Rumi's Little Book of Life: The Garden of the Soul, the Heart, and the Spirit

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

Love’s sorrow is no more than just one story and yet, amazingly, it is never the same from whoever I hear it.

If one were to tell an unborn child that outside the womb there is a glorious world with green fields and lush gardens high mountains and vast seas, with a sky lit by the sun and the moon, the unborn would not believe such absurdity. Still in the dark womb how could he imagine the indescribable majesty of this world? In the same way, when the mystics speak of worlds beyond scent and color, the common man deafened by greed and blinded by self-interest cannot grasp their reality.