Where words are born of silence - Jalaluddin Rumi

For over 700 years Muslims have performed a devotional worship, a form of sema, whirling in continual remembrance of Allah.

This tradition of whirling became commonly known through the Sufi Mystic Poet Maulana Jalal’ud-din Rumi. The word sema, which is arabic for “sound” is described best by Shamsi Tabriz, Maulana Jalal’ud-din’s master and shaykh saying,

 

“There comes a Sound, from neither within nor without,

From neither right nor left, from neither behind nor in front,

From neither below nor above, from neither East nor West,

Nor is it of the elements: water, air, fire, earth, and the like;

From where then? It is from that place thou art in search of;

Turn ye toward the place where from the Lord makes His appearance.

From where a restless fish out of water gets water to live in,

From the place where the prophet Moses saw the divine Light,

From the place where the fruits get their ripening influence,

From the place where the stones get transmuted to gems,

From the place which even an infidel turns in distress,

From the place to which all men turn when they find this world a vale of tears.

It is not given to us to describe such a blessed place;

It is a place where even the heretics would leave off their heresies.”

Done