Rumi finally, he realizes who he is…. Overwhelmed by this experience he tries to find words to express it and he writes:
I am --- that
Uncolored, un-formed, trace less
Even I cannot see myself for what I am!
You say; reveal your secret; place it in the middle
What middle---what center--- what seeing!
My flow swell – recedes – drifts--
Endlessly
===
My essence is a constant dance
Unending
Unmoving in my motion
Motionless in my movement
I-- am a vast Ocean
And drowned …
In myself
Don’t look for me in this world
Or the next
Both… are lost in the World
That I am
===
Then, Shams mysteriously disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. Rumi was disconsolate and grieved deeply, but eventually he emerged out of that devastation, became perfect and wrote his second major work the Mathnavi, but in an entirely different style. Unlike the ecstatic style of Divan-e-Shams, the Mathnavi is clear and sober. Here is an inspiring example from the Mathnavi; this one about a timely topic: intuition.
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired;
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts,
from books and from what the teacher says-
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in
retaining information.
But - . there is another kind of tablet,
One already completed and preserved-- inside you.
A spring -- overflowing its springbox.
A freshness--in the center of the chest.
This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate.
It's-- fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside through
conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
We end with an example from the many poems in which Rumi encourages, entices even begs people to focus-- on the Real. With deepest love he pleads:
I am your lover, come to my side,
I will open the gate to your love.
Come settle with me,
Let us be neighbors to the stars.
You have been hiding so long,
Endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.
Even so, you have always been connected to me.
Concealed, revealed, in the unknown, in the un-manifest.
I am life itself.
You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood.
Come merge with me,
Be with me,
I will open the gate to your love.