I do not come before you this evening with claims of being a world class intellectual or a scholar of superior renown. What I can rightfully lay claim to is a very personal and satisfying passion for the subject of my talk. As you are going to find out in just a few moments, that subject entails a good deal more than the title might imply. The title being: DANCING WITH GENIUS, DANCING WITH MADNESS.

I think of Genius and Madness as being very much like a twin brother and sister.  And it doesn’t really matter which one we call the brother, or which we describe as the sister, for one simple reason.  Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated. Because of this mixture of traits, these twins called Genius and Madness often appear to be the same thing. They both have a tendency to blur the lines of what we call norms, or established reality.  They both, when we study that grand tapestry known as history and modern-day society, tend to stand out in much bolder relief than other figures. Neither Genius nor Madness ever look upon the world as a finished product. Both tend to view it as a kind of work in progress subject to their peculiarly mesmerizing influence.

Nevertheless: despite their similarities we are talking about twins with pronounced and distinct characteristics. If they at moments appear identical, in the end there’s rarely any difficulty telling them apart. For we recognize True Genius and True Madness most accurately by their legacies. Madness has a fondness for leaving the world filled with confusion and atrocity: such as the assassination of humanitarian leaders; the systematic rape and oppression of women and children; or the deliberate destruction of social and individual harmony. Genius, on the other hand, prefers to reserve its passions for clarity and the joys of intellectual possibility. It bestows upon the world such gifts as the angelic compositions of a Mozart; the enabling spiritual vision of a Martin Luther King, Jr.; the creative brilliance of a Leonardo da Vinci; or the Nobel-winning literary excellence of a Toni Morrison.

But what precisely are we talking about when we speak of Genius and Madness? If we trust Random House Dictionary’s definition of Genius, it is: “an exceptional natural capacity of intellect.” Or: “A person having such capacity.” In contrast, Madness is described in a number of very interesting diverse ways. The least surprising definition is as follows: “Crazy, demented, insane.” Pretty much what most people think of when they hear the word Madness. It is also, however, defined as: “affected with rabies.” And, as: “enjoyably hilarious.” Put these three definitions of Madness together and we come up with: an enjoyably hilarious individual with rabies acting crazy, demented, and insane.       

Now those may sound like qualities completely alien to what we have termed Genius, but that is not necessarily the case at all: the great Roman statesman, philosopher, and writer, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, put it this way: “There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” And the extraordinary French author Marcel Proust, who all of his life wrestled with both his intellect and his neuroses, made this statement in his masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past: “All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded  religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.”

Inspiration and Ideological Substance

We can point to many cultures and periods of history to find examples of Genius and Madness which have impacted significantly upon the course of human events. But for this evening’s purpose, I want to focus upon the life and personality of one Genius, whom many also considered mad, in particular. I have chosen to address his life for several reasons: 1) because this specific individual literally illustrates the concept of ‘Dancing with Genius, Dancing with Madness’; 2) because his intellectual and spiritual presence has become an ever-abiding one within the world of my personal reality; and 3) because his life’s work, some 800 years after his death, continues to inform and even help generate the creative and spiritual sensibilities of others.    

One of the true st marks of Genius is its ability to provide both inspiration and ideological substance for the creative pursuits of others.  With that in mind, one does not need to search long or hard to confirm the Genius of the twelfth century teacher, father, son, husband, poet, community leader, and community servant, known as Jalal al-Din Rumi. His influence in 2005 can be found with ease in modern literature but we may also encounter it in music, the visual arts, social trends, theology, and philosophy.

Because history is that which we dare to articulate for a given purpose, and not the actuality of events themselves, we can never know all of the ways that one might accurately describe Rumi, as we generally refer to him in North America.   But let’s start with a short description of him as his father’s son.  I specifically say his father’s son because Rumi was born into a line of men famous for their skills as leaders, scholars, and spiritual masters. The various hagiographies, or biographies, of this particular saint, rarely refer to his mother. And most of those which I have been able to study have alluded to her only as “Rumi’s mother,” or as his father’s wife. The major exception to this omission in the West is Franklin D. Lewis’ massive study,Rumi: Past and Present, East and West, The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi. In this work, she is acknowledged as Momene Khatun.

His father was Baha al-Dine Valad, a professor of religious law who was known as “the King of Scholars.” He was such a revered man that true kings literally offered him their palaces and keys to their treasures. He was approximately 59 years old when his son Rumi was born September 30, in the year 1207. He was in his mid-sixties when he moved his family from a province known as Balk (or present-day Afghanistan) to a city called Konya(in what we now know as Turkey). Baha al-Dine was not just making a twelfth-century career move when he traveled such a distance with his family, losing his wife Momene Khatun along the way. He was escaping that singular scurge of history known as Ghenghis Khan and his Mongol hordes. In the city of Konya, Rumi’s father accepted a teaching position. When he died, his son Jalal al-Din inherited both his position and his honorary titles: “King of Scholars,” and “Sultan of the Men of Knowledge.”

Exactly what was the substance of Rumi’s Genius and how did his Madness begin? The Genius would have been part of his spiritual and family cultural inheritance. There is a story about a great philosopher named Ibn Al-Arabi who reportedly once saw Rumi when he was a child walking behind his father. And as great as we have said Baha al-Dine was, when the philosopher Ibn Al-Arabi saw the boy Rumi walking behind his father, he stopped and said: “Good Lord! Look at that huge ocean flowing behind that tiny lake!”

What could Ibn Al-Arabi possibly have meant by such an enigmatic remark? It is my belief that the answer to that question is more in evidence today than it was during Rumi’s lifetime. When he took over his father’s teaching post, Rumi was already considered a man of superior intelligence. According to William Chittick writing in The Sufi Path of Love, Rumi’s areas of expertise included: “Arabic grammar, prosody, the Koran, jurisprudence (the science of the Shariah)…Koranic commentary, history, dogmatics, theology, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy.” Most people would have thought that more than sufficient to consider oneself an educated man. And very possibly Rumi himself felt fully equipped to carry out his inherited duties. However, a disciple of Rumi’s father named Borhan al-Din learned that Baha al-Dine had died before he was able to communicate, and demonstrate, specific levels of knowledge to his son Rumi. Although the disciple respected both Rumi’s scholarship and his spiritual status, he took it upon himself out of love for his deceased teacher to further instruct Rumi in those mysteries of the spiritual discipline known as Sufism. Many say that these mysteries, in fact, cannot be taught. Nevertheless, Borhan al-Din acted as Rumi’s spiritual guide along the path of these mysteries for some nine years.

Once Rumi’s mentor felt he had completed his task, he departed Konya and left Rumi to get on with his work and life. It was a life which was not very different from that of any committed thinker during any given time in history.  Rumi studied his books, he taught classes, he met with other spiritual-minded men to discuss religious law, and he preached sermons in a pulpit. He got married twice. His first wife, Gowar Khatun, died shortly after the birth of their second son. With his second wife, Kerra Khatun, he had a third son and a daughter. In short, he lived a fairly quiet, meditative, and conservative life. Some might even call it downright dull. He had his followers, and he was an acknowledged leader of men. But he was also a very sober, and possibly even predictable, ascetic.

However, while Rumi was quietly tending to his books and students and family, there was another man living a very different kind of holy life. His name was Shams. Some people called him the Winged One because he was supposedly dedicated to the bliss of uninhibited wandering and traveled astounding distances on foot. He was about twenty years older than Rumi. But like Rumi, Shams had a strong love for spiritual experience and revelation. Unlike Rumi, he had very little patience for religious or social formalities. So while Rumi was studying and teaching from his books and pulpit, Shams traveled the earth like a spiritual tornado, growing in the power of his extraordinary personality and spiritual magnetism. It was said that during his walking meditations, he would accumulate so much spiritual energy that he then would perform hard physical labor just to mentally balance and ground himself. Then he would leave before anyone could pay him for the work he had done.

Shams was one of a kind. And because he was such a singular individual, according to Sufi legend, he prayed to meet just one person ––just one–– who could bear what might be described as the full psychic force of his personality. His prayer, the biographers tell us, was answered with a vision of the man named Jalal al-Din Rumi.

There are several stories about how Shams and Rumi actually met, but the one told the most goes like this: Rumi was returning from a lecture with a group of his students and followers all around him. They were asking questions, quoting great thinkers and doing all those things that young hungry minds do in the presence of a teacher they love and respect. Then, suddenly, standing on the path in front of them, they saw a man dressed in dirty dark clothes. Everyone stopped. And the man asked Rumi a question. Exactly what happened after that is something which scholars still debate. Some say the question which Shams asked was so powerfully profound, that it knocked Rumi unconscious. There are others who say the exact opposite: that the answer which Rumi gave was so unfathomable that it knocked Shams unconscious. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that when whoever fainted woke up, the two men went to Rumi’s home and began something amazing. They began a conversation. But these were not ordinary men, so their conversation was not an ordinary conversation. It was what mystics call a sohbet: a shared verbal meditation on the realities and non-realities of God. And this exceptional communication between Shams and Rumi, once it started, legend has it, lasted for approximately three months. Precisely what they communicated to each other during that time is one of the great puzzles of world mysticism.

The story of Rumi and Shams is one of which I never grow tired. I cannot adequately explain why because that is one of the divine mysteries within my own life and being. But what I can tell you is that theirs is one of greatest stories of one of the greatest promises made ––then kept–– by the possibilities of divine friendship. Why the term ‘divine friendship’ as opposed to simply: friendship? Because Shams and Rumi did not find in each other what people generally hope to find in a true friendship. More than simply the ego satisfaction of finding reflections of one’s self in the person of another self, Shams and Rumi discovered within each other what they accepted as manifestations of divine reality.  I will grant you the amorphous nature of such terminology but what I will not concede is the validity of Shams and Rumi’s stature as highly evolved individuals whose lives more than justify the use of such terms. As far as they were concerned, each man was a conscious fragment of Divinity marveling at itself manifested in the form of the form of the other. Each was an open window through which the other could witness divine law unfolding and operating flawlessly as divine love throughout the universe.          

Obviously, if Rumi was engaged for months at a time in deep spiritual conversation with Shams, that meant he was not teaching his classes. He was not preaching regularly. He was not tending to the recognized daily affairs of family life or scholarly pursuit. His disciples could not bear their master’s absence from the life of the community. So they told Shams very bluntly that he had to go. And rather than cause friction between his friend and those who believed they loved and needed him, Shams did leave.

Shams’ departure buried Rumi so deeply in depression that his students and colleagues realized they had made a serious mistake. It was Rumi’s elder son, Sultan Valad who made the journey to find Shams and bring him back toKonya. Upon their return, something quite magical happened as Shams and Rumi greeted each other. When the townspeople saw these two very adult men publicly crying out and embracing at their reunion, they began to dance, applaud, and recite poetry praising divine love. It was as if everyone present were suddenly possessed by the powerful essence of Shams and Rumi’s combined joy and sorrow.

For a time, following his return, everyone treated Shams like a king. But only for a time. After a while, he and Rumi again disappeared inside their days-on-end mystical conversations and Rumi’s disciples again became jealous. How were they to fix the problem this time? Some accounts claim that Shams resolved the issue by once more leaving Konya and going back to his life as a wandering holy man. Others tell a decisively different tale and say that Shams was murdered by Rumi’s jealous disciples. To make this latter theory even more tragic, it is said that Rumi’s younger son was among those who murdered Shams.

Inside the Corridors of Madness

And if you think the people of Konya wee dismayed watching grief drag Rumi around like a rag doll, imagine again what they must have felt when the sound of a goldsmith beating his hammer against an anvil caught his ear and Rumi heard it not as hammering at all but as music. Listening to the rhythm of the hammer and anvil, he began to whirl and dance. In both public and private, Rumi whirled like a solitary planet spinning to the music of the spheres. Then a day came that while he danced, he began at the same time to recite poetry. Here, then, was his transformation into a living fountain of freely flowing verse, singing endless praise to divine love, beauty, and the never-ending ecstasy of unity and harmony. While he danced and sang, others wrote down the words that poured out of him. Over an estimated period of some sixteen years, he composed more than 50,000 verses in this manner.     

Spinning inside the corridors of his Madness, Rumi discovered two very important things: for one, he realized that so much of the illuminated personality of Shams had become his own personality, that so-called death could not separate them. And secondly, all that knowledge which his father and teacher had placed at his disposal, now evolved and merged to forge within him one of the most formidable literary sensibilities this planet has ever seen. While he was dancing away his Madness, Rumi did not just compose exquisite poetry. He created a masterful encyclopedia of Middle Eastern mythology and prophecy known as the Masnavi. And he also gave us one of the world’s most telling documents on the possibilities inherent in human relationships in the form of his Divan of Shams of Tabriz, a collection of lyrical poems that are not so much dedicated to Shams as they are attributed to his spiritual influence speaking through Rumi.

In the process of creating his extraordinary testimonies to spiritual potential and reality, the man who had been revered as a pillar of conservative theology, was transformed into a living dynamo of love and wisdom. Rumi himself expressed his transformation this way:

            “I was the country’s sober ascetic; I used to teach from the pulpit––but destiny made me one of thy hand-
clapping lovers. (D22784)

            My hand always used to hold a Koran, but now

            My mouth was filled with glorification, but now it recites only

poetry and songs." (D24875-76) (Chittick: Sufi Path of Love)

Could something as simple as friendship really have generated such a profound evolution in a human being? Please recall the philosopher Ibn Al-Arabi’s statement early in Rumi’s life when he described the child Rumi as an ocean following behind the lake that was his father. Then consider this observation from S. H. Nasr: “It seems that Shams al-Din was a divinely sent spiritual influence which in a sense ‘exteriorized’ Rumi’s inner contemplative state in the form of poetry and set the ocean of his being into a motion which resulted in vast waves that transformed the history of Persian literature.”     

Rumi’s mad dancing and his inspired utterances of pure Genius gave birth to a major religious order known today as the Whirling Dervishes. His writings have influenced not only Persian literature but world literature and world spirituality. His richly inspired work has been translated and published in languages all over the globe. In English alone, there are more than a dozen writers and scholars who frequently publish volumes of Rumi’s work. Interpretations of his poetry have been recorded as musical compositions by such diverse individuals as motivational speaker Deepak Chopra and famed music producers Graeme Revell and Roger Mason, among numerous others. In addition, calendars, biographies, web sites, and discussion groups all based on the life and passion of Rumi are in plentiful supply. Rumi himself in many parts of the world is greatly revered as a saint. When he died, representatives from every major religion tried to claim him for their own.

What I have presented here is but an outline illustrating in part the life of one man who dared to dance with Madness in order that he might teach the world what it means to dance with Genius. His story, and the treasures it may offer any given individual, is one fully worthy of further exploration. Because I am a poet, and because I have lived now for some fifteen years with the grace of Rumi’s beautiful wisdom shining like a lamp in my life, I am going to conclude this presentation with a poem that I wrote while contemplating a visit to the city where Rumi lived and died. It is called A SPRING DAY IN KONYA:

© 2005