Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى)‎ (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273) was a Persian philosopher, theologian, poet, teacher, and founder of the Mawlawi order of Sufism. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world’s languages and he has been described as the “most popular poet in America” and the “best selling poet in the US” according to BBC.

The general theme of Rumi’s thought is on the concept of tawhid — union with his beloved (the primal root) from whom he has been cut off and become aloof — and his desire to restore that union. Rumi passionately believed in the use of music, poetry and dance as a means for reaching God. For Rumi, music helped devotees focus their whole being on the Divine until the soul was both destroyed and resurrected.

Rumi encouraged Sama – listening to music and turning or doing the Sacred Dance, representing a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes, and nations.

Rumi was an evolutionary thinker in the sense that after devolution from the divine Ego, the spirit undergoes an evolutionary process by which it comes nearer to the same divine Ego. All matter in the universe obeys this fundamental law and this movement is an urge (which Rumi calls “love”) to evolve and seek unity with the divinity from which it has emerged. The evolution into a human being from the animal state is only one stage in this complex process. The French philosopher Henri Bergson’s idea that life is inherently creative and evolutionary is similar; though unlike Bergson, Rumi believes that there is a specific goal to the process: the attainment of God. For Rumi, God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence.

Song of the Reed