From Ego Magazine:
Konya, Turkey, November 1244
Face to face stood two strangers, Maulana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Rumi) and Shams al-Din of Tabriz; Rumi, a young demure scholar and Shams, a spiritual wayfarer with a penchant for the uncertain. By the young age of forty, Rumi was a brilliant scholar. Shams, at sixty, was a free-spirited wanderer. The transformation was instant. The sheer opposition of their innate temperament may have been the flicker that caught the coal. By some unverifiable accounts, Shams had initially noticed Rumi in Syria when the latter was 21 years old but had deemed the scholar not yet disposed for their partnership and that he chose to wait for 16 years before approaching him again.
On the streets of Konyathat night, Rumi was on his path home with he came across the strange and hypnotic Shams. The latter, without any introduction, asked him pointed philosophical questions intended to fluster Rumi’s concepts of enlightenment. While Rumi responded, mustering the collective strength and wit of his years of devotion to religion and jurisprudence; the flicker in Shams’ words, his speech, mannerism and conduct compelled Rumi to explore further by inviting the wanderer along and into his home. From that day forward, Shams possessed him. Shams grasped Rumi’s understanding of religion and infused it with a love and devotion that elevated him from scholar to philosopher; He went into seclusion with the stranger, leaving aside all that composed his life – family, students, and disciples. This detachment lasted for three months and inspired him for a lifetime. His heart engulfed his systematic, controlled mind with the message of humanity and oneness with God, a result of his pointed discourses. Rumi’s professorial sermons were replaced with ecstatic soliloquies of God, love and humanity.
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