In the context of a discussion of “Rumi in the Light of History”, I’d like to cast as much light as possible on the conversation that took place between Shams and Rumi when they first met. In his Introduction at the beginning of Rumi’s “Diwan”, our translator Alexander Feigin begins to tell the tale, but he quickly ends the story. Here is Alex’s account:

It is told that Jelaluddin Rumi was riding through the market accompanied on foot by his followers. Suddenly his eyes met the eyes of a wandering dervish (Shemsi Tabriz). Without hesitation the wanderer asked him:

“Who is greater among the servants of God: The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, or Bayazidi Bistami?”

“The Prophet Muhammad, the last of the Prophets, is the greatest one of them all!” Rumi answered.

“If so,” the dervish continued, “why did the Prophet say: ‘O God, we do not know You as You are to be known’, while Bayazidi Bistami said: ‘Praise me! Praise me! How great am I!’” (which is to say, he reached union with the Divine).

I don’t know what exactly Alex had in mind when he ended the story here. Reading this account, one might naturally come to the conclusion that Beyazid went deeper than the Prophet Muhammad… to become one with the divine Self. Is this what Shams meant to say? If we look carefully at the sources available to us, what do they have to tell us?

We might expect to get this story clearly from Rumi’s son Sultan Veled, who would have been about twenty at the time this happened, and later wrote extensively about his father’s life. But Sultan Veled doesn’t focus on the conversation. According to the scholar Franklin Lewis, “Sultan Veled describes the meeting of Shams in the language of love poetry, with Rumi glimpsing the face of Shams when the veil was lifted, falling in love… and taking him home where they lived happily for a year or two, before the disciples of Rumi began to act on their jealousy.” In short, he describes their meeting as a spiritual romance and not as a teaching tale.

The earliest description of this first conversation between Shams and Rumi comes from someone named Sepahsalar, who says he was Rumi’s disciple over the course of forty years. According to Franklin Lewis: 

Sepahsalar says that Shams and Rumi sat staring at one another for some time before Shams spoke to him. Shams asks Rumi about two contradictory reports about Bayazid. On the one hand, Bayazid was so insistent on following the example of the Holy Messenger that he refused to eat melons, because there was no record in any of the biographical information about the Prophet indicating if or how he had eaten them. On the other hand, Bayazid says, “Glory be to me, how great is my station,” and “Within my cloak there is naught but God,” whereas the Prophet, despite the grandeur of his station, said “Seventy times every day I ask forgiveness at the threshold of the Lord.”

This version of the tale is quite similar to the one above. But it also tells us that Beyazid piously endeavored to follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad by not eating melons. We have yet to learn what this meant to Shams. And what did it mean to Rumi?

The Meeting with Rumi according to Shams

The ‘Maqalat’ or “Sayings” of Shamsi Tabriz which have recently been published, would seem to be a natural place to get a better understanding of what happened when Shams and Rumi met. Although it seems there is no account there in which Shams tells the whole story, we find several instances in which he reflects on the significance of their encounter:

The first words I spoke to Mevlana were these: “Why didn’t Abu Yazid cling to following (the example of the Prophet Muhammad)? Why didn’t he say, ‘Glory be to You! We have not worshipped You… (as you should be worshipped)’?”

Mevlana completely understood the implications of this question: where it was coming from and where it was leading. It made him intoxicated, on account of the purity of his inner heart, because his inner heart was clean and pure. So that (answer to the question) shone clearly from within him. I knew the sweet pleasure of this question by means of his intoxication, although I was unaware of this sweetness before-hand.

Shams doesn’t tell us Rumi’s answer to his question—he assumes, it seems, that we already know the story! So, although Rumi may have “completely understood the implications of this question,” we still don’t have a clue. But Shams tells us something very interesting:  that he was impressed by Rumi’s response and saw this as a sign of Rumi’s purity of heart. It seems likely to me that Shams asked a question which Rumi was already carrying inside himself. And rather than provoking him defend either the honor of Beyazid or of the Prophet Muhammad, the question brought Rumi to the edge of a new understanding, which he found liberating and even intoxicating!

If we have any doubt whether Shams himself was either for or against the approach of Beyazidi Bustami, here Shams makes it clear:

They say that Bayazid did not eat melons. As he explained, “I have never found out in what manner the Prophet, peace and blessing be upon him, ate melon.” But following (the Prophet) is both superficial and meaningful. You have observed the superficial aspect of following, but how is it that you failed to observe the truth and meaning of following?

As the Chosen One (the Prophet Muhammad), God’s blessings upon him, says: “Glory to Thee, we have not worshipped Thee as it befits Thee.” As he (Bayazid) says, “Glory to me, how great is my station.” If someone supposed his station to be greater than the station of the Chosen One, he is a real idiot and ignoramus.

Here Shams makes his position abundantly clear!  He has no patience for those who project themselves above and beyond “the Chosen One”, which is the meaning of Muhammad’s nickname “Mustafa”. Also, he has no patience for those who seek to demonstrate their piety by avoiding eating melons. The problem for Bayazid, it seems, is that there is no reliable ‘hadith’ (oral tradition) which describes exactly how the Prophet Muhammad went about eating melons: with a fork? a knife? a spoon? Perhaps he avoided melons!? Many Muslim men to this day follow the custom of growing their beard but trimming their moustache, because of the tradition that Muhammad did so. Living among the shepherds of the Arabian desert, it makes sense that Muhammad would drink a lot of milk and try to avoid getting his moustache wet. But the expression “Persian melon” suggests that melons come from Persia, and might not have been found in Arabia in the time of the Prophet. From the point of view of a Persian like Shams, this is no reason to avoid eating melons!

But what does Shams mean, exactly, when he says, “to observe the truth and meaning of following?” First of all, he means following Muhammad by saying “Glory be to God” as he did, and not improvising statements like “Glory be to me”—even if this is understood as praising one’s discovery of God within oneself. But, on the other hand, Shams did not see “following Muhammad” as putting him on a platform and making of him an unattainable ideal. Thus Shams says:

What about following Muhammad… in form and in meaning? I mean, the same light and brightness of the eye of Muhammad should become the light of his eyes, Muhammad’s eye should become his eyes, and (one should) take on all his qualities.

Just as a Budddhist might see the goal of his path as attaining the Buddha’s level of enlightenment, Shams sees the goal of Sufism as attaining the spiritual station of Muhammad. So now that we’ve clarified how Shams understood the outer and inner meaning of “following”, the question remains: how did Rumi respond to his challenge?

Rumi’s Answer

Aflaki is the man who became known among the Mevlevis as the official biographer of Rumi. He never met Rumi and Shams. He was born a generation later, and served the Mevlevi Order when it was led by Rumi’s grandson. Aflaki wrote hagiography—he wrote a biography of Rumi portraying him as a saint. He’s quite effusive in his praise of Rumi and of those around him, and I therefore prefer to rely on earlier sources. But we haven’t found an earlier account in which Rumi answers Shams’ question! And it is possible that Aflaki’s version of the story is based on accurate oral accounts. While employing flowery language, Aflaki fills in the missing pieces of the puzzle:

One day, the Sovereign of the Kingdom of the Spirit (Shamsi Tabriz) was seated at the door of the caravanseri, when Mevlana (may God sanctify his secret) left the medresse in the cotton trader’s market. He was riding on a mule, while some of his students and various friends walked beside him. Suddenly, Shamsuddin jumped out of the doorway and ran in front of him as he passed. He seized the bridle of the mule and declared, “O you who are as knowledgeable in meanings as a money-changer is with coins, tell me who was greater, Muhammad, the Elect of God, or Bayazid?”

“Muhammad is the Prince and the Commander of all the Prophets and all the Friends of God. All power and greatness is his.”

Shamsuddin asked, “In that case, what does it mean that the Prophet said, ‘Glory be to You! We have not known You as You ought to be known,’ while Bayazid said, ‘How great is my glory. How exalted am I, the sultan of sultans.’”

Mevlana answered, “Bayazid’s thirst was quenched and the container of his comprehension was filled by a single sip, and he appeared to have been satisfied. The light entered in proportion to the opening of his heart. The Chosen one of God (peace and blessings upon him) had a profound desire that had yet to be satisfied. For the Prophet it was thirst upon thirst. His blessed chest had become God’s vast dominion… For that reason he said, ‘I have not known You as You ought to be known’.”

For Rumi, it may have seemed at first like he had to choose between the glory of God that Muhammad witnessed beyond himself, and the glory that Beyazid discovered within. Yet what appears to have opened for Rumi at that moment… is the understanding that it is all contained within the heart. Thus Beyadi’s experience of the Light of God within himself would be included in the heart of Muhammad… who continued to open himself for more. We should pay attention to Rumi’s generosity to Beyazid at this point. When he says that Beyazid “appeared to have been satisfied” by one sip of light, he’s making room for Beyazid to go on and feel the need, like Muhammad, to open himself to more. All this fits the teaching we quoted earlier from Rumi’s teacher Borhanuddin: “When you reach the city of oneness, there is no end to progress within that city.”

How then might we understand what took place in this first meeting between Rumi and Shams? I see it as an outstanding example of the Sufi art of ‘sohbet’ — pursuing a “friendly” spiritual conversation. In this case, the one who asks the question prepares the ground for the one who’s going to answer, to go beyond his limitations. He opens the way for him to discover the answer for himself.

Shams and Rumi don’t see everything exactly the same way. Shams is critical of Beyazid. Although he doesn’t condemn him as a heretic, he does not see him as a model to follow. Rumi views Beyazid more favorably—as someone whose heart was filled to overflowing with the light of God. They recognize this implicitly, but it is not important to them, or to the story. What is important to them both is relating the ecstatic experience of Beyazid to the spiritual station of Muhammad.

In the generation that followed Beyazid Bestami, Mansur al Hallaj came along and declared, ‘Ana’l Haqq’, “I am the Truth” (meaning God). As a consequence of this he was imprisoned for eleven years, and eventually was executed. Afterwards a controversy developed among many of the Sufis about whether it was acceptable to follow “drunken” and heretical figures like these, or whether one must follow a more “sober” Sufi path. And while Rumi saw himself following Muhammad, there were moments when Rumi spoke of al Hallaj with admiration. Following Borhanuddin, who earlier had written about the vast difference between Pharaoh and al Hallaj, we find in the Mathnawi that Rumi declares:

“I am the Truth” shone from Manur’s lips like light.
“I am the Lord” fell from Pharaoh’s lips by force.

In one of his discourses, Rumi goes further than this, and makes the special distinction of al Hallaj explicit. He explains that one who submerges himself in the divine, goes beyond the duality of subject and object, human being and God. For such a person, “this phrase ‘I am the Truth’ actually reflects the extreme humility of the speaker”. We might say that at this point, it’s no longer the person who is saying ‘I am the Truth” but that God is saying it through the human being.

Rumi employed examples like these in his teachings, without becoming a “heretic” himself and publicly making declarations like that. But already in the Diwan we find Rumi pointing to a third possibility, going “beyond heresy and Islam” (see poem # 158). Here, as elsewhere, Rumi talks about the need at some point to go beyond identifying oneself with a particular religion. And yet he follows going “beyond” by speaking of “a head to be placed upon the grass”, suggesting that prostration (a vital part of Islamic prayer) continues to be part of his experience. How then might this apply to our world? Most of us are not very concerned about making, or not making, provocative heretical statements. But I see Rumi pointing us past the dichotomy between identifying with secularism on the one hand, and with religion—any religion—on the other hand. There is value in religious practice, but it gets lost if we’re busy being proud of our religion. Rumi found in the Prophet Muhammad a model of religious piety, but more than that he found in him a model for opening oneself to the greater whole.

I see a parallel between this kind of Sufi understanding of the role of Muhammad, and the role of the Buddha in the Buddhist tradition. There we find that the Buddha represents a more comprehensive realization than the first experience of enlightenment… which is a great attainment in itself, and yet may be seen as only the beginning of the path. In the Sufi tradition the figure of Muhammad, along with living spiritual masters, represent ‘al insan al kamil’, “the Complete Human Being” who is able to help others become more complete. The word for complete, ‘kamil’, also has the meaning of ripe or mature, like ripe fruit or fermented wine. A person like this has reached their human potential. The Baal Shem Tov, who inspired the Hasidic movement, also spoke of “the Complete Human Being”, and in the Jewish tradition of Hasidism, the spiritual master is often associated with “the quality of Moses and represents the “Tzaddiq” who is “the foundation of the world” connecting heaven and earth. The human capacity to contain and connect all levels of being is reflected in figures such as these. They provide us with models on the path to wholeness.