Description

Maulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273A.D.) was a mystical thirteenth century Persian Sufi poet,
jurist and theologian. He believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching the Ultimate Reality. For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the Divine. It was from these ideas that the practice of Whirling Dervishes developed into a ritual.Rumi’s importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. The Persian world, which are extended from Turkey to India, looks upon Rumi as one of the greatest spiritual poets in history. He has had a significant influence on the Persian and Turkish literature since the thirteenth century A.D. Over the last about one hundred years, Rumi’s poetry has spread from the Islamic world and into the Western World. The lyrical beauty of his outpourings of love for the Divine have caught up the imagination of the West which have helped to make him one of the most popular and best-selling poets in America and some other countries in
the West. This is so because Rumi’s poetry embraces all cultures, nationalities and mythologies. People of all denominations read the poetry of Rumi without feeling as though he is imposing any orthodox beliefs upon them.
Rumi, in fact, integrates themes and myths from multiple religious traditions into a universal expression of Divine Love. His writings resound with tolerance,
goodness, charity, understanding, fellowship, and awareness through love. In doing so, he does not offend anyone, but includes everyone. The world of Rumi is neither exclusively the world of a Sufi, nor the world of any religious denomination; it is the highest state of a
human being -a fully evolved human.
The writings of Rumi are timeless and quite relevant even today. Therein lies the importance of Rumi especially in the context of modern world where the need
of this understanding is felt all the more.
Maulana Rumi heralded the cause of Sufism at a time when the Mongol hordes had wreaked havoc in Asia and people were groping in the dark and striving arduously in search of the Truth and
its realization. Consequences arrived at by him, and the findings made by him, were based more on his personal experiments rather than on theoratical knowledge in the field of realization. He took the religious scriptures as his base and main prop and, at the same time , relied on the findings of earlier spiritual preceptors of the East as well as of the West. After his meeting with Shamsuddin
Tabrizi, he experienced ecstasy and complete inward transformatiopn. His personal experiences of this truth inspired the great mystical revival in Iran and the Anatolian Peninsula. He was
acclaimed as the resuscitator of the dormant Divinity of man by erealizing which humanity throughout the world could be brought into the orbit of one family of God. He delivered a message of hope,love, faith, brotherhood, fellowship, amity, understanding, peace and charity throughout the world.