Love Is the Only Religion | The Life of Rumi

He is one of the most widely read and popular poets of all time globally. He wrote primarily in Persian, and also in Arabic, Turkish, and some Greek. And he's been dead for almost 800 years. His name is Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. And to become the voice millions turned to for love, he first had to lose the person he loved most. This is that story.

» The wound is the place where the Light enters you. «

In 1207, in Balkh—a jewel of the Persian world—a boy is born into a family of immense prestige. His father, Baha al-Din Walad, is a towering theologian and mystic, known as Sultan al-Ulama—the Sultan of the Scholars. The whole city expects greatness from this child. Rumi grows up a prince in a kingdom of knowledge, surrounded by philosophy, theology, and law. His mind is a sword—sharp, brilliant, and disciplined.

Next, Mongol armies sweep across the land like an apocalypse, reducing entire cities to ash. In 1214, Rumi’s family flees their Transoxianan homeland, refugees with a library on their backs. Early on, he learns his first great lesson: Everything you build can burn. Everything you love can be lost.

» Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. «

On the road of exile, in the city of Nishapur, an old poet named Attar, one of the greatest spiritual masters of the age, sees the father walking ahead of his quiet, thoughtful son. Attar gifts the young Rumi a copy of his own mystical epic, the Asrar-Nama (The Book of Secrets), and utters a prophecy: 

 

» Here comes a sea, followed by an ocean. Your son will one day set the hearts of the world on fire. «

Years of wandering follow until in 1228 the family finally settles in Konya, a prosperous sanctuary in Anatolia. Rumi is now 21 years old and his life begins to take root. He marries his childhood love, Gawhar Khatun, and they have two sons. When his father passes away in 1231, Rumi inherits his position as head of the madrasa (theological school). For the next nine years, under the guidance of his father's finest disciple, Sayyid Burhan al-Din, he hones his craft. 

 

» He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels. «

 

He masters law, ritual, and complex theology—the outer dimensions of faith. By the time he is 37, Jalal al-Din reaches the pinnacle of worldly and religious success. He is the most celebrated scholar in a city of scholars. His life is a portrait of pious perfection—orderly, respected, and intellectually fulfilled. He builds a fortress of knowledge around himself, a perfect world with no room for doubt. Yet behind his eyes lies an emptiness he cannot name. Admired by many, he feels understood by none.

 

 

» Your son will one day set the hearts of the world on fire. «

  

Suddenly, a wild, 60-year-old wandering dervish walks into his life: Shams of Tabriz. He asks Rumi a single, piercing question: "The great mystic Bayazid once cried out, 'Glory be to me, how magnificent I am!' Yet the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, closer to God than any man, confessed, 'We have never known you as you truly deserve to be known.' So tell me, how can this be? Why did the lesser man boast while the greater man bowed?"

  

» As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. «

 

In that instant, Rumi understands: true greatness is not the ego shouting; it is the soul surrendering. The question strikes him so deeply that, legend says, he faints. When he awakens, the rigid professor is gone. He is a seeker. Two oceans meet.

» You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. «

For months, they are inseparable, entering into total seclusion for forty days. In Shams, Rumi finds a mirror of the divine. Shams does not teach Rumi new knowledge; instead, he takes a hammer to the foundations of his identity. The intellect, for all its brilliance, is a cage. 

 

» Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. «

  

The only path to God, Shams insists, is through a heart broken open. Rumi later reflects that what he previously thought of as God, he met that day embodied in a human being. Shams introduces Rumi to the Sama—the whirling dance where the spinning soul sheds the ego and mirrors the turning of the cosmos. The  theologian who once considered music a distraction is now lost in it.

 

» We have come to spin, to revolve around the Sun of Truth and fly into the sky of the heart. «

 

The brilliant scholar has finally become a lover of God, of life, of everything. But to Rumi’s followers, this is a scandal. Whispers of slander turn to poison, and jealousy fills the air of Konya. Unable to bear the hostility, Shams flees to Damascus in 1246, plunging Rumi into a grief like death. Though Rumi sends his son, Sultan Walad, to beg his soul-friend to return, the reunion is tragically brief. One night, Shams is called to the door, steps outside, and vanishes from the face of the earth forever—brutally murdered, some say, by a cabal of jealous disciples.

» Why did the lesser man boast while the greater man bowed? «

 

Shattered by loss, Rumi does something no one expects. He begins to spin. Arms open to the sky, weeping and turning for hours, letting go of the ego to mirror the cosmos. His grief becomes a prayer in motion: the Sama, marking the birth of the Whirling Dervishes.

»  Dance when you're broken open. Dance if you've torn the bandage off. «

Then, the words come—not calculated, but pouring. Thousands upon thousands of verses erupt from his broken heart into an ocean of poetry, which he collects as the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi (The Collected Poems of Shams of Tabriz). He isn't composing poetry; he is bleeding it.

 

»  Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. «

In his later years, Rumi begins his masterpiece, the Masnavi (The Spiritual Couplets), a vast six-volume epic of 26,000 verses that he composes aloud and continues until his death. Rather than writing it himself, he dictates the verses spontaneously—often while walking, bathing, or dancing—while his disciple, Husam al-Din Chalabi, records every word. He introduces the Masnavi as usul usul usul al-din—"the roots of the roots of the roots of the Religion." 

 

» I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God. « 

  

He defines it as kashshaf al-Qur'an, an expounder of the Quran, intentionally written in the Persian tongue to unveil the text's hidden mystical meanings for ordinary people who could not read the original Arabic. A work people would one day call the Quran in the Persian tongue. His message was radical then, and it remains radical now: Love is the only true religion. Christian, Muslim, Jew—he welcomed them all.

 

»  Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Come. «

 

When he dies in 1273, his city weeps, but he had asked them to celebrate. He called his death his Urs—his wedding night, the moment his soul finally reunites with the Divine. At his funeral, people of every faith walk together in mourning.

 

»  When I die, don't look for me in the ground. Look for me in the hearts of those who loved me. «

» You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life? «

 

Eight centuries later, his words are everywhere—read at weddings, quoted by presidents, and whispered by broken hearts across every continent. The refugee boy who lost everything became the voice of love for the entire world. Because Rumi lived the truth he taught: that even a shattered heart can become a doorway to the light.

 

 

Ocean and Fish

  

» Didn't I tell you? Do not go there, for I am your friend
In this mirage of fading shadows, I am life without end

Even if you run in anger for a hundred thousand years
You will return to Me at last, I am where the path clears

Didn't I tell you? I am the Ocean, and you are the fish
Don't go to the dry land, I am the only Water you could wish

Didn't I tell you? Don't be fooled by the world's design
I am the Painter of your joy, the Artist of the divine

Didn't I tell you? Do not fly like a bird to the snare
Come back to Me, I am your Wings, I am the power of the air

Didn't I tell you? They will rob you and leave you cold
But I am the Fire, the warmth of your soul

 

As I foretold, they put ugly masks upon your face to make you forget
that I am the Source of beauty, the purest love you met

Don't ask how the stars align or how the world is spun
I am the Creator without limits, I am the Only one

If you are the lamp of the heart, you know where to roam
And if you seek the Divine, know that I am your Home «

Ghazal 1725 from the Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi, 

Rumi, Konya, 645 AH/1247 AD.