RSS Feed
Rumi on Love: Making Sense of Ecstasy
If they are in the spirit, people turn their thoughts to love on Valentine's Day. It would be fitting to honor someone who never took his thoughts away from love: Rumi, A.D. 1207-1273, the greatest of Persian poets. No one has made more sense of ecstasy, raising the fleeting impulse of passion into something permanent and abiding.
The dust of the centuries hasn't dimmed Rumi's amorousness, which began with the flesh and ended with God. Actually, that's not right. His passion was for the flesh and God at the same time, without the slightest gap between them. In the middle of one verse he burns for his lover:
This could be the panting of a young Romeo dreaming of himself between the sheets, but what about the first verse of the same poem, which seems to come from another world?
Let all lovers be content
Give them happy endings
Let their lives be celebrations
Let their hearts dance in the fire of your love
Here we taste the other extreme of Rumi's love, which reaches for the divine. Yet in both verses the theme is the same: merging. Rumi knew, as we all do when we are in our right minds, that sexual ecstasy and romantic yearning are temporary. And yet they feel complete and undying while they last. This separation between the ideal and the worldly gave Rumi the same challenge all lovers face, including now.
I remember a dry comment from a psychologist who said, "Bursting rapture is all well and good, but you wouldn't want it around the house." Rumi would retort, "Why not?" For him, every day brings an opportunity to bridge two kinds of love. In modern terms we'd call them conditional and unconditional love. Conditional love is based on change; unconditional love is unaffected by change.
They sound different, but both kinds of love reside in the same world. The beauty of Rumi's love is that in the scent of perfume, the soft warmth of flesh, and a tender smile he also glimpsed eternity. While reading his poems, we can glimpse it, too.
Come to my side
I will open
the gate to your love
Come settle with me
Let us be neighbors
to the stars
In every lover's ache and yearning Rumi hears an answer from God -- therefore, no love goes without fulfillment. Every passion serves to awaken the soul.
I ask for help
I want mercy
And my Love says
Look at me and hear me
because I'm here just for that.
I call this making sense of ecstasy because Rumi sees that fickle everyday love is actually a secret door to the steady, ever-present, nourishing love that is the basis of consciousness. To go through the door, one must surrender to love. By a wondrous twist of fate, to be defeated by love is to win everything.
by the splendor of the moon
So powerful
I fell to the ground
Your love
has made me sure
I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being
For Rumi, to be alive is to be a lover, and I think the greatest spiritual teachers say the same thing. In fact, Rumi is one of those teachers, and among them he is the most tender and lovable. He stands for the wisdom of the heart, and what better wisdom could there be on Valentine's Day?
By
Deepak Chopra
|
February 14, 2009; 2:32 AM ET
Share This: 
Technorati
| Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
Previous: Lessons From the Land of Lincoln and Obama |
Next: Defeating Al-Qaeda
Posted by: DoTheRightThing | February 23, 2009 11:20 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Chopra is good enough for the masses but if one is more seriously interested in true religion from India check out Ramana Mahashi, Shirdi Sai Baba, Neem Karoli Baba, Swami Nityananda etc. These are just a few of the real Spiritual Realizers of India.
For instance they would never say, as Chopra says ..."because Rumi sees that fickle everyday love is actually a secret door to the steady, ever-present, nourishing love that is the basis of consciousness. To go through the door, one must surrender to love. By a wondrous twist of fate, to be defeated by love is to win everything".
In the traditions this would be called 'conditional' love. We all know that trying to attain Consciousness through loving someone else does not work. Being conditional does not get to the unconditional. It doesn't happen that way.
I believe Rumi was talking about God below, and not some sexual friend or other.
The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon
So powerful
I fell to the ground
Your love
has made me sure
I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being
Otherwise Deepak does a good service in that he introduces concepts but true Spirituality has to go beyond what the mass or pop culture requires.
Posted by: Mnnngj | February 22, 2009 10:44 PM
Report Offensive Comment
Love is God
Love One Another
As Love Loves You.
My dear wife passed away last month after 25 wonderful years together. Many times we felt like two halves of the same person, and our last kiss was as sweet as the first.
Thanks for presenting Rumi.
Namaste
Posted by: djteller2000 | February 22, 2009 9:52 PM
Report Offensive Comment
When you build on a foundation of love everything happens as it should. Find your bliss, love what you do, do what you love, and love someone.
Mt ego, Ralph, is constantly trying to tell me I am right, I should get angry, I should get even...but love tells him to just shut up.
I listen to love.
Posted by: mrvance | February 22, 2009 4:12 PM
Report Offensive Comment
Maybe Chopra is pandering to what a lot of people want to believe.
But I also hear a spiritual truthfulness of these words that describe an attitude that helps one be in love with another.
These words don't involve social climbing, which is often a reason people select a marriage partner, and they don't involve ego in which people see themselves validated by the "quality" of the mate they select.
Posted by: Instructor5 | February 22, 2009 1:35 PM
Report Offensive Comment
Chopra is nothing but a con artist. He should take his BS and shove it.
Only a sap would fall for this snakeoil saleman.
Posted by: mmm1110 | February 22, 2009 12:47 PM
Report Offensive Comment
The comments to this entry are closed.
If you REALLY want to know about "love", read Pope Benedict 16's first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est" (God Is Love). In it, Benedict says, "eros (sexual desire ("love")) needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns." The encyclical is a great read for those seriously interested in the subject.