[When Rumi and Shams met for the first time]
These beings, face to face, saw within each other the grace and presence of the essence of what each was searching for. For the first time each could reveal to another being the secret in his heart. Rumi was like a room filled with God-love. Shams saw this and opened the door.
As they meditated on the Beloved, sounded wasifas (Names and Attributes of God) and the zikr (la ilaha illallah), the air in the small hut was made pure by the breath of these two holy beings.
Rumi later wrote in Divani Shamsi Tabriz:
Happy the moment when we are seated in the palace,
thou and I,
With two forms and with two figures but with one soul,
thou and I.
The colors of the grove and the voice of the birds
will bestow immortality
At the time when we come into the garden, thou and I.
The stars of the heaven will come to gaze upon us;
We shall show them the moon itself, thou and I.
Thou and I, individuals no more, shall be mingled in ecstasy,
Joyful and secure from foolish babble, thou and I.
All the bright-plumed birds of heaven will devour their
hearts with envy,
In the place where we shall laugh in such a fashion,
thou and I.
This is the greatest wonder, that thou and I, sitting
here in the same nook,
Are at this moment both in Iraq and Khorasan, thou and I.
- from the book, The Whirling Dervishes by Shems Friedlander
[content and art credit Google]
