Andrew Harvey, author of several collections of Rumi including The Way of Passion, is worried that this great poet is being watered-down as he grows in popularity into a "Rosebud Rumi, a Californian hippie-like figure of vague ecstatic sweetness . . . a kind of medieval Jerry Garcia of the Sacred Heart." The prolific author sees in this Sufi seer "the intellect of a Plato, the vision and enlightened soul-force of a Buddha or a Christ, and the extravagant literary gifts of a Shakespeare."
In Teachings of Rumi Harvey has gathered together selections from his odes, letters, table talk, and opus magnum Mathnawi. Here is a corrective to what the author sees as a vulgarization of Rumi's spiritual genius — "its rigorous, even ferocious austerity." The paperback is divided into four sections: The Call, Be a Lover, Ordeal, and Union.
The annihilation of the ego must take place through surrender to the Beloved. Again and again, Rumi shows how bewilderment, grief, and suffering are part of the Sufi path. So also are dining on the daily fare of astonishment and discovering the heart as "the only house of safety."