Rumi: The Sufi's Tavern of Love

"In the tavern are many wines," writes poet, Coleman Barks, "the wine of delight in color and form and taste, the wine of the intellect's agility, the fine port of stories, and the cabarnet of soul singing. Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grapeskin of ego breaks and a pouring begins."

"Fermentation is one of the oldest symbols for human transformation," he points out. "When grapes combine their juice and are closed up together for a time in a dark place, the results are spectacular. This is what lets two drunks meet so that they don't know who is who. Pronouns no longer apply in the tavern's mind-world of excited confusion and half-articulated wantings."

"But after a time in the tavern," Barks warns, "a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing for the source, and the drunks must set off from the tavern and begin the return. The Qu'ran says, "We are all returning." The tavern is a kind of glorious hell that human beings enjoy and suffer and then push off from in their search for truth. The tavern is a dangerous region where sometimes disguises are necessary, but never hide your heart, Rumi urges. Keep open there. A breaking apart, a crying out in the street, begins in the tavern, and the human soul turns to find its way home."

[Coleman Barks, "The Essential Rumi" p. 1.]

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THE DRUNKARDS AND THE TAVERN

I'm drunk and you're insane, who's going to lead us home?
How many times did they say,
"Drink just a little, only two or three at most?"

In this city no one I see is conscious;

one is worse off than the next, frenzied and insane.

Dear one, come to the tavern of ruin
and experience the pleasures of the soul.
What happiness can there be apart
from this intimate conversation
with the Beloved, the Soul of souls?

In every corner there are drunkards, arm in arm,
while the Server pours the wine
from a royal decanter to every particle of being.

You belong to the tavern: your income is wine,

and wine is all you ever buy.
Don't give even a second away

to the concerns of the merely sober.

O lute player, are you more drunk, or am I?
In the presence of one as drunk as you, my magic is a myth.

When I went outside the house,
some drunk approached me,

and in his eyes I saw

hundreds of hidden gardens and sanctuaries.

Like a ship without an anchor,

he rocked this way and that.

Hundreds of intellectuals and wise men
could die from a taste of this yearning.

I asked, "Where are you from?"
He laughed and said, "O soul,

half of me is from Turkestan and half from Farghana.

Half of me is water and mud, half heart and half soul;

half of me is the ocean's shore, half is all pearl.

"Be my friend," I pleaded. "I'm one of your family."
"I know the difference between family and outsiders."

I've neither a heart nor a turban,

and here in this house of hangovers

my breast is filled with unspoken words.

Shall I try to explain or not.

Have I lived among the lame for so long

that I've begun to limp myself?
And yet no slap of pain could disturb
a drunkenness like this.

Listen, can you hear a wail

arising from the pillar of grief?
Shams al-Haqq of Tabriz, where are you now,

after all the mischief you've stirred in our hearts?

(Translation by K. Helminski, A, Godlas, and               L. Saedin)

[Kabir Helminski, "The Rumi Collection," pp. 32-24]

The "Journey From God"

"We all come from God, but when we are born into this world we forget. We forget from where we have come and that we are children of light. We take on the clothing of this world, leaving behind,"the clouds of glory' of our true Home. The Sufi calls this the "journey from God," a journey of forgetfulness in which we leave Paradise behind. But there are those who never quite forget, who keep a distant memory buried deep within them. As a result this world never quite seems like home; there is often a sense of not quite belonging, not fitting in. Mystics are strangers in this world, just because they remember their real home."

-- LLewellyn Vaughan-Lee --
("Love Is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home")

 In his Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Wordsworth enters the sublime, echoing the teachings of the Sufi, with his intimations of the transmigration of the soul and his explicit recognition of  a universal "home" in the Godhead.

William Wordsworth

“ … Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God who is our home. ”

(William Wordsworth, from his poem, "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.")

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* * * * * * * * * * * * *

ONLY BREATH

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, sufi or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

From the Ground, nor natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an enemy in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam or Eve or any

origin story. My place is pathless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath, breathing human being.

    << >>                                            

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

[Coleman Barks, "The Essential Rumi," p. 34.]

Carl Jung on the 'Soul'

Carl G. Jung (1875-1961)

Carl Jung was perhaps the most influential and greatest of all early psychologists, outshining even Freud, his one-time mentor. While his public writings have fueled many Jungian schools, until recently, his most intimate metaphysical musing were collected only in what is generally known as "The Red Book," the contents of which were until recently a closely guarded secret by Jung's surviving family.

"The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (Latin for New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, prepared for publication by The Philemon Foundation and published by W.W. Norton & Co. on October 7, 2009. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he began after a falling-out with Sigmund Freud in 1913. Jung originally titled the manuscript Liber Novus (literally meaning A New Book in Latin), but it was informally known and published as The Red Book. The book is written in calligraphic text and contains many illuminations." [Source: Wikipedia.]

The following poem and video (from the newly published "Red Book") give the reader a taste of the depth and conviction of Jung's religious experience and conviction. When asked if he believed in God, Jung demurred, saying there was no need for "belief" as he "knew."

"My soul... Where are you?..
Do you hear me?..
I Speak.. I call you.. Are you there?
I have Returned.
I am here again.
I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet,
and I have come to you.
I am with you..
After long years, of long wondering,
I have come to you, again.

Should I tell you, everything I have seen?
Experienced? or drank in?
or do you not want to hear,
about the noise of life and the world.

But one thing you must know,
the one thing I have learned,
is that one must live his life..
This life is the way,
the long sought after way,
to the unfathomable which we call divine.

There is no other way.
All other ways, are false paths.
So I found the right way,
to let it let me to you, to my soul.

I've returned, tempted and purified.
Do you still know me?
How long, the separation lasted.
Everything has come so different.

And how did I find you?
How strange my journey was.
What words should I use to tell you,
on what twisted path a good star has guided me to you.

Give me your hand,
My almost forgotten soul.
How long, the joy, at seeing you again.
You long disappointed soul.
Life has let me back to you.
Let us thank the life I have lived,
for all the happy, and all the sad hours,
For every joy, for every sadness.

My soul, my journey,
should continue with you..
I will wonder with you,
and ascend to my solitude.."

-- Carl G. Jung --

The Ego's Fear of the Soul's Power

Nelson Mandela, on assuming the presidency of South Africa after enduring 27 years in prison, quoted the following passages from Marianne Williamson's book, "A Return to Love."

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, one of the foremost teachers of "A Course in Miracles," recognizes that it is the ego which fears the power of the soul, and that our greatest achievement is letting go of the fears that constitute the ego's clutch on the soul, that it is fear which separates us from God which is within and all around us.

Our playing small does not serve the world!

Peace and Joy

"Consider the subtlness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide underwater, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. . . . Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in ourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the sorrows of the half-lived life. (Emphasis added.)"

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, at p. 293. The latter part of this quote (which inspired me to read, and finish this time, Melville's transcendental masterpiece) was brought to my attention in There's A Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, an audiobook on CD by Wayne Dyer. This beautiful quote, that captures the inner serenity and absolute paradise of the soul which is surrounded and encumbered by the fears, unquenchable desires and "the terrors" of relative, everyday life is the subject of a wonderful essay in Wayne Dyer's masterful book about his greatest spiritual teachers,"Wisdom of the Ages: 60 Days to Enlightenment".