egel praised him as one of the greatest poets and one of the greatest thinkers in world history. The great British Orientalist Reynold A. Nicholson paid tribute to him as "the greatest mysti cal poet of any age." His poetry inspired Goethe to compose Westostlicher Di van. The great classical Persian poet Molla Jami said of him: "He is not a Prophet, but he has written a Holy Book," referring to the Masnawi, which has also been called "The Koran of Mysticism" and "The Inner Truth of the Koran." Gandhi used to quote his couplet "To unite is why we came / To divide is not our aim." In 1958, Pope John wrote: "In the name of the Ca tholic world, I bow with respect before the memory of Mevlana."
He is known as Mevlana (or Mawla- na) in the Islamic world, and some times referred to as Rumi (meaning Ro man or Anatolian) particularly in the West. He was a mystic poet and hu manist philosopher. Born in Balkh in 1207, he settled in the ancient city of Konya (Iconium of antiquity) in- the heartland of Anatolia at the age of 22, and died there in 1273. In December 1973, Mevlana, his poetry and mystic philosophy will be observed, discuss ed, and celebrated in Turkey and many other countries. The world pays trib ute to the great Anatolian poet-philo sopher about whom the French writer Maurice Barres once said: "When I ex perienced Mevlana's poetry, which is vibrant with the dance of ecstasy and with melody, I realized the deficiencies of Shakespeare, Goethe and Hugo." Mevlana is the only major philosopher (with the possible exception of Lucre tius in the 1st Century B.C.) through out history to express an entire system of thought in verse which has intrinsic aesthetic merit. His humanism and universalism antedated Dante, who was only 8 years old when Mevlana died. Two of the great humanists of the West, Petrarch and Erasmus, came a full century and two a half centuries, respectively, after Mevlana. His Mas nawi and Divan constitute a most re sourceful body of philosophical, ele giac, didactic, lyric, mythic and mystic poetry.
The great Anatolian spiritual leader, in whose name the Mevlevi (or Maw- lawi) sect, commonly referred to in the West as "The Whirling Dervishes," came into being, wrote euphonious paeans to the supremacy of love. He spurned the narrow teachings of for mal religion: "W e are the spirit's trea sure, not bound to earth, time or space. How can they talk to us of prayer-rugs and piety? Our mother is Love. We were born of love."
Mevlana Celaluddin Rumi witnessed in his lifetime the ravages of the Mon gol invasion and the Crusades. Be moaning rifts and enmities, he called for peace, for a united world transcend ing schisms, for love of man and love of God. He offered his humanism to all: "I am the temple for all mankind." He was, in his own words, "the temple for loving hearts."
Omnia vincit amor. (Love conquers all.) In a famous poem, Mevlana posited the power of love in swaying life and doing away with sectarianism and cynicism:
In all mosques, temples, churches I find one shrine alone, And in it, your face is my supreme delight, don't go away. Yours is the world's all-loving heart for which I yearn, Don't deprive me of your soaring flight,
don't go away. You are the eternal center, I whirl
around you praying. In your absence doomsday comes into sight, don't go away. Mevlana's lyric poems are studded with beautiful epigrams on love: "Love is the sultan of sultans, at whose feet both worlds bow." "In the sect of love, there is neither faith nor sacrilege." "Love needs only Love to declare it self / As the sun needs just the sun to bare itself." And in a dithyrambic outburst, he’ clamors:
If you were patience, I would tear off the veil, If you were sleep, I would awake the dead, If you were a mountain, I would burn it with flames, If you were an ocean, I would drink it
away.
To the Anatolian mystic leader, who said "m y faith and my nation are God," all human beings, regardless of their creeds, ethnic backgrounds, social status, nationalities, etc., were wel come at his shrine of love and hope, as he expressed it in a famous quatrain: Come, come again whoever, whatever
you may be, come: Heathen, fire-worshiper, sinful of
idolatry, come. Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times, Ours is not the portal of despair or
misery, come. It is small wonder why the 20th Cen tury German poet Hans Meinke ce lebrated Mevlana by proclaiming him "the only hope for the dark times we are living in." This man of vision who died exactly 7 centuries ago gave our 20th Century a sense of higher values and the hope for universal brotherhood. Responding to Mevlana's calls, men with loving hearts flocked into the Mev levi congregation-place in Konya for more than seven centuries, as they do today.
In the heart of the city of Konya, which Mevlana once called "the Mecca of the heart", stands the great Mevlana Mau soleum. "The Sultan of Lovers" himself described its overpowering effect: "The place is the Kaba for lovers / Whoever comes half into it leaves full." The Mev levi spurns all worldy pleasures, even the glorious life of the rich and the mighty (In Mevlana's words: "The thrones of the sultans, pitted against love, are pieces of wood.") Mevlana celebrated love's supremacy: "Live in love's ecstasy, for love is all that exists."
Mevlana's Mausoleum is known as "the stronghold of lovers" and as "The Green Dome". It serves as the monu ment to a philosopher who gave Tur key, Islamic countries, and the world at large the values of "the heart's pu rity", the images of the Perfect Man, deathlessness of the loving soul, joys of passion, artistic dimensions of faith, and humanitarianism. The "climate of love" he nurtured in Anatolia has been kept alive not only by the Mevlevi der vishes but by other mystics and men who uphold the principles of ethics
¿M EVLANA
The dance o f love for all m en
in all seasons
blended with aesthetics. His impact was, expressed in two pithy lines by the great Turkish mystic and humanist folk poet Yunus Emre (d. ca. 1321) : Since Mevlana the Divine cast his
glance upon us His magnificent vision is the mirror of
our hearts Ecstasy and passion were hallmarks of Mevlana's thought and art. A t a time when the zealots, preachers of the nar rowest strictures, the fanatics were hell-bent to reduce religion to austere, joyless, stultifying vacuities, Mevlana brought to mysticism the excitement of poetry recitations, music, and ecstatic dance. He described the soaring spirit of the dervish in the act of the Sema (the whirling dance) as the falcon flying towards God. The Sema, ac cording to him, is not the ultimate triumph of the mystic soul, but its noble search for ecstasy and Godli ness. When asked why he used music and dance even on such solemn oc casions as a funeral, he replied: "When the human soul, after years of impris onment in the cage and dungeon of the body, is at last set free, and wings its flight to the source from which it came, isn't this occasion for rejoicing, thanks, and dancing?"
The yearning of the mystic is to return to God the Beloved. The metaphor that Mevlana used in his poems to express this yearning is the sad, soul-piercing sound of the nay (ney), the traditional reed flute. His masterwork, Masnawi, a philosophical exploration of mystic wisdom written in about 26,000 coup lets, opens with the sorrowful strains of the n a y :
Listen to the reed, how it tells its tales: Bemoaning its bitter exile, it wails: "Ever since I was torn from the
reed-beds "M y cries tear men's and women's
hearts to shreds." The Sema, often called "the blessed ceremony", is primarily an aesthetic sight and experience. The musicians and singers create an aura of spiritu ality, of divine poetry. The dervishes whirl rhythmically — their figures dyna mic and dignified, like living statues. Each motion, each gesture has a divine significance. The sudden turns are an
attempt to see God in all directions. Thumping the ground symbolizes tram pling crass selfhood, crushing egotism. Genuflection is the ultimate expression of abandoning one's soul to God. Open ing the arms to the sides is the aspi ration to spiritual excellence, the soul's balance, union with God and eternal bliss. The right arm points heavenward, to God; the left arm down to the earth. This way, the whirling dervish express
es his faith in the world as well as hiis dream of the beloved Providence. The symbolism has been articulated as fol lows: "W e receive from God, we give out to the people. We never keep anv possessions. We soar to the sky, we pour on the ground. Our souls are on the way to God's mercy."
The Mevlevi whirl is a Dionysian ritual with its roots in Anatolian culture and with antecedents in the ancient Turkic shamanistic dances. The Sema has no indignity, no obscenity. No Sufi (mystic) touches another. Sensuality remains a private privilege although the dance is communal, not solitary. In seeking ecstasy, each Sufi is an integ ral man, purifying his soul, summoning all passions he is capable of, having communion with God, without any in termediaries, each man a world unto himself. As Mevlana states it: "Lis tening to beautiful sounds, one finds peace of heart and achieves union with God." In all the outward serenity and innermost exuberance during the Sema, the mystic strives to arrive at the state of ecstasy which gives him a glimpse of God:
What nurtures our soul is the whirling dance Where the loved one emerges in our trance Mevlana referred to this spiritual ele vation and passionate excitement as a creative surge, as divine inspiration: "The madman of love is above all reason." Antedating Emily Dickinson's "Much madness is divinest sense" by more than six centuries, he wrote: "The mind's supreme strength is the secret of madness.
The man of spirit is also the man of reality. Mevlana, enamored as he was of flights of mystic fancy, remained in volved in the welfare of the people of
his city, in social justice, in affairs of the state. He sometimes defied and took to task an unjust Sultan. When Sultan Rukneddin Keykavus sought guidance from Mevlana, the mystic leader answered scathingly: "W hat could I possibly tell you? They expect ed you to be the shepherd. Yet you are the wolf. They wanted you to be the guard. You turned out to be the thief."
For Mevlana the "Good man is he who serves the people." He gave women an exalted place: "Woman is not a creature, but creator." Once a burglar stole from his Lyceum a valuable rug. The burglar was caught and brougnt before Mevlana who said: "He must have stolen because of need," and bought the rug from the burglar. His poetry is strongly critical ot arrogant lords, rulers who take bribes, mer chants who cheat buyers. There are painful depictions of cities destroyed and villages ruined, severed heads, children stoning madmen, hunger and famine.
Mevlana did not initiate the Mevlevi sect. It was done in his name after his death by his son Sultan Veled, himself an important Turkish poet, and some of his principal disciples. His funerai included the saddest Sema because Konya had lost its great spiritual guide and Anatolia one of its dazzling cultur al figures. It was also the most joyous because the greatest mystic of them all had at last reached his beloved God. He had proclaimed: "When my coffin starts its journey to the grave / Don't think I am unhappy to leave this world. / When you lower me into the pit, don't weep / Because that is a curtain behind which lies / Peaceful Paradise." Not only Moslems were crying at Mevlana's funeral, but also Christians, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, men of different creeds, languages, ethnic origins. They had come to revere him as their own. He symbolized the unity of mankind for all of them. ("There are hundreds of thousands of bodies — but only One Soul.) And Mevlana's humanism and humanitarian- ism still strike a vital chord today. Mevlana is a mind for all seasons. Significantly, the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, regard ed Mevlana as a spiritual and moral authority and inspiration for the New Turkey when he paid the following tri
butes to the great mystic philosopher: "Every visitor to his mausoleum is a refugee from reactionary dogma... He was a great reformer who welded Islam into the Turkish soul... He upheld so cial revolution and the freedom of cons cience... Whenever I visit Konya, Mev lana's spiritual power engulfs my whole being. He is a great genius, a lover of transformation who transcends the ages."
