‘Our Master’ Rumi

A Maulvi (schoolteacher) could become a Maulana (Spiritual Leader; literally ‘our Master’) only by the Grace of Shamas-i-Tabrez.

Shamas-i-Tabrez was said to have given Inner Eyes to thousands of the congenitally blind.

To Rumi, His Great Disciple, He transferred this mantle of Mastership so that the science of Spirituality would continue to flourish.

With all Grace of His Master, Jalal-ud-din Rumi returned to Konya to continue this work of restoring sight to those in darkness.

At this time, He was known for His strange and ecstatic ways. The Inner Bliss overflowed from Him like a heaving sea and the story of Love poured out through His eyes. In the ecstacy of His devotion He would dance about and songs of Love welled up from the deeps of His heart. Such behaviour was very much looked down upon by the Muslim orthodoxy.

Nevertheless, song and dance became important to the circle of dervishes that gathered around Maulana Rumi, and they became known as whirling dervishes.

To the accompaniment of reed and drum the dervishes would sometimes do their whirling dances through the night while Rumi would give impromptu discourses.

It is said that Maulana Rumi Himself could dance for days on end without stopping. At such times He would be lost to all outward consciousness and have total union with the Inner Song and Light. Then He would commune with His Master and the Saints of olden times.¹

As long as a Competent Master remained, the outer music was used only as means of the Inner.

Holy Men dance and wheel on the (Spiritual) Field … From within Them musicians strike the tambourine … One must have the Spiritual Ears, not the ears of the body.

There were indeed an outer and Inner Circle of students. Those of the Inner were also given the Inner Exercises of Simran and Bhajan which they were to do in silence, along with self-introspection. In addition, Rumi would quote the Prophet Mohammed Who said that the way of Islam was not the way of solitary monkhood. What was needed was the way of the householder.

The very vicissitudes of such a life, He would say, were the means of cleansing oneself and learning the Inner Endurance so needed for Spiritual Life.

If one could not go that way, well then he should at least take up the way of monkhood so as not to be lost altogether. Maulana Rumi Himself had a wife and two sons and earned His own livelihood.

His followers came from all faiths and all walks of life as His teachings were for all. The Masters see and communicate through the heart and not the outer forms.

Rumi tells that once He was speaking to a crowd on which a party of non-Muslims was present. In the middle of His talk they began to weep and went into ecstacy.

Someone asked Him how people who knew nothing about the Muslim faith could understand such things. Rumi told him that everyone knows the Oneness of God, Who is Creator and Provider, no matter what their religion. In His words which came from that One God were miexed the Universal Ecstacy and they awakened in these people the scent of their Beloved and the quest.

Once a Jewish disciple was asked by his Jewish brethren why he went to a Mohammedan sheikh.

He replied,

Why – He is the King David of this age!

The Mongolian soldiers were also fond of Rumi’s teachings and it is said that when the Mongols invaded Konya, they tore down the city walls but did no destruction to the city itself out of deference to the Great Maulana there. The Persian Sultan and the Governor of Rum, Muin-al-din, and his minister all became disciples of the Master, and it is probably for this reason that His unorthodox teachings were allowed to continue without disturbance admist the constant hostility of the orthodox Muslims.

Many of Rumi’s discourses are personally adressed to Muin-al-din, to whom He gave lessons of humility and True Love. Under such guidance the worldly governor became intensely devoted to his Spiritual Governor.

During His life Maulana Rumi came to have two Gurumukh disciples.

The first was an illiterate goldsmith named Salah al-din Zakrob. The story goes that while in one of his states of ecstacy Rumi was dancing about the streets of Konya when He passed by Zakrob’s shop. Zakrob was beating silver and he was also remembering God. Thus the sound of his hammer filled Rumi with intoxication and He began to dance around the shop. In deference to the Master, Zakrob continued beating the silver. In this way he wasted many pieces of silver but he gained much more. He became a disciple of Maulana Rumi and gave all his devotion to the Master and the Inner Practices. The Master in turn gave him His heart.

I discovered a treasure in the shop of gold leaf maker. What a form, what a content, what a beauty, what a Grace!

The Maulana gave him great favours and took him as His close companion. People wondered what He saw in this illiterate man.

Zakrob simply stated:

They are offended that the Maulana has singled me for His favours, but they know not that I am but a mirror. The mirror does not reflect itself – but the one who looks into it; then why should He not choose to see Himself?

Maulana Rumi Himself said:

Assuredly Salah al-din is the image of that fair one; rub thine eyes, and behold the image of the heart.

When Maulana Rumi made Zakrob His assistant in instructing the dervish acolytes, those same jealous sentiments that arose with the coming of Shamas-i-Tabrez once again came to the surface and great propaganda was made against Zakrob. It is indeed unfortunate that such petty sentiments have threatened such great movements. Rumi practically had to excommunicate the troublemakers before they would give in.

For nine years, until the death of Zakrob, Maulana Rumi gave this beloved disciple His special Love.

After that, God bestowed another Gurumukh disciple on Rumi in the form of Hisam al-din Chalapi, who later became His successor as Master of the Mevlevi Dervishes – as the order of whirling dervishes later became known.

As we have seen, Maulana Rumi’s Love knew no bounds when He found one who could totally effase himself in God. He was indeed a living sacrifice of Love. When He saw that this disciple Chalapi had become such a one, He bestowed all that He had on him, physically and spiritually. His own house became barren because He gave everything he had to Hisam Chalapi.

Once the Amir of Rum sent 70,000 dirhams to the Master. The Master immediately gave it all to Hisam Chalapi.

Sultan Walad, Rumi’s son, complained to his father that while He was giving everything away to Hisam Chalapi there was nothing at all in their own house.

The Maulana, in order to stress to His son the rare greatness of one who has surrendered all to the Master, said,

If a million saints were starving in my sight and I had a loaf of bread, I’d give that loaf to Chalapi.

When Chalapi found out that the Master’s followers were fond of studying the Ilahi Nama of Hakim Sanai and Mantiqatu’ tayr of Attar, he went to the Master to ask Him to write such a work that the disciples need study no other poetry.

Maulana Rumi immediately took out a portion of His Great Work, the Mathnavi, saying that God had already forewarned Him of the wishes of the brethren.

And He read to them from that fragment which began:

From the Sound of Flute hear what tale it tells, wherein the sad plaint of separation swells.

Thereafter each night Maulana Rumi would call forth Hisam Chalapi and dictate to him the God-inspired verses of the Mathnavi.

Chalapi would take them down and then chant them in his beautiful voice. Sometimes they would work the night through, unaware of time. Maulana Rumi called the Mathnavi the Book of Hisam and in all modesty called Himself a flute on the lips of Hisam al-din, pouring forth the wailful music that he made.

That inspired literary work of Rumi has been called a sublime mountain peak; the many other poets before and after Him but foothills in comparison. Among Western scholars who have delved deeply into the original it is considered to be one of the supreme mystical works of all time.

For twelve years Hisam Chalapi and Maulana Rumi were Spiritual Lover and Beloved.

Then after some twenty-three years of Spiritual Ministry, in the year 1273, Maulana Rumi’s earthly mission came to an end. He conferred the Spiritual Mantle on His dear Hisam al-din who continued the work of God.

As His disciples viewed the Master on His deathbed they prayed with deep emotion for His recovery. With all serenity, the Master rose up and, looking deep in their eyes, stated:

This recovery you pray for is for you alone. For so many years this body has been between God and soul and during my busy hours I could snatch only a little time to rise above this body. Now at last this body is being thrown off and I am going back into God. So please do not pray for my staying.

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Explanation: 1) Normally, today’s dervishs whirl dancing in a circle to the outer music of the flute, in order to enter a kind of trance. In Turkey, it is considered to be a tourist attraction, because this is the only possibility for the dervishs to follow their tradition. Maulana Rumi, however, was God-intoxicated by the Inner Sound of the Flute which is audible in Bhanwar Gupha and which calls the soul back to its True Home [Editorial Note, 2011].