THE BRIDGE

Rumi’s poetry has long served as a steadfast bridge between the Islamic world and the Western one, bringing all people closer to understanding and Divine compassion. His vision remains contemporary, urgent, and necessary in the divided, violent world of this century. It seeks to unite faiths and nations, speaking the universal language of love—one that crosses cultural boundaries and helps us move away from the politics of hatred and fear, of separation and division.

EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE

Rumi’s biographer, Aflaki, recounts the words of an Eastern Orthodox priest: “Master Rumi is like bread. Everyone likes him.” And indeed, Rumi’s poetry is truly nourishing and delightful spiritual food, prepared with love. This is why, more than seven centuries later, his poems—now translated into many languages—still rest sweetly and vibrantly on our lips.

I am the Moon, everywhere and nowhere. Do not seek me outside; I dwell within your very life.
Everyone calls you toward themselves; I invite you only within yourself.
Poetry is the boat and its meaning is the sea.
Come aboard, now! Let the moon guide this vessel!

THE VIBRATIONAL TEMPLE

In the 13th century—the same years in which Saint Francis was renewing Christianity—Rumi revitalized Islam by placing love at its center and signaling profound transformation within the Islamic world, becoming over time a point of encounter between East and West.

For this reason, many regard him not only as a poet but also as a prophet.
His principal work, essential to the Islamic world and especially to Turkish-Iranian Sufism, is the Mathnawi, a masterpiece of Persian literature and universal mysticism. It is a 25,000-verse poem divided into six books, translated and studied for centuries around the world—including in Italy thanks to Gabriele Mandel Kahn, to whom the country owes much of its understanding of Islamic art and culture.

Rumi follows the Qur’an but loves all religions and transcends them all, freed from the bondage of dogma and intellectual concepts in favor of feeling—of the direct experience of God’s love within the heart.
Rumi’s path is one of spiritual freedom and, like Jesus, he affirms that the true temple is not in churches but in our heart—a vibrational temple of music and verse, where prayer rises from inner listening and where everything in the universe turns and vibrates as energy of light and sound.

In Sufism, the word Samā means listening. Through the rhythmic spinning of the Samazen dancer, the mind is abandoned and harmony with the universe’s sound and light is achieved. At the end of the sacred dance, the chant Hu is sung, emerging from deep within the dancer.

THE ROOTS OF THE ROOTS OF THE ROOTS

Jalāl-ud-Dīn Rūmī was born in 1207 into a noble family of Sufi mystics near Balkh, an ancient Persian Silk Road city now in Afghanistan. After the Mongol invasion, he wandered in exile until settling in Konya, Turkey, where he founded the Sufi order of the Mevlevi.

His father, Bahâ Valad, was a renowned scholar and Sufi mystic, whose sermons were said to be attended even by the king of Persia.

In 1244 came Rumi’s encounter with the dervish Shams Tabrizi—literally “the sun of Tabriz”—who had devoted his life to the practice of Sufi teachings. Their conversations sparked a profound transformation in Rumi, leading him to devote much of his time to poetry and to develop the practice of samā, where meditation, music, song, and dance merge into a single process.

Though he earned his livelihood from the religious school, he was also an extraordinarily prolific and passionate poet, creating two masterpieces of Persian literature: Diwān Shams Tabrizi, in honor of his spiritual master, composed of 44,000 verses, and the Mathnawi, “rhyming couplets on spiritual themes,” comprising about 26,000 verses.

While the Diwān is filled with emotional and fiery poems, the Mathnawi is a didactic book that teaches the wisdom of love—or, in Rumi’s own opening words, “the roots of the roots of the roots of all religions.” Unlike poets who repeatedly revise their work, Rumi wrote extemporaneously, reciting his verses to his disciples in states of ecstasy and contemplation, while listening to music, dancing, or in the midst of conversation. His poems overflow with spontaneous images expressed in a vivid and imaginative poetic language—the mark not only of a gifted poet but of a mystical master.

MUSIC AS DIVINE REFLECTION

Sufis use a parable to explain the sense of divine reflection:
God’s love and presence are like the sun—too powerful to gaze upon directly, yet we can enjoy its reflection on the surface of a lake.

In the realm of the Unseen, a sandalwood burns. This love is the smoke of that incense.

One of the greatest obstacles to accepting divine presence is the refusal of what cannot be seen or touched. Every musician experiences this multilayered perception: through music, one may become aware of one’s divine nature and activate it through creation; one may live music as offering and prayer, drinking the wine of love; and finally, one may turn attention inward, toward the deepest senses that invite us to feel God—or sense the divine as one senses incense.

In Sufi, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions alike, incense evokes the presence of the sacred. Music can be compared to incense: invisible, intangible, pure love through which matter becomes embodied. Resins and embers transform into smoke, spreading fragrance—the symbol of divine presence.
Water for the fish, air for animals—we might say. Rumi saw this essence, love, as the matrix of the cosmos.

In modern scientific terms, the best explanation physicists offer for gravity is not a simple attraction between isolated bodies, but a force inherent in the very fabric of the universe. The world is not still, and we are mortal; therefore, the failure to perceive the divine is, in itself, a kind of sacrilege.

Music is one of the paths to reach God, and the Persian poet maintained a profound connection to music through the ney, the reed flute considered a manifestation of the universe’s essence, a symbol of divine love, a bridge between earthly and spiritual realms.
According to the Sufis, a sonic current of life permeates the entire universe, creating a correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm; from its balance arises a universal sound and dance. The great 14th-century Persian poet Hafez hears it and writes: “I do not know how far the destination may be, but from afar a music reaches my ears.”

MUSIC AND TRANSCENDENCE

The Mathnawi opens with a long introduction centered on the ney, whose breath conveys the divine and whose voice reveals the importance of music in Rumi’s lyric world. One of the oldest instruments known, the ney expresses—through its mournful intensity—the soul’s longing to return to God and be reunited.

In Hindu philosophy, it is the flute of God, the Hu-sound of Krishna’s flute that permeates the universe: by following that sound, the soul finds its way home.

States of consciousness manifest as vibration, music, and sound. Poetry is pure consciousness precisely because it expresses rhythm and musicality. In Iranian and Turkish cultures, song, music, and poetry have always been profoundly intertwined.

What cannot be expressed in words can be expressed in music. Since ancient times, musical harmony has carried the divine word from invisible worlds down to earth.

The Mathnawi’s proem wonderfully expresses the state of separation of the soul—imprisoned in human corporeality—and its long journey toward awakening: awakening to the essence of the All, pure Vibration. In many poems Rumi describes states of mind and spirit that Sufi masters believe love brings forth: the extinction of the ego, surrender, annihilation—akin in many ways to Buddhist nirvana—complete intoxication with divine love: ecstasy.

The enduring relevance of Sufi practice lies in its pursuit of experiencing essence through the unity of the three centers—body, mind, and spirit—using music and dance as instruments of transcendence in order to reach ecstasy.

LOVE

Through poetry, Rumi carves out his message of peace:
Go and wash all hatred from your heart seven times with water.
Only then may you be our companion and drink the wine of love.

In the West, we have long believed that peace and progress are gifts granted by some invisible benevolent hand. Betrayed by intellectuals and politicians, we live lulled by the dream that we will always live longer, healthier, wealthier. The wars of recent years call us back—brutally—to awakening. We must not surrender to this sleep. In our comfort-induced inertia, we have forgotten that the construction of anything meaningful requires effort, sacrifice, and sometimes even the extreme. It has always been so for every generation before us.

Love is the alchemy of peace.
Shortly after World War II, Albert Einstein observed: “The war is won, but the peace is not.”
Seven hundred years earlier, Rumi had the same insight: violence cannot generate lasting peace; only understanding, compassion, kindness, and sharing can—these are the qualities of love.

Aflaki recounts that a Christian monk, having heard of Rumi’s great spiritual and cultural refinement, went to visit him in Konya. To show respect, the monk prostrated himself before Rumi, and when he lifted his head, he saw that Rumi had bowed down before him in return.

Rumi expanded the domain of love from personal relationships to religious coexistence and international peace. Love has always existed—older and more deeply rooted than any religious institution—and all religions and spiritual traditions are founded upon this shared aim: love.