Poem explanation for Rumi - Essay Example

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad, also known as simply Rumi, was a 13th century Persian Muslim poet, theologian and Sufi mystic. The evolutionary way of his understanding the world around him was perceived in his belief that the spirit undergoes an evolutionary process by which it comes nearer to the divine. Life is a creative cosmic phenomenon and Rumi believes there is a specific goal to this process: the realization of God. This is exactly what he states in his poem: the universal soul, working through the various spheres of being, rejecting them, eventually manages to rejoin divinity.

The poem’s form is very loose, rhyme free, almost like a flow of free thought from the heart, a confession of a soul not confused any more, but illuminated and free. Its haunting aura of deep simplicity almost borders on atheism: “Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion…” Man is the bedrock of all religious and cultural systems, but he is always taught what to believe in and what to feel, while in fact, he should believe in what he feels. For Rumi, religion is a highly personal experience, not necessarily limited to logical arguments or perceptions of the senses, and in this particular poem, he disregards the importance of outward religious observance.

Faith and love, just like breath, are invisible, yet inextricably present, and he truly believes that people of all religions and backgrounds can live together in ecumenical peace and harmony. His words come from the heart and ache to explain the often perplexing world of personal, spiritual growth, and are aimed at everyone, every single human being on earth. He continues to list contrasting worlds of “the East or the West… the ocean or… the ground, not natural or ethereal” pushing his existence away from all those cultural and natural systems.

He is neither, yet he is all of them. His existence constitutes theirs, without him, these worlds are devoid of meaning, they lack core, and he does not need them to find solace and sense, because the inner world is the real world, the world of oneself where one recognizes God in his true form: “I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next.” Because, every man is a little God, his soul part of a divine unity of souls. He was created out of this unity and into it he returns after his celestial cycle.

From a philosophic point of view, we could claim that God is not anything. Literally, God is not because he transcends being. This is exactly what Rumi portrays in the poem. Created by God in his own image, man himself transcends being: “My place is placeless, my trace traceless. Neither body nor soul.” In the line “I belong to the beloved” we witness yet another identification with God, the creator, he who lit the divine spark of life. We belong to our source, we are made from it, our core being carries its core being.

He continues with I “have seen the two worlds as one,” the merging of natural and ethereal, this world and the other one, the merging of man with his creator. Rumi is concerned with the spiritual progression of a human being, because according to him, man unconscious of God is like an animal, crude and unworthy of possessing spiritual growth, while true consciousness makes him divine, a goal which every human being should strive for. He ends his poem with “[I] know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

” Breath, that is air, is the primary element. One of the major philosophers to utilize air symbolism was Nietzsche who saw air as a kind of higher and more subtle matter, the very stuff of human freedom. The two movements of breathing - the intaking and outgoing of the breath - symbolize the alternating rhythm of life and death, of manifestation and reabsorption into the universe. In this way, to breathe is to assimilate spiritual power, and this is exactly what Rumi intended to portray. The breath of millions of people: the first, the last, the outer, the inner, merges together into a wind, symbolizing air on a cosmic level symbolizing the spirit and the vital breath of the universe.

The poem is wonderfully simple, but still does not lack complex symbolism and imagery. Its straightforward language allows for layers of meaning to surface after only one reading. One might say it is a simple poem about a simple message: love. That is exactly what it is. That, and so much more. It urges us to remember that we are all one human brotherhood, and that we should not segment ourselves into colors and creeds, but stand before one another, and before God, as a loving unity.