By Munjed M. Murad

The famous thirteenth-century (seventh-century AH) Persian Sufi poet Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī expounds a view of the universe in which the force behind all motion and life—from the flight of birds to the movement of the stars and the change of seasons—is love (Per. ‘ishq), without which the world would be inanimate and lifeless.¹ Far from being only a sentimental view of the universe, however, this conclusion rests upon cosmological, exegetical, and directly experiential insights that deal with existential questions about spirituality, epistemology, and perception of the other. In contrast to this view of the motivating force behind all things, if you were to ask today why it is that a bird hunts, a lion mates, or a plant grows vertically, answers would often invoke teachings based on the principle of the survival of the fittest.

Perspectivism, defined as “the view that there are multiple valid ways of understanding or describing reality,” describes Rumi’s expositions on reality, and in his perspectivism the principle of the survival of the fittest might indeed appear to explain so much of nature, but that explanation considers only one dimension of it.²From an objective perspective, it is love rather than fear that animates the hunting and mating of animals. Moreover, this theory accounts for not just the animal and plant kingdoms but also the mineral kingdom.

Were we to ask who, precisely, is in love, Rumi’s answer, in short, would be: everyone and everything. Many of us imagine human couples when we think of romantic love, but love between couples is to be found also in the sky and the earth, the night and the day, and in countless other cosmic pairs. All members and even particles of the cosmos are in love. The workings of nature are the effects of the courtship and union of countless lovers and beloveds. It is not just humanity that can love, nor only human beings and the animal kingdom, but also plants, stones, the stars, mountains, the sea, and countless other members of the cosmos. All are in love.

Because of that fore-ordainment all the particles of the world
Are paired as mates and are in love with their own mate.
Every particle of the universe is desiring its mate,
Just like amber and the blade of straw.³

Night and day chase after each other.⁴ The thirst that creatures have for water is the effect of an attraction that the two have for each other. Every particle of the cosmos has its mate and is attracted to it. In summary, the cosmos is the coming together of so many lovers:⁵

Day is in love with night and has lost control of itself;
When you look (inwardly), (you see that) night is (even) more in love with it.
Never for one instant do they cease from seeking;
Never for one moment do they cease from pursuing each other.
This one has caught the foot of that one, and that one the ear of this one:
This one is distraught with that one, and that one is beside itself for this one.⁶

The aforementioned details one kind of love, that is, love between creatures. Ultimately, however, all creatures love God, the Divine Beloved:

Know that the wheeling heavens are turned by waves of love:
Were it not for love, the world would be frozen (inanimate)
. . .
Every mote is in love with that Perfection
And hastening upward like a sapling.
Their haste is “Glory to God!” (Q. 57:1)⁷

All are in love, but one unique trait of human love is that humanity has the free will not to love—or not to channel its love properly. Human beings can rebel against the Divine Beloved and love the world at the expense of explicit love for the Divine, while the rest of creation may love others in the world, but each doing so in conformity with its spiritual purpose, that is, loving the Divine.

If love animates and all things are in love, then what of apparently inanimate beings, such as stones, valleys, and mountains? To answer this: love manifests itself according to the nature of the lover, and those who have activated the appropriate faculties of perception can see that even a being that seems to most as inanimate is animate spiritually. A stone appears to be inanimate, but those with spiritual perception can see the stone’s spiritual participation in love and see its spiritual animateness.

Rumi references the Prophet Muhammad’s vision of things to expound their true nature. The Prophet signifies the peak of spiritual capability; so, what he sees is in fact things as they are spiritually, or as they really are:

And to the Prophet this world is continuous
In praising God yet to us it looks heedless:
To him this world is full of love and justice;
To ordinary men it’s dead and lifeless.
He sees the hills and valleys moving round;
He hears wise words from bricks and from the ground;
They are all dead and limited to most;
I’ve never seen a stranger veil exposed.⁸

Rumi is well aware, however, that most others do not perceive that all creatures are in love. In response, he problematizes axioms of ordinary human perception of both love and the nonhuman other. Building on the fact that most people cannot just look into a busy street and distinguish with ease those who are in love from those who are not, he teaches that since we have difficulty discerning love within our own kind, it is of no surprise that we cannot discern the absence or presence of love in nonhuman beings.

Wolf, bear, and lion know what love is.
He who is blind to love is inferior to a dog.
If the dog had not a vein of love,
How could the dog of the cave seek to win the heart (of the sleepers of the cave)?
There are also of its kind, dog-like in form,
In the world but not celebrated.
You have not smelled the heart in your own kind;
how are you to smell the heart of wolf and sheep?”⁹

That is to say (at least in one reading of these verses) that not only does the Qur’anic dog of the cave love the sleepers of the cave, but so too do many dogs in the world love those whom they protect.

Where is the proof, however, that all things are in love? As is the case in any scientific venture, the nature of the object determines the instruments necessary for its scientific study. One needs a nose to perceive scent. One cannot smell with one’s ears nor hear with one’s nose. In other words, the instrument of perception must accord with the nature of the object perceived. In Rumi’s epistemology, one must activate spiritual faculties of perception to see things as they are spiritually, which explains why, to many, a hill appears to be inanimate while the Prophet is capable of seeing it “moving round.” In this spiritual epistemology, in order to encounter the other properly, one must first encounter and transform one’s own self. To perceive the spiritual love of nonhuman others, one must first become a spiritual lover.

The present environmental crisis has been described by the traditional Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr as being rooted in a spiritual crisis. According to Nasr, who in the 1960s pioneered the study of religion and the environmental crisis, prior even to Lynn White Jr., the environmental crisis can be described in one among other formulations as a turn toward describing nature as an “it” after having addressed nature previously as a “thou.” This conclusion of Nasr’s, who himself belongs to the Sufi tradition, resonates with Sufi epistemology in general and, in addition to being the result of a scholarly endeavor, is a response to the modern environmental crisis from within the tradition that houses Rumi’s insights.¹⁰

In Rumi’s spiritual epistemology, to perceive fully the thou-ness of the other, one must first know and love God—not through reason but through God mystically himself. Moreover, according to a Sufi adage, by knowing oneself, one knows God, which helps to explain Rumi’s self-transformational epistemology in that whosoever comes to know oneself truly knows reality truly.¹¹ This Sufi statement finds validation not only in the presence of Sufi saints but also in the Prophetic teaching that the heart of the believer is the Throne of God as the Merciful (Ar. qalb al-mu’min ‘arsh al-Raḥmān). Once one has come to know God through God, one can, by Divine Grace, see the world of objects as being instead a congregation of lovers. Exceptions aside, Rumi’s theory of perception posits that only in the spiritual encounter with the Divine Thou can one encounter truly the spiritual thou-ness of nonhuman others. In Rumi’s framework, only in becoming a spiritual lover can one perceive the world’s spiritual reality and see it for what it really is, a congregation of lovers and beloveds.

Thus, according to Rumi, the animating force behind all cosmic movement—from the striking of lightning to the blooming of flowers—is love. Love, however, can be perceived thoroughly only through spiritual faculties. Therefore, to perceive properly the (human or nonhuman) other, one must first encounter one’s spiritual self, which is to say that one must first encounter one’s self within the Divine or to encounter the Divine. Only then is nature no longer just an “it” but a spiritual lover and beloved.