As such Shams Tabrezi had an immence impact on the life of Maulana The departure of Shams caused Rumi to realize that his attention, affection and love (which was not homoerotic as some writers have supposed) were all more appropriately directed elsewhere. The forms and manifestations of this poisoned love are many, as the reed opines.Īmong his spiritual advisers was Shamsi-‘d-Din of Tabriz, who gained such an influence over the poet that Rumi adopted his name as his takhallus, or poetical Nom de plume, under which he wrote his Divan or lyrical odes. But engulfed by our passion, we are so often drawn to the world of transience rather than the world of permanence. From this moment onwards, the soul’s one quest is to re-experience something of that primordial sense of bliss. Although audible to all, alas few understand. Not only love but Rumi also cherishes other aspects of life in the form of his poetry, as such pain also finds a place in this ,the pain of separation is manifest at birth as the cry with which an infant enters the divine amphitheatre. Love is the transformative force that infuses every aspect of Rumi’s world and herein lies his appeal and the timelessness of his message: there is an inherent unity in our universe, and love is the key to realizing it. It is for this reason that we have the capacity to love and moreover the need to be loved.
Without meeting with Shams of Tabriz, it is unlikely that Rumi’s name would ever have found its way on to the pages of history. For it was this meeting that, caused him to turn from the life of a scholar/preacher and become ‘the greatest mystical poet of any age’ Their two lives offer many parallels, not least in the way that both, at the height of their careers in religious law, were to throw off the shackles of academic and jurisprudential deliberations to pursue the religion of the heart. It was at the feet of his father, Baha-al-din, that the young Rumi acquired an appreciation and love for the works of the celebrated medieval theologian and ascetic Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali.