QUOTES > Experiencing freedom

{Quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi}

 

Try not to understand the work of the pure saints by comparing them with yourself ... By such comparisons all the world's inhabitants have gone astray... They hold themselves up as equal to the prophets, imagining that the saints are just like themselves. They say, "Look: We are human and they are human, both of us must eat and sleep." Out of blindness they do not know that between them is an infinite difference... This person eats food and gives out filth; the other also eats, but his food is transformed entirely into the Light of God. This one eats and gives birth to avarice and envy; the other eats and gives birth only to love for the One. (The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 144)

 

No one looks for stars when the sun's out. A person blended into God does not disappear. He or she is just completely soaked in God's qualities. (The Essential Rumi, p. 114)

 

The lovers {of God} ... have all become one, kneaded together by Love. When a thousand corpses are thrown into the saltmines, they all become salt -- no duality remains, no "man from Marv" or "man from Balkh." (The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 219)

 

The spirits of wolves and dogs are separate, every one, but the spirits of God's lions are united. I refer to their spirits by a plural noun because that one spirit is a hundred in relation to bodies. (The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 71)

 

Although those drunk with God are thousands, they are one; those drunk with self-will are all twos and threes. (The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 312)

 

When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one.
When you are with no one but me, you're with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone.
When you become that many, you're nothing. Empty.
(The Essential Rumi, p. 28)