Sufism is emerging in fashion, film, new-age guruspeak, art and music as the vanguard of love Muzaffar Ali explains why the Sufi is more relevant than ever
Each of us have a sacred receptacle—the heart. The heart receives every image that is designed to induce consumption of some kind, all the time but is only ready to retain only the purest of the pure.
That which consumes it, than to make it a consumer. Sufi imagery is a world of images mirrored in the soul. It is unaffected and pure.
Images—which reach out to the poorest of the poor, with dignity and purity. Images—that are ideas, concepts and stories, melodies and rhythmic structures, poetry of the surrender of the soul.
The entire range of spiritual imagery is taken in its purest form from the Divine source. While everything in this world is singing and dancing in His praise, the Mystic stops to capture these moments of eternal truth with the pen of his heart.
In the light of the Quran, the Sufi understands and explains the images through divine secrets; through hidden meanings, through every day symbols and experiences, he puts them in poetic forms that come from his own burning.
Rumi was the greatest Sufi poet of them all. In Rumi’s poetry the Sun is an inexhaustible image and through it other images appear, take form and disappear.
Every atom touched by the Sun of the Soul robs cloak and hat from the created sun.
In the poetry of Rumi, the sun becomes a central image also because of Shams his, friend and guide, whose name means the sun and so do his qualities.
If the sun becomes naked and visible, neither you would remain nor your breast nor hem,
The sun through which the whole world is illuminated—if it would draw slightly closer, the whole world would be burnt.
Anne Marie Schimmel interprets Rumi ‘The sun is both tremendum and fascinans, thus the perfect symbol of God who is kind and loving, and at the same time a consuming fire.’ The Jalal and Jamal, the attributes of God, Beauty and Majesty.
The heart which was like the dawn drowned in blood became now filled with the sun, like the sky
From the harsh and soft dimensions of the sun he creates the earth, skies, mountains, streams, wind and fire, birds and gardens. He blends the real with the surreal, the mystical with the material. The earth must be submissive.
Every atom of the universe is submissive to the Divine ordinance and none can rebel. Then why should man rebel against Divine fate?
The earth is submissive to God and grows whatever is sown.
The landscape of the Sufi is entirely spiritual, it is placeless and traceless, its neither of this world or the next , it only exists in his bliss of having found his connection with beloved, the creator of all the beauty he sees and breathes.
This sky is an astrolabe and love is reality
Whatever I may say about it; turn your ear toward the inner meaning.
Through Him he finds himself in the Garden of indescribable beauty… The Bagh-e-Behisht, the garden of paradise, as described in the Holy Quran.
The grace is from God, but bodily people do not find the grace without the veil ‘garden’.
The true lover sees behind this new life, God’s grace and life-bestowing power, manifesting on the day of resurrection.
A Sufi takes everything to heart and finds in it a hidden meaning that opens the doors of ecstasy and wonder.
In the essence of annihilation I said: ‘O King of all kings!
All images have melted in this fire!’
He spoke: ‘Your address is still a remnant of this snow-As long as the snow remains, the red rose is hidden!’
Muzaffar Ali, filmmaker and painter, is working on a film on Rumi.
