Speech by Peter H. Cunz in Zurich and Bern, February 2026
Oh, faithful one, come, come, come even closer! Let go of the ego, of yourself, let go of the
‘we’ and of the collective self! Quickly, before time runs out, come!
Come, come even closer! Let go of the ‘we’ and the ‘I,’ come, come. Come, until the ‘you’
and the ‘we’ vanish. Neither the ‘you’ nor the ‘I’ shall exist!
Let go of complacency and arrogance, and make place for Him in your heart, the Greatest
of the Great, who has no place in heaven or on earth!
(Rumi, from his Divan)
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today I would like to speak to you about the person who wrote this poem. I will refrain
from discussing historical details and legends about this person, as that would
consume the time we have for this talk. You can find much of that information on
Wikipedia.
We should note that, with the advent of the New Age movement, religious practices in
the Far and Middle East became increasingly romanticized. This trend was evident not
only with Buddhism and Yoga but also in the mystical tradition of Islam, known as
Sufism. The works of Mohammed Celaleddin Rumi, known simply as “Rumi,” a great
Islamic scholar and mystic of the 13th century (1207-1273), were soon marketed.
Books by and about him became bestsellers in the West.
The Islamic Mevlevi Order, which for centuries had practiced the Sema, the ritual of the
“Whirling Dervishes”, was founded shortly after Rumi’s death at the end of the 13th
century. There are studies and conjectures on the historical reasons for this ritual’s
popularity in the West, but they are not the focus of this talk.
The spiritual training within this Order is based on Rumi’s teachings, which are deeply
rooted in traditional Islam. In fact, Rumi taught nothing that was foreign to Islam.
Without exception, everything he said was a glorification and interpretation of Islam.
Rumi’s legacy consists primarily of an immense collection of poems of impressive
quality. We are talking about nearly a thousand deeply moving mystical poems,
comprising over 30,000 verses, that describe the state of the highest spiritual levels.
They are collected under the title Diwan-e Shams.
In addition, Rumi’s teaching, which he dictated to his students, is particularly admired.
It comprises six books, with more than 25,000 rhyming couplets. The name of this
masterpiece is Masnawi-ye ma’nawi, which means “Couplets on Spiritual Content and
Meaning”.
So, how did this enormous treasure of spiritual poems come to be? Rumi was a widely
respected Islamic scholar who provided legal opinions under Islamic law (Sharia) to
the then-powerful ruler in the capital of the Rum-Seljuk Sultanate, Konya. At the same
time, he was the head of a local university (madrasa). This is how he earned his living.
His place of work, Konya (formerly Ikónion, Ikonium), lies in Anatolia, the former !land
of the Romans” (!Rum”), which gave rise to the nickname “Rumi.”
Through the encounter with the wandering dervish Shams from Tabriz, himself a
highly learned man, Rumi’s heart opened to intense mystical experiences. Soon, the
two became close friends. Legends suggest that this friendship transformed Rumi, the
scholar, into a mystic (Sufi). After several years together, Shams suddenly disappeared
without a trace, which completely devastated Rumi. Soon afterward, his sadness
transformed into rapture for the One God.
In states of spiritual elevation, Rumi composed poetry of a rare and excellent quality.
To this day, he remains one of the most important poets of Islamic mysticism. The
honorific title “Mevlana” (our master), bestowed upon him by his students, became the
standard name for him after his death. Hence the name of the Mevlevi Order (Tarikat
Mevleviye).
What has made Rumi so popular? On the one hand, many of his poems describe inner
states that most of us aspire to. These are states where concepts, religious forms, rules,
and commandments no longer hold sway, a situation that is attractive to those seeking
spiritual experiences. In the current Zeitgeist, the search for unconventional
spirituality is omnipresent because churches, Islamic schools, and other religious
institutions have lead to disappointments.
The number of people without religious affiliation in Europe (maybe also on the
American continent) has increased significantly at the expense of church membership.
Still, a large proportion of these non-religious people consider themselves believers.
They are all interested in having spiritual experiences. Religion, then, has become a
private matter, which may be a good thing, but it also has drawbacks. This leaves
believers alone in the face of the matter of spirituality. This is a great challenge for an
individual – many are overwhelmed and can’t cope with it.
Among those seeking spirituality, there is a lack of criteria and role models to rely on.
This results in a situation where only individual feelings can serve as a reference.
Assuming that God is to be found in the heart, they rely on their feelings. !I listen to my
heart!” is a standard phrase among these seekers. Here, the voice of the heart is
conflated with emotions. That is how spirituality is associated with positive feelings.
Rumi considers this path completely unsuccessful:
You have contemptuously rejected help and said: !I have a heart; I need no one
else; I am united with God.”
This is as if the water in the earth were to contemptuously say: !I am the water,
why should I seek help?”
You have imagined this defiled heart as your heart, and consequently, you have
turned your heart away from those who possess it.
Do you truly believe that the heart that is in love with milk and honey is that pure
heart?
(Masnawi 3: 2261 ff)
Our minds strive for self-determination and self-realization. We all know this natural
urge within us! It’s a struggle to establish a clear, meaningful identity. Therefore,
everyone longs for a sense of belonging that fulfills this meaning. Social institutions,
such as families, humanitarian organizations, sports clubs, political parties, and others,
provide this.
Yet, deep within us, something stirs that Meister Eckhart, the famous abbot from Erfurt
in Germany, called “the spark of the soul.” He spoke of a longing that desires more than
what we already possess, and even more than what we can comprehend. It is a
yearning for support and stability, even when we are struggling, and our self-control
fails. Deep within, we all seek to belong to something greater. Whether we admit it or
not, we are searching for a spiritual home.
Those who begin to recognize this will want to explore spirituality. However, the need
for individual freedom stands in the way. Those who have left the church and similar
institutions do not want to return to commandments and prohibitions; the desire for
spirituality persists even without religious affiliation. Thus, only one’s own judgment
remains as a reference point—that is, one’s own feelings. But such a thing, to reiterate,
does not correspond to Rumi’s ideas:
In reality, God’s attraction is the original source, but exert yourself, O companion,
do not become dependent on this attraction.
For shirking effort is a kind of contempt, and is contempt fitting for a devoted
worshipper?
O young man, think neither of acceptance nor of rejection; always consider God’s
command and prohibition.
(Masnawi 6:1477 ff)
In other words: Do not be led astray by your longing and attraction but strive to keep
God’s commands and prohibitions!
It wasn’t this kind of pronouncement that made Rumi the best-selling poet in the West.
In bookstores, you will not find any of Rumi’s poems that emphasize God’s commands
and prohibitions. Rather, you will find numerous verses that celebrate hope, longing,
and love. By handpicking these verses, Rumi is invoked as the standard of liberating
spirituality that does not question self-realization or well-being. Two poems are
repeatedly quoted for this purpose, which, interestingly, are not by Rumi at all, but by
other poets. One poem attributed to Rumi reads:
Come! Come! Whoever you are!
Even if you are an idolater or a fire worshipper. Come again!
This is the door of hope, not of hopelessness.
Even if you have broken your promise a thousand times. Come! Come again!
Stylistically, this poem could very well have been authored by Rumi. But certainly not
in the sense that we can return to the spiritual path effortlessly and in any given state.
Rather, in the sense that our Prophet Muhammad is !the door of hope,” and that
devotion to him opens the way for a spiritual path.
And the other often-quoted poem reads:
I tried to find Him at the cross of the Christians, but He was not there.
I went to the temples of the Hindus and to the ancient pagodas, but I could find no
trace of Him anywhere.
I sought Him in the mountains and valleys, but neither in the heights nor in the
depths did I find myself able to find Him.
I went to the Kaaba in Mecca, but He was not there either.
I consulted the scholars and philosophers, but He was beyond their understanding.
I examined my heart, and there I saw Him. He is nowhere else to be found.
The last sentence cannot come from Rumi! “I examined my heart, and there I saw Him.”
Who on earth thinks they can examine their own heart? Who serves as the examining
authority here? Once again, the heart is being confused with emotions!
And the further nonsense: “He is nowhere else to be found.” That is completely wrong
and illogical. God is everywhere in His creation. The Quran is clear on this when it says
(2:115): “Wherever you turn, there is the face of God.”
Rumi repeatedly says that spiritual progress is not possible without guidance. For him,
there is no spiritual path without devotion to a religious revelation with a spiritual
guide who knows the way. In a sermon, he stated unequivocally:
“If someone sets out on a journey without a guide, every two-day journey becomes
a journey of a hundred years.”
(Masnawi 3:588)
Rumi was a devout Sunni Muslim who preached Islam as a message of salvation. To
those who, during his lifetime, sought to discredit him as a freethinker because of his
ecstatic poems, he proclaimed:
“As long as I live, I am a servant of the Quran.
I am dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen One.
If anyone wants to understand anything else from my words,
then I have broken with him and am outraged by these words.”
(Quatrains by Rumi, after Firuzanfer Ruba’i 1173)
Rumi nowhere promised spiritual well-being or self-realization. He sought to awaken
people to a transformative process of the soul, one that cannot be achieved without
overcoming the ego. Specifically, he preached the path of Islam, drawing on numerous
quotations from the Quran and the transmitted sayings of the Prophet (Hadith). He was
not a freethinker; He advocated a challenging, arduous spiritual path with strict
boundaries on both sides, as all mystics do.
Meister Eckhart was a Christian, and Rumi, likewise, was firmly rooted in traditional
Islam in his imagery and statements. How deeply he was impressed by the path of our
Prophet Muhammad is evident in the following verse:
The path of Jesus was solitude and struggle, and his desire not to be satisfied;
the path of Muhammad is to endure the tyranny and sorrow of men and women.
If you cannot endure the Muhammadan path, then at least follow the path of Jesus,
so that you do not remain entirely without a share.
(Fihi ma fihi, Discourse 21)
It is true that Rumi relativizes religious forms in countless poems. We learn from him
that religious forms ultimately lose their meaning. But only ultimately! This applies
only after we have been led through the painful process of self-dismantling and have
come closer to non-being. At a certain point in our spiritual development, that part of
the self that previously felt constrained by religious precepts has died. Adhering to
traditional religious rules becomes easy and a joy!
For Rumi, it is essentially always about the prophetic saying, “Die before you die!” It is
the opposite of self-fulfillment and self-realization. It is much more about the gradual
and painful relinquishing of oneself in favor of surrender to the higher power, which
we cannot comprehend, let alone grasp. But Rumi wouldn’t be Rumi if he didn’t also
emphasize the beauty in letting go and relinquishing oneself. For him, dying is a gain:
I died as a mineral and became a plant;
Then I died as a plant and became an animal.
I died as an animal and became a human;
so, what should I fear? When did death diminish me?
Next time, I will die as a human to fly with the angels.
And even as an angel, I must depart,
for !all things pass away except from His presence” (Quran 28:88).
And again, I will be sacrificed and die as an angel;
I will become something unimaginable.
Then I will become nothingness;
beautiful as an organ, nothingness sings to me:
!Indeed, to Him we will return” (Quran 2:156).
(Masnawi 3:3901 ff; see also 4:3637 ff)
Rumi’s writings are full of warnings against individual arrogance. Those who follow
only their own reason become prisoners of this world of appearances. Human beings
alone are incapable of perceiving reality. Our self is like a vehicle that requires certain
skills and strength to move forward. But it doesn’t know where it’s going. It needs a
driver to determine its course. To believe that one’s own judgment and feelings can be
this driver is one of the great illusions of our so-called “modern” world. A selfconstructed
spiritual path leads nowhere but to the prison of one’s own imagination
and its own delusions.
Thus, it is not surprising that Rumi shows little enthusiasm for philosophers. For him,
devotion to an incomprehensible greater whole is the only way to approach reality.
And this is only possible by following in the footsteps of those who have already
walked the path and know it. Therefore, esteemed attendees: Spirituality demands first
and foremost humility and the willingness to dedicate oneself to a well-established and
proven practice. We need a guiding principle that, God willing, will become God’s rope,
by which we can cling in all of life’s storms. Rumi’s guiding principle was Islam; for
Jews, it is the Torah; for Christians, it is Christ; for Buddhists, the Buddha, and so on.
For the freethinker, however, only the pathetic “I” with its delusions is available as a
guiding principle.
Esteemed guests, does this sound too aggressive to you? Do you feel resistance when I
speak in this way? Rumi is also known as “the Pole of Love.” Love is an omnipresent
theme in his poems. According to him, in every living being lies a spark of longing for
the origin of existence. And this longing makes us lovers of the object we yearn for. He
says, for example:
One of your hands, without the other, makes no clapping sound.
The thirsty one groans: “O delicious water!”
The water, too, groans and says: “Where is the water drinker?”
The thirst in our souls is the attraction that water exerts:
We belong to the water, and yet it is ours.
God’s wise providence and His wise counsel have made us lovers.
This providence has paired all the atoms of the world together,
and each atom loves its partner.
(Masnawi 3:4398 ff; see also 1:1741)
But beware: For Rumi, love is never sentimental. He is concerned solely with spiritual
love (ashk). It is a love that neither demands nor expects anything; a love that gives
itself away, like a candle that consumes itself by giving off light. Consuming oneself,
giving oneself away, is painful and the opposite of romance and comfort. Someone in
Rumi’s circle said that he loved God, to which Rumi playfully replied:
You love God, and God is such that not a hair of you will remain when He comes.
At the sight of Him, a hundred like you will vanish;
I believe, my friend, you are in love with the negation of yourself.
You are a shadow and in love with the sun:
The sun comes, and immediately the shadow disappears.
(Masnawi 3:4621 ff)
Dear listeners, many poems and quotes attributed to Rumi that you encounter in
bookstores and the media have been taken out of context and should therefore be
regarded as new poems inspired by Rumi. Of course, these poems can have a beautiful
effect, much like a rose in a vase that brightens a room. It may no longer be part of the
rosebush and therefore not viable, but it brings beauty to our lives for a few days.
I hope my words have shown you that there is little room for sentimentality and
complacency in Rumi’s teachings. Rather, Rumi calls for humility instead of
complacency, self-dissolution instead of self-realization. Yet his entire work also
constantly radiates the confidence that we are seen and loved by God. The Quran
states: “We are closer to you than your own jugular vein.” This holy book also states:
“Wherever you turn, there is the face of God.”
Let me conclude with Rumi’s words:
On the day of death, your senses will be extinguished:
Do you have the light in your soul that should be the companion of your heart?
When the dust of the grave closes your eyes,
do you have anything to illuminate the grave?
When your hands and feet decay,
do you have the wings and feathers to help your soul take flight?
(Mesnevi 2:941 ff)
Thank you for your kind attention.