundred stars …
Its marvels come not into (are beyond)
  description: why art thou in tribulation in
  this darkness.'.⁴⁴

The embryo would be incredulous and would disbelieve it. The proposition would appear to it as a deceit and a delusion because the judgment of the blind has no imagination. The embryo's perception has not seen anything of the kind and its incredulous perception would not therefore be willing to see the Truth. Exactly in the same manner we find ourselves unable to see a world beyond our own 'dark and narrow pit.' And reason can never lead us there—it is intuition, revelation alone which make this discovery possible.

And revelation is nothing but the eternal spirit of man himself.⁴⁵ The characteristic of all that is spiritual is its knowledge of its own essential nature. We cannot treat life and consciousness mathematically, scientifically and logically, for how can we depend upon our senses which do not carry us very far? Knowledge is and must remain a vision of reality, a Weltanschauung, an intuition.

Love alone takes us to the Reality or love; ceaseless effort is necessary.⁴⁶ Peace only comes when you identify yourself with the one that stands outside this struggle. An impetus is given to this love by intense, zealous desire; a compelling urge and a wish devoutful. Decadent Sufism had created useless drones and hypocrites. Such passive life is of no use to Rumi. In his world there is no scope for parasites. Rumi's lover cannot afford to be static and ascetic. He is constantly at war—at war with his own baser self, at war with those elements in the world which hinder or prevent his ascent. It is the very fate of man to struggle. Struggling against destiny is the destiny of man.…

We have seen that life emanates from matter and mind emanates from life. It seems, however, that though even matter is really spiritual, yet the trend of evolution is only unconsciously felt by it. It is only in man that a full awareness of the trend of evolution is present. We have seen that Rumi explains Evolution by referring to the concept of Assimilation. Man has assimilated into himself all the attributes which belong to the lower species. Thus we may divide man into two parts, viz. one which he has assimilated from the lower species and the other which constitutes its essence— the divine spark in man. This division of man's nature into two parts corresponds exactly to the bifurcation of human nature effected by Kant and now completely discredited by modern psychology. Man is animated by two naturally hostile principles—animality and divinity. It is on the basis of this distinction that Rumi builds up his moral system. A person who obeys his animal self lives the life of a slave determined for him by forces alien to his essential nature. A person on the contrary who complies with the demands of his higher self lives the life of a free man—determined from within. The higher self is the divine spark in man and its realisation makes one the source of infinite power and knowledge. Realisation of the ideal self rids one of the fears and hopes. 'I am the ruling power in both the worlds, here and hereafter; in both the worlds I saw nobody whom I could fear or from whom I could hope to get any favour; I saw only myself.'

One also transcends discursive knowledge and attains to the divine knowledge—which is not sensuous in origin and character. Knowledge is itself a great power—and the ideal man of Rumi purged of fear and anxiety, enriched by the divine knowledge, holds complete sway over the spiritual and material world.…

Such a man moves the world according to
   his desire.
According to whose desire the torrents and
 rivers flow, and the stars move in such
 wise as he wills;
And life and Death are his officers, going to
 and from according to his desire.⁴⁷

Such is the 'Man of God,' the perfect man, who assimilates God himself but does not lose his own individuality. Such a man eludes all description.…

The man of God is drunken without wine,
The man of God is full without meat.
The man of God is distraught and
 bewildered,
The man of God has no food or sleep.
The man of God is a king 'neath dervish-
 cloak,
The man of God is a treasure in a ruin.
The man of God is not of air and earth,
The man of God is not of fire and water.
The man of God is a boundless sea,
The man of God rains pearls without a
 cloud.
The man of God hath hundred moons and
 skies,
The man of God hath hundred suns.
The man of God is made wise by the
 Truth,
The man of God is not learned from book.
The man of God is beyond infidelity and
 religion,
To the man of God right and wrong are
 alike.
The man of God has ridden away from Notbeing,
The man of God is gloriously attended
The man of God is concealed, Shams-i-Din,
The man of God do thou seek and find!⁴⁸

Notes

1. Whinfield, Mathnavi, Introduction, xxxv.
2. And when they saw him they were amazed at him and cut their hands (Quran, xii. 31).
3. Whinfield, Mathnavi p. 260.
4. Ibid., Introduction, p. xxviii.
5. Ibid., p. 80.
6. Ibid., Introduction, pp. xxxii and xxxiii,
7. De Boer, p. 102.
8. Ibid., p. 188.
9. Thilly, History of Philosophy.
10. Munqidh, pp. 20-21.
11. Mathnavi, III (Nicholson's Translation), p. 85.
12. Ibid., IV, p. 399.
13. Ibid., p. 230.
14. Iqbal, Lectures, p. 170.
15. Ibid., p. 189.
16. Ibid., pp. 186-188.

17. In a way it is wrong to call Rumi's thought a 'philosophy,' for as a saint he is superior to a philosopher. "The philosopher is in bondage to things perceived by the intellect; (but) the pure (saint) is he that rides as a prince on the Intellect of Intellect."

    The Intellect of intellect is your kernel, (while) your intellect is (only) the husk; the belly of animals is ever seeking husks (Mathnavi, III, p. 141).

18. With the denial of creation, the denial of God as Creator becomes a logical necessity and Rumi boldly faces the consequences.

19. I have tried it: my death is (i.e. consists) in
      life;
      When I escape from this life, 'tis to
       endure for ever.
      Kill me, kill me, O trusty friends! Lo, in my
        being killed is life on life.
    (Mathnavi, Book III, p. 215.)

20. Khalifa Abdul Hakim, Metaphysics of Rumi, pp. 38-40.
21. Iqbal, Lectures, p. 48.
22. Mathnavi, III, Nicholson's Translation, lines 1639, 1640.
23. Ibid., IV, Nicholson's Translation, p. 384.
24. Iqbal, Lectures, p. 81.
25. For further elucidation, see Mathnavi, IV, Nicholson's Translation, pp. 355, 357 and 358.
26. Nicholson , Idea of Personality in Sufism, p. 55.…
27. The Our'an, xxi. 36.
28. Iqbal, Lectures, p. 118.
29. Nicholson, Vol. IV. p. 71.
30. Khalifa Abdul Hakim, Metaphysics of Rumi.
31. Paradise Lost, VI. 178-181.
32. Mathnavi (Bulaq ed.), 1, 59.
33. Nicholson, Vol. IV, pp. 106, 107.
34. Whinfield, p. 27.
35. Nicholson, Vol. IV, p. 56.
36. Ibid., p. 81.
37. Secrets of the Self, pp. xix-xxi.
38. Nicholson, Mystics of Islam, pp. 44-46.
39. Iqbal, Lectures, p. 48.
40. Sayyidain, Iqbal's Educational Philosophy, pp. 46, 60.
41. Iqbal, Metaphysics of Persia pp. 39-41.
42. Khalifah Abdul Hakim, Metaphysics of Rumi, p. 25.
43. Nicholson, Mysticism in Islam, p. 117.
44. Mathanvi, Vol. IV, pp. 7-8.
45. Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 344.
46. Ibid., Vol. I, line 976.
47. Nicholson, Vol. IV, pp. 105-106.
48. Nicholson's translation, Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz, pp. 30-31.