self melts into nothingness and is absorbed by the Beloved’s heart.
The first time this strange and love-drunk Holy fool was to notice Rumi, Shams was in his 60s and Rumi his early 20s, with a following of students himself. Shams was looking for a ‘master student’ to whom he could pass on his wisdom and he saw sparks of this in Rumi, although he ultimately judged the young man too raw in his spiritual development. Shams became intimate with the wilderness again and the two men did not meet again for many years.
As soon as they met for the second time, however, sparks flew – perhaps literally, since one of the legends surrounding this encounter is that Shams’ very presence in Rumi’s house caused his shelves of sacred texts to burst into flames. True wisdom cannot be contained in books.
A deep bond developed instantly between the two men and they immediately went into seclusion for weeks to practice the mystical arts together. A deep mystery surrounds this time and no-one knows, to this day, what techniques of enlightenment or magical practices were exchanged.
Rumi, however, later gave hints as to what took place during his seclusion with Shams. “The one you call crazy is not really crazy”, he wrote. “He’s giving birth to his soul. That’s why he keeps his eyes so fixed”. The author Will Johnson, in his book, Rumi: Gazing at the Beloved: The Radical Practice of Beholding the Divine (Inner Traditions International, 2003) interprets this as a reference to gazing: a technique where, for prolonged periods, Sufis will stare meditatively into each other’s eyes in order to mirror each other and connect with the soul within. This is now a common practice for