Celebrating Rumi at his tomb in Konya, TurkeyI tried to find Him on the Christian cross, but He was not there; I went to the Temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas, but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere.
I searched on the mountains and in the valleys but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him. I went to the Ka'bah in Mecca, but He was not there either.
I questioned the scholars and philosophers but He was beyond their understanding.
I then looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him; He was nowhere else to be found.
-by Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, theologian and mystic born in Khorasan which is present-day Afghanistan. Rumi's teachings are universal in nature and transcend national and ethnic borders. For him, religion was mostly a personal experience not limited to logical arguments or perceptions of the senses. Creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, was the goal towards which every thing moves.
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