ASCETICISM AND ECSTASY

Rumi, who was completely on the Muhammadi path and took Muhammad as an example in everything, was very much attached to asceticism and self-mortification due to the abundance of divine love in him. At this point, let us listen to Sipehsalar once again:

This poor slave of God had been in Rumi's service for forty years. He used to continue his worship from his youth to his death without decreasing. I never have seen him put his head on a pillow and comfortably rest on the bed. It is a fact that God always brought to morion the body of his holiness who was sub­jected to self-mortification, and He gave strength to it. How can one describe his sleeplessness and discontent? Once during a night of whirling ceremonies when sleep had overtaken those present, his holiness leaned his back against the wall and put his blessed head on his knees. Shaykh Muhammad Khadim came and brought a big blanket and put it on his blessed shoulders and covered his whole body with it. When the friends fell asleep his holiness stood up. He started praying. Then he walked around a little bit. He never rested and stopped.

Sipehsalar tries to explain Rumi's state of ecstasy and dis­content with this poem from the Divan-i Kabir:

I have lost my mind for love because there is no strength in my heart that has lost its hand and feet to resist His love.Day and night I keep on chewing on one end of the chain of love that ties me.

I am covered in blood all over my body.

I am afraid if the vision of the Beloved comes, I might spill the blood of my heart over Him.

Ask the fairies of the night of this lover who burns with the fire of love and cries and weeps.

When I come and go in the darkness, my feet touch fairies.

My heart, which is shattered in pieces, is traveling all night by burning like a star.

By the spell of the unfair and cruel Beloved all my sleep has gone.

0 my Beloved, let me wear a dress of fire like the sun and with that fire let me beautify and enlighten the world like the sun.

My love is a moment of Your love.

Even if I escape and rest, my spirit never relaxes and rests.

I attain peace and comfort that very moment when I do not separate from Your love, never rest but continuously burn and be burned.

In another poem, Rumi points to the same state and says: "Everybody went to sleep. I, the lover who gave away his heart, did not sleep. All night my eyes are counting stars in the sky Your love drew sleep away from my eyes such that it never returns. My sleep has drunk the poison of Your separation and died. "

Rumi's patience and endurance in terms of fasting were at an amazing level. He had attained the essence of the meaning of the Prophetic Traditions: "Hunger is the food of God on earth. He keeps the bodies of those He loves alive with it, " and he was practicing it. According to Islamic principles, there is only one month of compulsory fasting. People of piety, those who fear God very much and those who follow his orders, fast also some days during the other holy months. There are also others who fast three days a week or more. But all who fast break their fast at sundown for the night. It is narrated from the Masters that even those in the forty-day Sufi reclusion break their fast in this way. But Rumi had taken hunger to its highest level. For years, he never ate to fill his stomach and said: "For forty years there was never food in my stomach at night. "

Now that I have spent the night in the presence of my Lord, now that I have attained that happiness, the nourishment of my Lord has reached my spirit and made me spiritually full.

When he first met with Shams of Tabriz, they sat down for six months and stayed away from human desires such as eating and drinking. Whenever they broke their fast, they ate one kind of food. The most food Rumi ate was not more than ten bites. He said: "There is such a dragon in me that cannot stand eat­ing. " On the matter of hunger, he said: "The bird of your heart cannot crack the egg due to eating in excess and being sick. It remains in this prison of an egg. You come out of the egg of imprisonment of the lower self (nafs) so that your wings can open up and you can soar in the spiritual heavens. "

The above descriptions are related to the physical fasting of Rumi. The one who best observed the spiritual fasting, the fast­ing of heart, which means to leave everything other than God, is again Rumi. In fact, people of gnosis have said: "There are three kinds of fasting: fasting of the lay, fasting of the elite, and fasting of the elite of the elite. The fasting of the lay merely con­sists of giving up eating and drinking. The fasting of the elite is the fasting of the hands, feet, eyes, tongue, and other limbs by protecting them from doing evil. The fasting of the elite of the elite is leaving everything other than God. " Rumi's fasting was this third kind.

He became upset whenever his family made major plans for cooking; whenever there was little burden and trouble for cook­ing, he would seem very happy and compliment his family say­ing: "Today the light of poverty is shining on the foreheads of my family. " In one of his odes he says: "The one killed by the lust is contaminated. But the martyr of love is pure and clean. Poverty has set its tent at a place far away from that clean one and that dirty one. The hearts of all lovers formed a circle around poverty. It was as if the poverty was the shaykh of shaykhs and the hearts of all his disciples. " Elsewhere in the Divan-i Kabir, Rumi says: "Every person who saves his heart from the desires of both worlds and cleans it and never seeks pleasure in this world or the other, understands that it is poverty and nothingness to reply 'Yes' to the voice of Alast' (Am I not your Lord?). "

As Sipehsalar writes, whenever the time for prayer came, Rumi would face the qibla (the direction of holy shrine in Mecca) and the color of his blessed face would change. Rumi's prepara­tion for daily prayer would remind one of Ali's prayers. As com­monly known, the Commander of the Faithful, Ali's face would change colors, and he would start shaking out of fear when the time for prayer came. When he was asked: "O Commander of the Faithful, what is happening to you, " he would answer: "It is time to turn to God and perform the duty of the Divine Entrustment God has offered to the heavens, earth, and moun­tains, and they were afraid and declined the responsibility. I am afraid that I don't know whether I will be able to perform the duty that I have assumed. "

Rumi's prayer was performed with an open heart and a for­getting of one's self. In his prayer he would find himself com­pletely in God and reunited with God. In fact, the purpose of prayer is to find God spiritually, to reunite with God by forget­ting about one's self and escaping one's imaginary existence. It is for this reason that the Prophet says: "Prayer is reunification with God. " But those who look at only the appearance of things cannot see and understand how this reunification will happen. It is also for this reason that prayer is viewed as the pillar of the religion and ascension of a believer to heaven. It frequently is observed that the great Prophet started a prayer after the night prayers and continued praying until the next morning, praying the two-rakat prayer, forgetting himself in the presence of God. It also was observed that he remained in prostration and bow­ing for a day or for a night.

Rumi's prayers were not like the prayer of any other believ­er, performed only as a duty to attain God's pleasure. Rumi's prayers were not only a prayer for God's pleasure but also a prayer of heart and a prayer of love. The following passage from the Divan-i Kabir illustrates Rumi's state in prayer:

When it is time for the evening prayer, everyone lights up his house and prepares the table, but I find the spirit of the Beloved in my heart and start to cry out and lament.

Since I make ablution with my tears, my prayers are fiery.

When the sound of adhan (call for prayers) reaches the door of my mosque, it burns it down.

Which way is the qibla?

I missed my prayers; I need to make them up.

You and I receive a lot of challenges because of these miss­ing prayers.

I wonder if the prayers of those who arc enraptured with God's love are right.

You tell me because the ecstatic never knows time and place.

Is this the second rakat that I am praying? Or is it the fourth- Which chapter did I recite?

I cannot speak because of excitement.

How can I knock on God's door when neither hands nor heart remained in me? I am not in me.

You took my hand and heart. O my God! Nothing remained of me. At least you give me assurance and trust.

By God, I do not know bow I pray

Did I complete the bowing? Who is the imam? I have no idea.

From now on let me be like a shadow in front and behind every imam so that sometimes I may shrink and prostrate with the fear of the One who created me.

Since we love this world and focus too much of our atten­tion on our daily business, we do not realize that we are in God's presence in prayer, and we think of the things we have done or we are going to do. No matter how much we try, we cannot escape these random thoughts. We concentrate on the matters of the world that randomly pop up in our minds and confuse prayers. Unlike Rumi, who confused his prayers because he was enraptured with the love of God, we confuse our prayers because of our intoxication with the love of this world.

Sipehsalar writes: "If I were to describe one tenth of Rumi's ecstasy, love, and divine attraction, I could not fit it into this book. "37 O reader, may God give you success. Know that rapture of attraction is a state of fascination and ecstasy induced by God attracting his servant to Himself. It is being overwhelmed such that one forgets one's self; it is being fascinated by God's great­ness, power, and attributes. Attraction is reunion with God, dying before death, and attaining God while living. If there is no spiritual talent in a person to walk on the path of God, no mat­ter how much that person strives or how much he performs self-mortification, he never attains union with God. Attraction is a favor of God, the Most Glorious, in the eternal past. It is a spir­itual bestowment that God has granted in the souls of some peo­ple in the world of the spirits before coming to this world.

Our Prophet says, "There is an attraction among the attrac­tions of God that is better than the worship of the whole of humankind and jinn. " If there occurs a pause, a joylessness, a hopelessness to the person who walks in the path of God when he reaches a level, God, the Most Dominant, the Most Glorious, takes the traveler on His path to safety with His attraction due to the abundance of His mercy and favors and makes him attain his destination. The eternal attraction bestowed by God was clearly visible in Rumi. Therefore, of every level and stage he attained with continuously overflowing divine attraction, he related:

The love Buraq of meanings has taken away my mind and my heart.

Ask me: "Where did it take them?" It took my mind and heart to that side which you do not know, to the beyond. I reached a pavilion from where I saw no moon, no sky. I arrived in such a world that even the world ceases to be the world. For one moment, excuse me, spare me, so that my mind returns to me and I can tell you what the spirit is and talk about its beauties. Do not disregard my words. Listen to me, you, too, have a spirit. Try to understand the spirit. There are favors of the Beloved upon us—bestowments, grants, and gifts. These are amazing, never before seen favors and bestowments.

These are unique gifts.

From the path of the senses come clear lights, and hearts are enlightened.

When the spirit, which resembles the star of Canopus, appears from the direction of the Yemeni corner of the Ka'ba, the moon ceases to be visible as well as the sun and the seven poles of the skies.

The light of the spirit overpowers them all. For a moment take the religion which resembles a piece of gold and put it under your tongue so that you may realize how valuable an ore resides in your heart, inside yourself.

Enlighten the lights of the five senses that are in you.

See them as the five daily prayers. Your heart is like the fatiha, which consists of seven verses.

Every morning there comes a voice from the heavens. If you can remove the love of this world from your heart, you can hear it.

And find the trace of the path of truth and begin to walk on it. In another poem, Rumi describes the same state:

Once again happiness came and pulled our gown.

Once again we set up our tent on the heavens.

Yesterday the Beloved asked me "How are you at the mercy of this disloyal world?"

How is one who sees his smiling fortune and luck?

Praises to God, I found that candy that Egypt could  not even dream of next to my tooth.

We are a great person even though we arc not rich or do not hold a high position. We are a king without subjects or army.

We are eating sugar from our sugar cane field.

Though the revolving of the moon wears out life and short­ens it, our Beloved has granted a lot of long lives in his revolution.

Each word that Rumi said when losing his consciousness under the influence of God's love is the key to thousands of spir­itual treasures. If one attempts to explain all this, the matter lengthens and the purpose gets lost. My dear readers, most of the books written about Rumi's life and views try to explain his wah-dat al-wujud by comparing him to others. However, Sipehsalar explained Rumi with Rumi. That is, he explained his ideas, feel­ings, and views by taking examples from his work. In this regard, to explain the spiritual joy in the world of spirits, Rumi says:

O my God, my love was at the level of perfection when You created me in the eternal past.

At that time there was no earth, no world. Neither the sun existed nor head of a man, nor his hat.

There was nothing when you selected me for your love. I was with You in the eternal past, I was Your companion and friend.

Now that I was with You and You were with me, why are You hiding now? Why are You not revealing Yourself?
The eye that sees is You, the one that says is You, the one that hears is You.  You are the One who puts up curtain before our eyes to prevent them from seeing the truth and who tears up those curtains.

Most of Rumi's beautiful and influential poems were recited when he was in a state submerged in rapture (istighraq} with divine love. What is this state of being submerged in rapture? When the special servants of God attain the level of closeness and union with God, they are fascinated by His Beauty, Power, Majesty, and Generosity. Coming under the influence of the Creator, the Absolute Beauty, they become ecstatic and intoxicat­ed as if they had drunk a spiritual wine, the wine of love. The Prophet tells us of their state: "God has prepared a wine for his saints that when they drink it, they become intoxicated; when they become intoxicated, they become enraptured; when they are enraptured, they become silent. " Our Prophet was honored by vicinity to God, as indicated by the Qur'anic verse: "At a distance of two bow lengths or (even) nearer. "41 When he was bestowed with that favor, when he saw God, Possessor of Absolute Majesty and Absolute Beauty; with his spiritual eye, when he discovered the Divine Entrustments and secrets, he went into a state of inde­scribable joy. This spiritual wine that enraptured our Great Prophet was the wine of love, the wine of truth.

Rumi recited many poems that describe this spiritual wine that enraptures the saints and special servants of God. I could not proceed without sharing one of them here. If we read these poems carefully and reflect on them, with the grace and help of God, we can understand at least somewhat this spiritual state, which is very difficult to explain and to understand:

It is such a wine that if a drop of it falls on the ground, rose gardens grow from the barren soil It is such a wine that if a drop of it falls on the ground, rose gardens grow from.

It is such a ruby wine that if it foams and becomes exuber­ant at midnight the earth and heaven fill up with light and every place becomes illuminated.

Come, come, I have secrets in my heart. Serve that ruby wine, serve it so that the curtain of the heart opens up and the secrets reveal themselves.

O my Beloved, watch me when you exhilarate me with Your Beauty See how spirited lions are in the vicinity of prey.

Observe the youths of the People of the Cave. They drank this wine and they were intoxicated and slept in the cave for three hundred and nine years.

What kind of wine was it that when Moses gave it to the magicians they were intoxicated and had their hands and feet cut?

The women of Egypt were intoxicated with the beauty of Joseph and cur their fingers in pieces.

The Companions who threw themselves in front of swords without any armor or shields were intoxicated with the wine of faith served by Prophet Muhammad.

No, I said it wrong. Muhammad was not the cupbearer, so he could not serve the wine. He was a glass full of God's wine.

It was God Almighty who served wine to the good people.

What kind of wine did Ibrahim Adham drink that he left his throne and crown and ran away from his country? What kind of an enrapture was that?

When Bayazid drank from this wine, he said: "I disassoci­ate myself from imperfect attributes. "

When al-Hallaj drank the same wine, he yelled, "I am the Truth, " and went to the gallows.

When water received the smell of that wine, it became crys­tal clear. The drunks prostrated and started running to the ocean like floodwaters.

What kind of wine does this dark night have that makes people sleep with one glass and keep them from everything?

Which one can I mention of the favors and graces of the Great and Unique Artist?

The shores of the ocean of His Power cannot be seen... Let us drink the wine of love; like drunken camels let us join the caravan and pull the burden of love.

Where is the pure and clean wine of God?

Where is the wine of grapes? That pure and clean wine grants infinite life. The other is dirt.

The wine of grapes make one who drinks it sometimes a pig, sometimes a monkey.

That red wine makes your face eventually black.

The pitcher of the wine of God is the heart. Open up the lid of the pitcher because the human desires that do nothing but evil have covered the pitcher's lid with mud. Remove that dirty mud from the lid and throw it away.

In another poem, Rumi explains the secrets of the heart in divine love:

O heart, there is something different about you since the morning. You are so exuberant, so enraptured that you cannot sec me who is enraptured and scattered like you.

O heart, what kind of a fire are you that every wind no matter from where it comes exhilarates you and increases your flames? No, no, you arc above fire and above wind.

O heart, I cannot explain you, you are what you are. But I know this much that now you are tearing apart the curtain of the heavens like the sun.O heart, what kind of a pearl arc you? Neither heaven nor the planet of Jupiter can appreciate you fully. May my life be sacrificed to You since You created the heart.

O my God! For thirty years I have been running after You like a crazy lover. In fact, I have been running after You in an uninhabited and wild island where there was no wet or dry thing. Those times I was not aware that everything, every being was Your creation.

My mind was stuck with the thoughts of faith and unbelief. However, faith is the gift of Your holy light that comes from You.

Unbelief, suspicion, and belief that You are Omnipotent are all Your Predestination. You are both the paradise and the hell and the pool of Kawthar.

O heart, you are out of these two worlds, you are a uni­verse, everything is in you and you are above and beyond everything.

If we attempt to explain the secrets of heart and love that Rumi touches upon, books fill up and the subject does not exhaust. O friend who seeks God and truth, know it well that our Master Hudavendigar had limitless majesty, magnificence, and glory in love. From the day he was grown up to the day he passed away, his love and enthusiasm kept on increasing. He was never content with his love and enthusiasm; he always wanted them to increase even more. In one of his poems about his ecsta­sy and self-effacement, he implicitly points to his valuable being and says:

The phenomena of our physical being, of our body are limited, but our spiritual being beyond our physical being is complete.

The matter was completed with the first glass of wine drunken in the eternal past. I have a heart devastated on the path of love.

His strong attachment to the tavern of love has devastated it, ruined it.

Tell to the love: 'If you are looking for someone who gave his heart to you and is overcome with your love, the lover you seek has fallen on the ground and is lying there.

Come, hold his hand and lift him up. Don't come too close to this poor person overcome with your love, watch him from a distance because I am afraid that the flames of the fire inside me may burn you, too.

If its flames put you on fire then come to the front of my eyes, tears are flowing like flood waters from my eyes that are scattering pearls. My tears can put out your tire.

Cry out: "His ailing eyes heal. " Call out: "Wherever there is an ill person, may he come because the time of healing has come. "

Go to the mountains, wherever you sec a person whose heart is sleeping, let them know that the awake fortune of love will grant knowledge to everyone whose heart is asleep. Call out to them: "Come, come!"

"The light of the verse... one whose chest God has opened for Islam so that he has received a light from his Lord" comes from such a candle whose flame does not fit into the two worlds. This couplet of Rumi reminds one of the following couplet by Shaykh Ghalib: "The candle of spirit has such a flame that it does not fit into the lantern of the heavens. " In another poem, Rumi tells of the joys of a magnificent spiritual level to which love has elevated him;

Who is this that is coming in the middle of the night shining like the moon? I know, I know, this is the messenger of love, coming from the mihrab.

The messenger of love has brought a torch and put sleep on fire and burned it down. Where did he come from? Who sent him?

He came from the side of the King of Kings who never sleeps.

Who makes his noise, this cry in the city? Who came to the dervish's harvest like the flood, which is unique and peerless, the person that none exists other than him in the universe of existence?

Tell me! A king stood up in the middle of the night and came to one of his invaluable slaves.

Who is he? He is the one who opened up a table of gen­erosity to his creatures and is letting everybody eat from it.

He came smiling to invite the friends. In front of his Greatness and Power all hearts are shivering and all spirits are impatient.

The smallest particle of that shivering and fear has fallen onto the quicksilver and that's why it is shivering continuously.

The softness, the gentleness that he shows to his slaves, a small piece of it is manifested on the skin of a squirrel.

A wet melody from the sorrows, cries, and laments brought by love has been given to the water mill and therefore it turns, crying and lamenting.Love carries a set of keys under his arm. It came to open all doors that were closed.

Love is such a tree of holy light that its branches are in eter­nity and its roots are in the eternal past.

This tree neither rests on the Throne nor on earth, this tree has no trunk. We have freed the mind from all work and beat­en desires thoroughly.

Because this greatness is not suitable for this mind and these habits, you have a desire and longing for the mortal beauties.

Know that this desire is an idol for you.

When you find yourself in yourself and become your beloved there remains no longing in you.

May lives be sacrificed for the sake of lovers, love is a pleasant devotion. O son, attach yourself to love, all other things are useless and meaningless.

There is a fiery chain of love hanging from the heavens to the earth. If you love God and the truth, grab that chain and ascend to the heights.

Don't ask: "What kind of thing is love?" Love is a kind of insanity and craze. It makes one chained, but this is not the chain used to restrain the ignorant.

Who would be your enemy once you set out on the path of love and reach nothingness?

Who would have your power? You are a real fire that burns and roasts.

Be a lover, be a lover so that you may be saved from sorrow. You are a prince, son of the sultan, until when arc you going to stay as a slave of the world?

Let nobody know you in this mortal world, let nobody rec­ognize you. But you arc peerless and unique in that world where there is no direction.

In this world everything is transient, this world is the mor­tal world. So what if you are not a rich man in this world?
You are not dead, you are living. Isn't this enough? You are a lion of God in the form of a man. This is clearly seen from your virtues, endeavors, and courage.

Life has come and gone. But now that you exist and you exist in the holy light of God, it doesn't matter whether it is later or sooner.The value of the beloved depends on the nobility of the lover,

O helpless lover! Look to see what is your power and value.

Don't count the lifetime that has passed without love, don't think you lived.

Love is the Water of Eternal Life. Accept it wholeheartedly.

Consider others as fish out of water. Even if he is a vizier, think of him as dead and decayed.

When love opens its bag to unpack, all trees become green. New leaves appear from an old tree, and it gives fruits every moment.

It is better for a soul that never has fallen in love and never has made that love his main concern to cease to exist because its existence is nothing but mistake and shame.

Be ecstatic with real life and be unconscious because every­thing that is in this world is all but love. There is no appropri­ate thing to do for the Friend other that being occupied with love.

When they ask: "What is love?" Tell them: "Love is leaving the will, the discretion of whether to do something or not."

There is no goodness in one who does not abandon the choice; he is not a good person. The one thing that is eternal is love.

Do not devote yourself to anything other than this; all other things are imperfect. Until when are you going to embrace the mortal beloved who can be considered dead?

Embrace such a spirit that there is no end to it. Whatever is born in the spring dies in the fall. In the rose garden of love there is no help from the spring.

Would the flowers of love ever need the assistance of spring? Do not shake on the horse of your body, come down.

Be a barefooted wanderer that goes faster than that. God grants wings to a person who does not let himself be overcome by bodily desires and feelings and saves himself from their influence.

Leave thoughts and worries. May your heart be as pure as the face of the mirror on which there is no image.

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