An inquiry into Death-Awareness and the Original Life in the Rumi’s Thought

The main purpose of this article is to study Rumi’s thoughts regarding death and its effect and relationship with the original life. To achieve this end, the descriptive-analytical method has been used. Accordingly, Rumi’s concern is to describe the separation from the origin and to be lost in the borrowed world and to live in an original life in the shadow of death-awareness. Thinking about death in Rumi’s system of thought is deeply connected with his three principles of thought, namely, God, the universe, and the man, as well as other basic concepts such as life, love, and originality. The teaching of returning to the original and finding the original human is evident throughout Mawlana’s works. According to him, death is one of the most important issues in making life original. In this regard, by expressing the types of death, he divides it into two types of compulsory and voluntary, and by explaining voluntary death as the original death, he seeks to achieve happiness in life. He believes that due to meditation on death, the man can be saved from material existence by going beyond the realm of natural death and attain originality by purifying the soul. For him, the memory of death and thinking about it is essential in connection with the original life. Rumi considers the wisdom of death-awareness to be the separation of original and unoriginal humans and believes that the common perception of the phenomenon of death needs to be corrected. Because only the original view of death can save the essence of life from the shell of the body and be the fundamental principle in returning to the original. Returning to the original throughout Masnavi, odes of Shams, and other works of Rumi is the most obvious theme of his thinking. Originality in his thought is realized by the love of God and belief in eternity. For this reason, Rumi depicts the wisdom of death in returning everything to its originality, but what prevents this return to the original one in his view is nothing but the great calamity of originality, which is improper imitation. Although Rumi considers imitation to be one of the necessities and preconditions of the worldly life, the indiscriminate imitation of people is the most fundamental plague of originality in his view. Rumi considers human reliance on his views and thoughts as a cause of the original life. He believes the original human being becomes original in life in form and meaning due to connecting with God and loving Him. Therefore, in his view, the man, relying on God, can break all the internal and external unoriginal idols. The man takes a fundamental and original transformation by adopting an enthusiastic approach to death and by accepting it. The original man, unlike the unrighteous man who always has a careless and superficial confrontation with death, has a courageous and life-giving confrontation with death due to death- awareness. Thus, Rumi’s original man is a seeker of death and wants death, and death is a rebirth for him. It is a birth from an unoriginal life to an original life that is accompanied by new joys and sufferings. Since originality in Rumi’s view is related to eternity, and God, love, and non-existence are the three sides of the original life, so he never fears death and finds it the basis of life. Thus, in Rumi’s view, originality in life is realized in a two-way relationship with mortality. This realization is done in such a way that God has knitted the warp and woof of originality in the workshop of love and non-existence. Besides, with the death of lovers, he gives them eternal life. On the other hand, escaping death in Rumi’s view causes distress and regret, as well as falling into the trap of unrealistic life. Ignorance of death will replete the man with trifle details of life and makes him suffer from pain and borrowed treatments. Rumi believes that human life does not rely on anything but death, and that is why death in his view is the asylum of the dead and the safe coast of existence. Hence, death-awareness is the cynosure of originality in life, and the original life is in a two-way relationship with death so that looking at life with the glasses of death gives it originality, and neglecting it leads to the unoriginal life. The original life in Rumi’s high sagacity cannot be achieved except by cultivating in the farm of death-awareness. Therefore, in the present study, first, the types of death, thinking about it, originality in Rumi’s idea, and the pests and obstacles of living original, as well as human characteristics and original life have been discussed. Then, the authors show how Rumi goes through the path of original life with life-giving encounters and without fear of death. In the course of these discussions, considering that death and life are intertwined with the love of God and that death is chosen as the safe shore of the universe, we have argued that the original life is only in a two-way relationship with death. Finally, death-awareness is considered as the most basic aspect of original life.