Soul in Love Classis Poems of Ecstasy and Exaltation

Introduction There is a rare experience that can bring more delight than falling in love--falling in love with God. Both are mysteries of the soul. We are used to living our lives without touching such mysteries. Falling in love may remain in the back of our minds as a supremely desirable event, but the world doesn't revolve around it, except for lovers. We give them a privileged position, briefly exempt from care and worry. Life's business gets suspended while lovers sigh and long for each other, feeding off the mere touch of the beloved, intoxicated by a glance or a word. Glances and words aren't really magical, yet love makes them feel that way. The excitement of falling in love always comes to an end, and when it does, the mystery fades. Day by day, the intoxication is less, and soon the lovers get welcomed back into the reality of business as usual. Yet a privileged few are spared this return to everyday life and remain in love seemingly without end. For this to happen, the beloved must be God. All other loves pale beside a sacred one. Saints and sages alike tell us one story over and over of being irresistibly drawn to God's embrace: Oh God I have discovered love! How marvelous, how good, how beautiful it is! . . . I offer my salutation To the spirit of passion that aroused and excited this whole universe And all it contains. These words are from Rumi, the sublime Persian poet so enraptured with God that he clung to a pole outside his house, swinging back and forth in ecstasy. From his lips poured joyous, drunken words about his Beloved, but these words weren't the ordinary effusions of a lover seeing through rose-colored glasses--Rumi was a lover who had seen something at the depths of life. To him, God was everywhere, and every atom of the universe pulsated with the same divine rapture. The power that created the cosmos poured through Rumi's veins, and the experience was not all pleasure. It was earthshaking: You go to bed crying and wake up the same, You plead for what doesn't come Until it darkens your days. You give away everything, even your mind, You sit down in the fire, wanting to become ashes, And when you meet with a sword, You throw yourself on it. Ordinary people (the villagers and devotees who surrounded Rumi) were reluctant to throw themselves into such a frenzied state, but they were fascinated by Rumi. In mesmerized groups they stood around while he swung on his pole rhapsodizing, or whirled in the dance of the dervishes and sang, because his songs and verses were inspired. It is that quality which puts God-intoxication above falling in love. Some aspect of wisdom is present, not a mere emotion or inflamed passion. Reading Rumi, a chill runs up your spine because you have the uncanny feeling that you have been where he is. Perhaps he is even yourself: Motes of dust dancing in the light That's our dance, too. We don't listen inside to hear the music-- No matter. The dance goes on, and in the joy of the sun Is hiding a God Rumi was dancing the dance of life. He knew it, and so did his listeners, which is why the line between poet, saint, and lover became quite blurry in his case. No poet is more intimate than Rumi, no lover more crazed, no saint more innocent. An air of the supernatural gathered around him because he never lost this wild, extreme state of ecstasy. Somehow the deepest lovers don't have to fear time. Their intoxication is permanent, even though the divine beloved is invisible, remote, and never touched physically. Centuries ago an Indian princess named Mirabai walked away from wealth and privilege to live among the poor just so she could remain intoxicated. Like Rumi, Mirabai expresses amazement that the rest of us don't follow her lead. But to do that requires great strength, for the life of God-intoxication leaves no room for compromise, as Mira points out time and again: I am going mad witChopra, Deepak is the author of 'Soul in Love Classis Poems of Ecstasy and Exaltation' with ISBN 9780609606483 and ISBN 0609606484.