The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi ( ) - Book Report/Review Example

Information: ‘The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel for Rumi’ ‘The Forty Rules of Love: A novel of Rumi’ is a powerful bookthat transcends the genres of fiction, history, philosophy and spiritualism. The book follows along two timelines, and explores two cultures separated by time, distance, customs and even religion. The author does this through characters from thirteenth century Islam who meets in contemporary America. The past and the present interweave through each other. Shams are a wanderer who travels seeking spiritual divinity who believes that love is the paramount experience of life.

Following this message of love, rule number thirty-seven states that there is a time to love as well as a time to die. It is a duty to love when we’re alive. This is because everything happens at its own time allotted by God, who is the meticulous and accurate clock-maker. Shams teach the importance of practicing compassion because as he believes, “the Universe is one being.” If one person feels pain, we are all affected. In the same way, love and joy should be shared through the invisible web that holds everything together.

Love, according the book, transcends even time. Time is a concept created by our imagination. Shams explain that we do not move through life in a straight line from the past to the future, but through a tangling spiral between the two. Eternity according to Shams means to be timeless. Consequently, pure love goes beyond time-bound restrictions. “In love,” Shams explains, “boundaries are blurred.” This applies whether it is spiritual love, or romantic love. In rule number thirty of love, Shams downplays the ego.

For a Sufi, according to Shams, the ‘self’ does not exist, and because of this, a Sufi has no enemies. Conflict and rivalry are created by the ego (Shafak & Laural 149). The persisting lesson is that our compassion and generosity should expand to encompass everyone. We should not let anything stand between us and the one we love, be it man or God. This concept is summarized in the fortieth rule of love which states that life without love is meaningless. We also cannot limit love with definitions and labeling it (Shafak & Laural 224).

Shams believes that love is what connects us to each other and to God. However, to someone brought up in a fundamentalist view of religion, the concept of different religions being one may feel uncomfortable and confusing. This is because most people are brought up to believe in only one thing, being it Christianity, Islam, Buddhist or any of the other religions. The idea of combining different teachings to draw spiritual or moral lessons may be controversial. Because of this, we must change the human perception of spirituality, and perhaps give up traditional views.

If we can realize that the essence of religion is an all-encompassing consciousness, this would be the first step towards spiritual enlightenment. However, we must consider practicability when contemplating the role of instincts. To what extent should we follow one and disregard the other? While some cultures allow girls to be married from as early as fifteen years, many other cultures hold the controversial view that this should be prohibited. Is that then not a boundary we can place on love?

Works CitedShafak, Elif, and Laural Merlington. The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi. Old Saybrook, Conn.: Tantor Audio, 2010. Sound recording.