On the Occasion of Rumi’s Spiritual Reunion with the Divine
Beyond the Veil of the Darkest Night
We often celebrate time as an instance that rises to the occasion of an opportune moment when we connect with the other, with none other than the Divine in the universal unconscious. In that connectivity with the other, we lose ourselves, our self and self-centeredness. Thus, in the loss of the self, we belong to the world and not the other way around—we find the truth of our triviality in the totality of the incomprehensible universe. That realization is mirrored in time as the celebration of a new beginning in a higher realm of awareness.
Seven hundred and thirty-seven solstices ago, on the night of December 17, 1273, the soul residing in the body of Jallal-ud din Muhammad Balkhi Rumi was recalled by the Beloved to the realm of meaning as his body was laid to rest in Yesil Turbe, or “the green Tomb.” The epitaph, quite characteristically, consoles visitors in their yearning for his loss:
“After my death, don’t seek my tomb in the earth,
“For my grave is in the hearts of the men of mystical knowledge.”
Rumi has been gone for centuries, but his spirit has not left the hearts of millions. Rumi lives as an Islamic mystic through the traditions, rites, and rituals of his Sufi order, the Maulawia; he lives in the thoughts of great philosophers through his ideas and ideals; but more importantly, through his poetry, Rumi lives in the hearts of millions who seek love—human and Divine, as the re-veiling of the revealed.
Every year at this time, as the northern world plunges into the darkest nights of the winter solstice, Sufis and mystics seek the light of his wisdom and feel the pull of his love as they commemorate his spiritual reunion with the Divine. The Maulawi Sufis hold the sama, or whirling ceremony, in honor of the poet of love. They celebrate his return through whirling turns, moving from right to left toward the heart to acknowledge his presence in their minds and the essence of his spirit in their hearts.
The Sufis reconnect with the universal unconscious by re-enacting the cosmos in the spirit of Euphoria, through balance and harmony, creating euphoria and elation through persistent turning toward the heart and turning with the soul. They become a microcosm of stardust within a galactic spiral, in which the body is lost in turning while the eyes need not wander, for they know that “wherever you turn there is the face of God.”
Thus, for the soul in constant praise of the Divine, the sama is a spiritual unfoldment toward a state of perfection, the ultimate goal.
These numbers speak louder than the distortion of this man: 1,900,000,000 Afghans killed by Russians between 1979-1989, over one and a half million Iraqis and Iranians in the war that Western Christianity planned, fueled and armed between 1980-1989, over a million Iraqis that Bush’s crusaders killed between 2003-2009. Over 800,000 Afghans were killed by the indiscriminate bombing of the Americans between 2001 and 2021. Over half a million in Yemen were killed by the U.S. financed and armed aggression in Yemen. Similarly, in Libya, over 350,000 of Algerians the French supported because they didn’t want a legitimately elected Islamic government to come to power. Other “Christian violence killed hundreds of thousands in Bosnia, Somalia…and every Muslim-majority country whose political systems are jeopardized by the Christian West to make sure that legitimate governments don’t come to power.