Conversations between Rumi and Blake: The Madness of the Mind

Spirals flowed like a waterfall around her mocha face. Eyes full of aspiration, curiosity and innocence, she looked at the two men in front of her: a young, chocolate man, fuzzes of raven spiked around his face, a turban firmly on his head, eyes as deep as the ocean; a man of six decades, whimsical swirls framed his face in shades of grey, eyes glistened with coffee swirls. Anxiety started filling her throat as she slipped a loose spiral behind her ear and apprehensively asked:

“What is God?”

“God is a miracle.”

“God is the immortal hand.”

“He is the blazing sun that rises in the frigid morning,”

“He is the blazing fire that burns in the frigid forest,”

“The alluring moon reflected in the hopeful spring.”

“The dreaded hand and apprehended feet.”

“Blake, my silver twisted friend, I don’t quite understand —

How could the Divine Being be anything other than good?”

“Rumi, my dear ocean—eyed comrade, you don’t quite understand, 

For he is the one who created the Tyger.”

“The Tyger? What is this monstrous beast you speak of?”

“It is he, he who twists the sinews of our colossal hearts —

One who makes heaven weep.”

“You must be mistaken, my coffee-swirled companion, 

For the God I know is good, and would never. 

Who, like Jacob blinded with grief and age, 

Smelled the shirt of his lost son and again could see.”

“You may perceive your God in your imagination as the creator of the Lamb,

But if this be true, then he too made the Tyger. ”

“And what, Sir William Blake, may I ask,

Is this Tyger you perceive? For even an oyster

Who opens his mouth to swallow on a drop,

Now has a pearl.” 

“The Tyger is the evil that dances in the wind

Travels through the whispers of young children, who swim in pools of excretion waters, and fill their lungs with blackened mist for means of survival.

The Tyger breathes in the human desire for more:

Plot, possessions, power.

More, more and more. 

“God did not create this —“

“No, he did not, because there is no God.

There is no God.”

“My respected friend, have you lost your mind?

How could you say that there is no God? I belong to a line of prophets and saints. 

My purpose on this beautiful Earth is more than to just sit and enjoy what he has been handed to us by the Almighty Father. 

I am here to provide guidance to the human race, for those who have lost their souls.

Those who seek happiness in the what one can touch, taste, see and smell. 

One that will only provide temporary pleasure and pull you further away from the Lord. 

Know that there is no God, but He and I ask you to ask him for forgiveness for your blasphemy.”

"The man of the world will never lose his mind, only create the world in his mind. 

Your world creates a Divine Being, an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient being. You claim that he is all good, that Beauty, 

Generosity,

Intelligence, 

Love,

And Grace

 Are from and for the Divine Being, and place this ideology on a pedestal for the rest of your life. But, my friend, you are blinded, intoxicated by the love of your God. 

But, Rumi, what about the women fighting for their rights?

The children who bathe in pools of their own blood?

The evil, hurt and pain the flows through the veins of humanity?”

“He writes our paths, but gives us choices,

A vagrant wanders empty ruins and suddenly he's wealthy.

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies and opens a door to the other world. Soloman cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring, Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings. The Almighty God is forgiving, he is one of love.

For love slays everything but God,

His love, the highest of orders.”

Do you truly believe that the adolescent chose to sacrifice the hole in their shoe to fill the hole in their hearts? Desperate hearts filled with trifles that thrown casually by those who feast on the belly of the beast. 

Those who desire more, while sitting on a throne of everything.

Who strip those who have nothing to absolute extinction.

The extinction of the soul, of humanity, of purpose.

And you still, dear Rumi, still want me to believe that there is a God, an Almighty being who saves us after our souls have left our body and transport to place of spiritual happiness? 

This is it. For there is no heaven, for there is no hell. 

Only man and his demons.  

“This is not God’s actions — this is humanity’s fall from grace. 

God allows us to unfold our own myth, without the complication explanation.

Look at the world we have found ourselves in twenty-one centuries after the death of Christ. 

Look at life he has laid before us:

The majesty of nature, leaves that glisten in the peaking sunlight, water droplets gracefully gliding down their veins of peacock green. Tall trunks, twisted with the secrets of God’s natural beauty in hues of amber, raven and silver.

Joy and happiness twinkle in the faces of the people, who dance to the music of Lord, who may live two centuries, who fly with the wings of the Lord with the dream that they can be anyone, do anything. 

Blake, I ask you to reflect, look into your soul and at the beauty that surrounds you. Listen to the birds who sing for you, the wind who sways with you, talk to the people who have opened their hearts to God, who have glow in his majesty, like a bright light bulb fill with current. Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy and tired, but then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown, lifting —

That is the essence of God.” 

“Rumi, I advise you to relieve yourself of those rose-tinted glasses you possess.

There may be some beauty in this world, but that is not God —

“How could it not be? 

What other powerful being possesses the power to create such beauty, such high spirits that soar across the painted skies?

Yes, the world is not perfect, but then, my fellow colleague, why are we still here? 

What makes this world worth living in? Why do we still pray, hope and love? 

If the world is really as harrowing as you see it be, polluted with hatred and evil that we find in this world, then why do we still breathe it in?

That will to live, that reason to stay here and float above the atrocious elements of this world —

That, that is the presence of God.” 

“What about the grey clouded sky above our heads, each cloud filled with the pain and sorrows of the people Industrial Revolution?

The systemic hatred one has for another fellow human because of qualities out of their control?

The fall of great nations, victims of human desire? 

If God was real, there would be some change, some development, some progression,

But here, we sit, the three of us, in a modern world no different from the distorted dystopia that I come from.

There is only humanity, we are the captains of our own ships, run our own world,

Create our own heaven. 

But blinded by the hope and faith that one day will rise to a heavenly resting place,

Above the clouds, where the angels sing and the dance in the triumph of the Lord

Is only an illusion. An illusion which distracts us from the world we live in now.

The world which only we can make better.

But we don’t.

Why?”

“You cannot blame God for the arrogance and ignorance of the human race?”

“But God made humanity —”

“He made the beauty of humanity, but gave us the choice to unfold our own myth.”

“And humanity has failed.”

“Humanity has not failed.”

“Your ‘God’ has failed.”

“God has not failed.”

“You’re right, he hasn’t failed, because he is purely an illusion that we put our failures onto.”

“If you just open your heart—“

“If you just open your eyes—“

The sound of a shuffling chair breaks through the heated discussion of the two masters. The young girl gets up from her chair, her face a decade aged, her spirals condensed to her collar bones, the inquisitive eyes surrounded by darkened skin. Her mind was like a nucleus, the mens’ words like electrons — they whizz around her mind, but never quite pierce into it. She gracefully thanks the two men beside her, complimenting both of them for their enriching views of life. Without an answer to the question, she walks off into the new chapter of her life, refreshed and ready to discover the answers to her unanswered questions with a sense of confidence and wisdom in the person she is and the person she shall be.