Jalaluddin Rumi was allowed a portion of the knowledge of God. He was an ocean. If you place an empty glass into the ocean, what is in the glass is the ocean, yet it is not the ocean. ~ Shems Friedlander

The timeless stirring verses from Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) over the years inspired these images. Grateful for all the blissful joys that come my way … These images are essentially a humble attempt to pour out without saying much, since nothing can ever be enough to show gratitude to the "One" who makes it all possible.

Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi r.a 1207-1273 AD ::.

Was born in Balkh (Afghanistan) in 1207 to a family of learned theologians. Escaping the Mongol invasion, He and his family traveled extensively in the Muslim lands, performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and finally settled in Konya -Turkey, where he succeeded his father in 1231 as professor in religious sciences.

He was introduced into the mystical path by a wandering dervish, Hazrat Shamsuddin Tabriz r.a. His love and his grief after the death of Shams found their expression in a surge of music, dance and lyric poems. He is and will InshAllah be forever one of the most glorious voices amongst the saints in Islam, initiator of the Mevlevi Order of the whirling dervishes, respected for the great Mathnawi book of verses, one of the best known and most influential works of Muslim mysticism. The Mathnawi was begun around 1258 at the suggestion of a mureed (student), Husam al-Din, who acted as a scribe, and though the final story is unfinished, composition most likely ceased a while before Hazrat Maulana Rumi r.a’s death in 1273.

The six books amount to more than 25,000 verses. … They used to illustrate the main theme in a man's dilemma in his search for God. The oldest known manuscripts dated 1278 are preserved in the Mawlana Museum at Konya Turkey. It remains the standard text and is provided with diacritical marks to assist the student.

The Meeting ::. The Whirling Dervishes - Excerpts from the book by Ira Shems Friedlander (MacMillan Publishing Co, Inc., New York; 1975)

... Mevlana and Shamsi Tabriz meet one cold November morning, the wanderings of this mysterious being who walked in a field of magnetism brought him to the front of the Shekerjiler Hani (Inn of the Sugar Merchants), in Konya just as Mevlana Jalalu'ddin Rumi was passing. Mevlana sat majestically on his horse as his students scrambled to walk beside him and hold the stirrup. He had just completed his class at the College of Cotton Merchants and with a throng of students was passing the Inn of the Sugar Merchants.

Shams leapt from the crowd, grasped the bridle of the horse and shouted: "O teacher of the Moslems, who was greater, Abu Yazid Bistami or Muhammad the Prophet?" Rumi felt the eyes of Shams look past his own into the very essence of his being, causing rivers of energy to flow within his body. "The Prophet Muhammad was greater," replied Rumi. Then Shams said, "Did not the Prophet say, 'We have not known Thee as Thou deservest to be known,' while Abu Yazid exclaimed, 'How great is my glory; I am exalted; my dignity is upraised; I am the sultan of sultans '" Mevlana answered, "Abu Yazid's thirst was quenched after a mouthful, but the Prophet of God sought for water, thirsting more and more. Abu Yazid satisfied himself with what he attained in God, but Muhammad the 'Elect One of God' sought each day further, and from hour to hour and day to day saw light and power and divine wisdom increase. That is why he said, 'We have not known Thee as Thou shouldest be known.'"

Shams cried to God and fell to the ground. Mevlana dismounted, dropped to his knees, touched the head of Shams, and the two men embraced. They left the questioning students and retired to a retreat cell where they remained for three months occupied with the exploration of awakening. The two men merged as one being in the fatherhood of God. They became their own planet. Mevlana, the earth, his function to uplift the consciousness of man, revolving around and finally merging with Shams, the sun. They were stirred to the depths of their beings and transfigured by the joy of life. Lost in God-consciousness, they experienced the ecstasy spoken of by the Sufis. Here within the stone walls of a small domed chille (retreat) hut was a friendship based on the discovery of God through each other at a time when both beings had a lesson to impart to one another.

Shams was a catalyst to the sheikh. Sultan Veled, Rumi's son, once remarked of Shams the "his glory was veiled even from those who were themselves veiled in the glory of God."The spirit of the meeting of Jalalu'ddin and Shams was imbued with Divine Light. These beings, face to face, saw within each other the grace and presence of the essence of what each was searching for. For the first time each could reveal to another being the secret in his heart. Rumi was like a room filled with God love. Shams saw this and opened the door. As they meditated on the beloved, the air in the small hut was made pure by the breath of these two holy beings ...

... Out of the being of Mevlana Jalalu'ddin Rumi grew one of the most important and visually exciting dervish orders: the Mevlevis or Whirling Dervishes. At one point in his life, after meeting the wandering dervish, the man in rags, Shamsi Tabriz, Rumi went through a metamorphosis that shifted his center of manifestation from mind to heart. Although very little was known of Shams, there is no doubt that he belonged to a group which knew how to interiorize oneself, thereby reaching the place of the Kalam-i-qudim, the ancient word. He described this as a place where:

'There comes a Sound,
from neither within nor without,
From neither right nor left,
from neither behind nor in front,
From neither below nor above,
from neither East nor West,
Nor is it of the element:
water, air, fire, earth, and the like;
From where then?
It is from that place thou art in search of:
Turn ye toward the place wherefrom the Lord makes His appearance.
From where a restless fish out of water gets water to live in,
From the place where the prophet Moses saw the divine Light,
From the place where the fruits get their ripening influence,
From the place where the stones get transmuted to gems,
From the place to which even in infidel turns in distress,
From the place to which all men turn when they find this world a vale of tears.
It is not given to us to describe such a blessed place:
It is a place where even the heretics would leave off their heresies.

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD) Diviani Shamsi Tabriz

The "Diviani Shamsi Tabriz," containing 2,500 mystical odes, is an outpouring of feelings and thoughts which describes the natural state of man so unfamiliar to ordinary life. It is so different in character and style from Rumi's "Mathnawi" that one wonders whether Shams was not the author.

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade,
But do not be disheartened,
The source they come from is eternal, growing,
Branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?
The source is within you
And this whole world is springing up from it.

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

The Prophet said that God has declared,
" I am not contained in aught above or below,
I am not contained in earth or sky, or even
In highest heaven. Know this for a surety, O beloved!
Yet am I contained in the believer's heart!
If ye seek Me, search in such hearts!"

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

Spring Giddiness
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)

Many have been led astray by the Qur'an:
by clinging to that rope many have fallen into the well.
There is no fault in the rope, O perverse man,
for it was you who had no desire to reach the top.

~ Hazrat Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (r.a) (1207-1273 AD)