Whatever you conceive of God’s bounty, God transcends all that.’In Islamic mysticism, there are two types of death, dying voluntarily or dying indispens-ably. Man dying indispensably is his soul leaving the body. Man dying voluntarily, is to reach the fan fillah in accordance with the Prophet saying, ‘Die before you die.’
There is a beautiful Quranic verse, which Muslims recite when someone passes away. It says:
‘Ya auhal nafs al mutmina.’ Oh soul of peace; ‘Irjayee ala Rabaka radaytan mardaya,’ Return to your lord, you pleased with Him and He with you; ’Fadkulee fe abadee, wa adkule janatee.’
Enter in my servants and enter my heaven.
This can be interpreted in two ways. One can read this ‘adkulee fe abadee’ as enter in my wor-ship or what Maulana reads it as adkhule fe abadee, as enter into my servants and you have entered my paradise. If one finds a servant of God, someone who has cleaned himself from his nafs and if one is taken into his heart, the love, affection and the joy, which one will ex-perience is the very essence of paradise.
The varieties of stories in Masanvi show man’s predicament in the search of God. Sama represents mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One, through prayers, song, dance and other ritualistic activities. In this journey the seeker sym-bolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons ego, finds the truth and then returns from this spiritual journey with greater maturity, so as to love and be of service to whole of creation, without discrimination against beliefs, races, classes and nations. Mau-lana says, “The whole of my life can be summoned up in three words, “I was raw, I was cooked; and then burned,” meaning now I am on fire. Dec 17 the day of his death in Konia is celebrated as the day of Maulana’s final union with God.
Rumi says, “I am so small I can barely be seen, How can this great love be inside me? Look at your eyes. They are so small, But they see enormous things.”
In Discourse Thirty-five, Rumi, talking of Quran says, “How wonderfully gracious God is. It sets a seal on those who listen and do not understand, argue and yet learn nothing. God is gracious. His wrath is gracious and even His lock is gracious, but His lock is nothing next to His unlocking, for the grace of that is indescribable. If I shatter into pieces, it is through the Infinite grace of God’s unlocking.”
In the Sufi order, the one generated by Rumi, the Mevlevi Order, has a distinctive ritual in a circular motion, which is famous as dance of whirling dervish. The tradition says, it comes from Rumi himself. Rumi would hold the pillars of his mosque, cup his hand around, draw his head backwards and then move in a circular motion. The motion, perhaps, symbolizes the planets circling the sun. The planets and the sun are always in harmony and never fall apart. They never fall out in concert with the galaxies and the molecules.
Rumi wrote most of his beautiful poetry when he was in trance, doing the dance with his one hand towards the heaven receiving mercy and grace from God of love and from the other hand passing it on to all the creatures of the planet earth. Rumi reached such an unbe-lievable state of ecstasy that he could tap into the universe of consciousness and wisdom and could portray and talk of the mechanism of universe, i.e. of force of gravity, about quantum physics, about electromagnetism and about human journey and endeavor for love.
“You have said what you are. I am who I am. You are here in my head, my head here in my hands. Keep walking, though there’s no place to go. This moment this love comes to rest in me, many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks. In the needle’s eye a turning night of stars. Inside water, a waterwheel turns. A star circles with the moon. We live in the night ocean, wondering, what are these lights? Something opens our wings. Someone fills the cup in front of us. We taste only sacredness… I have lived on the lip of in-sanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside! Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you’re perfectly free.”
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Islamabad.
(ememiqbal68@gmail.com)
