Rumi Excerpts

Rumi on the Nafs

Selected by Kabir Helminski Let's ask God to help us to self-control: for one who lacks it, lacks His Grace. The undisciplined person doesn't wrong himself alone— but sets fire to the whole world. Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light; discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy. The peacock's plumage is [...]

On Spiritual Perception, tr. by Kabir & Camille Helminski

Vision of the World Know, son, that everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty. The universe is a drop of the Tigris of His Beauty, this Beauty not contained by any skin. His Beauty was a Hidden Treasure so full it burst open and made the earth more radiant than [...]

The Life and Spiritual Milieu of Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi

Rumi: Daylight, tr. by Kabir & Camille Helminski (Threshold Books, 1995) In the last decades of the Twentieth Century the spiritual influence of Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi is being strongly felt by people of diverse beliefs throughout the Western world. He is being recognized here in the West, as he has been for seven centuries in the Middle East and Western Asia, as one of the greatest literary and spiritual figures of all time. Different qualities of Rumi have been brought forth by a variety of new translations that have appeared during the nineteen-eighties. He has been presented as both refined and sensual, sober and ecstatic, deeply serious and extremely funny, rarefied and accessible. It is a sign of his profound universality that he has been so many things to so many people.

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