“Rumi’s Mystical Design” is an attempt at decoding the inner structure of Jalaluddin Rumi’s celebrated collection of poems known as the “Mathnawi”. The Mathnawi is quite a complex work. It consists of 25,631 verses. It is divided into six books. Each book contains between 8 and 19 unique stories; each story is divided into sections. These sections vary in length: the shortest being only two verses long, the longest well over a hundred verses. Most scholars consider the Mathnawi to be an inconsequential collection of stories, anecdotes, quotes and randomly injected commentaries.
According to the authors of “Rumi’s Mystical Design”, the Mathnawi has a hidden inner structure which must be known if Rumi’s spiritual teaching is to be understood and effectively absorbed. They assumed that the inner structure was three-level deep and highly symmetrical. The authors identified the following levels: the level of discourse (i.e., a story with associated commentaries), the level of each book, and the level of the work as a whole. Although their study covers only the first book of the Mathnawi, the authors argue that this structure is evident in the remaining five books.
The suggested structure of the Mathnawi is based on a circular arrangement known as a ring composition. The arrangement A, B, C, C*, B*, A* would be an example of a ring composition of a six verse poem, where there is a particular correspondence between the verses A and A*, B and B*, C and C*. When read sequentially, this sort of poem may give an impression of disorder, repetition, randomness and incoherence. In reality, such a poem is of considerable sophistication, elegance and symmetry. The main purpose of this structural form is to use the middle section to indicate the key inner content of the entire poem. The overall sequence of experiences described in this manner is a reflection of a process where there is a starting point (the verse A) leading to its zenith right in the middle (the verses C and C*). The zenith, or the overall purpose of this particular experience, is followed by a cooling down phase (the verse B*) while returning to the initial point (the verse A*). At the end of this particular experience, the traveler returns to where he started. Such a sequence applies to fleeting spiritual experiences (known as “states” or “gifts”). Experiences leading to permanent spiritual gains (known as “stations” or “acquisitions”) do not follow this sort of pattern. This means that a ring composition may be adequate for the illustration of some initial experiences of the spiritual journey. The overall methodology of the spiritual process follows a pattern which is similar (but not identical) to an ascending musical octave with intervals. In the case of the Mathnawi, the ring composition may apply to some of the stories. Yet, the authors of “Rumi’s Mystical Design” decided to superimpose the ring composition on all the three levels of the Mathnawi. As there are six books, the ring composition would require Book One to be reflected in Book Six, Book Two in Book Five, and Book Three in Book Four. Consequently, the first story in Book One would have to be parallel to the last story in Book Six, the second story in Book One would have to be parallel to the penultimate story in Book Six, and so on. As there are different numbers of stories in each of the books, the stories would have to be artificially clustered in order to fit into such an imposed symmetry. This would also indicate that the central piece of the Mathnawi would be the last story in Book Three which finishes at the beginning of Book Four. This is the story of “The Lover and His Mistress Who Rejected Him”. This story describes a trial that a lover has to pass before he can enter onto the next stage of his spiritual journey. The lover, however, fails the trial. He is rejected by his beloved. He is not at all ready for this particular experience. In other words, this story illustrates an intermediate stage. This stage is higher than the initial stage of the lover in the first story of Book One, where the lover simply “bought” his beloved. But it is below the final stage achieved by the lover in the last story of Book Six, where the lover “won his prize completely”. Therefore, the story of “The Lover and His Mistress Who Rejected Him” cannot be the central piece of Rumi’s message. This clearly points out that the ring structure does not apply to the top levels of the Mathnawi. By trying to impose a highly symmetrical structure upon the higher levels, one would obscure the inner design.
A possible hint on how to approach the Mathnawi has been provided by a rather surprising source. A recently published analysis of Shakespeare’s plays indicates that Shakespeare used the same inner design as that implemented by Rumi. Shakespeare’s plays, like Rumi’s stories, may seem to be non-related and disconnected. Yet, by reading them synoptically, it is possible to extract a consistent and coherent narrative that illustrates an advanced spiritual methodology. It has been shown that the methodology illustrated by Shakespeare is an updated version of that implemented by Rumi in the Mathnawi.
Even though “Rumi’s Mystical Design” does not deliver a satisfactory solution, it is a welcomed book for it brings to our attention the hidden dimension of the Mathnawi. Therefore, it may encourage the readers and the scholars to pursue further studies of Rumi’s masterpiece. We may all greatly benefit from this effort.
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