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Rating: "So, you must not think that everything false is completely untrue, because error comes not so much from things themselves, but from the vain hope of those who cling to them. And at the same time, never say that everything in the world is an illusion, because if there were no truth, the illusion would also cease to exist."
Din Rumi, founder and inspirer of the mystical brotherhood of the whirling dervishes (an expression of Sufism known for their whirling and mystical dance, which is a tool to detach the mind from any contact with earthly things. In the dance, they spin in a mystical trance, becoming a medium between earth and sky.), is considered the greatest mystical poet of all times, at least from an Islamic point of view. A sort of Persian Dante Alighieri.
His most important work is the Mathnawi, an immense poem composed of over 26,000 couplets.
The book, edited by Massimo Jevonella, offers a translation, respectfully (according to the translator Ali Reza Assar) adapted, of 35 of the stories, meditations, teachings, and metaphors of this wonderful poem. It reveals a spiritual energy unknown to those unfamiliar with the enthusiasm, tolerance, and joyfulness of Sufism, an expression of an Islam quite different from the well-known radical fundamentalism in the West, making the often-repeated thesis of a clash of civilizations plausible.
Because even in the Muslim context, there are those who preach dialogue and tolerance. Rumi is a contemporary of Francis of Assisi, and like him, he left a message and a religious order founded on humility, poverty, and compassion.
"If you want to shine like the day, burn and destroy your individual existence, which is like the darkness of the night. [...] You persist in asserting the 'I' and the 'We,' and you do not realize that it is precisely in this duality that the cause of spiritual ruin lies."
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