Philosophical Outlook of Rumi

All matter in the universe obeys this law and this movement is due to an inbuilt urge (which Rumi calls "love") to evolve and seek enjoinment with the divinity from which it has emerged. Evolution into a human being from an animal is only one stage in this process. The doctrine of the Fall of Adam is reinterpreted as the devolution of the Ego from the universal ground of divinity and is a universal, cosmic phenomenon. The French philosopher Henri Bergson"s idea of life being creative and evolutionary is similar, though unlike Bergson, Rumi believes that there is a specific goal to the process: the attainment of God. For Rumi, God is the ground as well as the goal of all existence.

However Rumi need not be considered a biological evolutionary creationist. In view of the fact that Rumi lived hundreds of years before Darwin, and was least interested in scientific theories, it is probable to conclude that he does not deal with biological evolution at all. Rather he is concerned with the spiritual evolution of a human being: Man not conscious of God is akin to an animal and true consciousness makes him divine. Nicholson has seen this as a Neo-Platonic doctrine: the universal soul working through the various spheres of being, a doctrine introduced into Islam by Muslim philosophers like Al Farabi and being related at the same time to Ibn Sina"s idea of love as the magnetically working power by which life is driven into an upward trend.

“ I died as a mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was Man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar

With angels bless"d; but even from angelhood

I must pass on: all except God doth perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,

I shall become what no mind e"er conceived.

Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence

Proclaims in organ tones,

To Him we shall return.

 از جمادي مُردم و نامي شدم — وز نما مُردم به‌حيوان سرزدم

مُردم از حيواني و آدم شدم — پس چه ترسم؟ کي ز مردن کم شدم؟

حمله ديگر بميرم از بشر — تا برآرم از ملائک بال و پر

وز ملک هم بايدم جستن ز جو — کل شيء هالک الا وجهه

بار ديگر از ملک پران شوم — آنچه اندر وهم نايد آن شوم

پس عدم گردم عدم چو ارغنون — گويدم کانا اليه راجعون

Rumi"s universality

It is often said that the teachings of Rumi are ecumenical in nature.[47] For Rumi, religion was mostly a personal experience and not limited to logical arguments or perceptions of the senses.[48] Creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, was the goal towards which every thing moves.[48] The dignity of life, in particular human life (which is conscious of its divine origin and goal), was important.