[Woman singing] Carlos Santana, voice-over: Probably the most significant two songs for me is "A Love Supreme," and "One Love," Bob Marley and John Coltrane.

Carlos: "One Love."

This is what Martin Luther King was talking about, this is what Mahatma Gandhi was talking about, for us to co-exist in harmony.

Carlos, voice-over: "Collective commonality"-- all of us, we have one thing in common.

We were born with love by love for love.

♪ Love ♪ ♪ And light ♪ ♪ Love and light ♪ This is who you are.

This is who I am.

Carlos, voice-over: This is an ocean, and there's a lake, and I was--I was swimming in a--in a swimming pool, so I went from a swimming pool to a big lake.

I'm still in the lake.

I think Cindy's gonna help me dive into the ocean once and for all.

Carlos: You have two things.

♪ Light and love ♪ ♪ Light ♪ Phil Cousineau: Welcome to Konya, Turkey, on the 738th anniversary of Rumi's death or, as Rumi called it, his wedding night, the night he became fully united with God, his beloved.

Today, as it was over 700 years ago, Rumi's gravesite is packed, not just with Muslims but with Christians, Jews, Hindus, and many others.

Jalauddin Rumi continues to have a unique appeal that transcends the usual boundaries of religious faith.

Called the world's first planetary poet, Rumi's poetry and teaching are based on the what the Afghans and Persians call ishq and what we in English simply but beautifully call love.

This love is not a normal kind of romantic love.

Instead, it is an all-encompassing divine love.

[Men singing in foreign language] It is said to ignite each breath of lovers, who range far and wide from northern Afghanistan, the country of Rumi's birth, to Turkey, the place where Rumi settled and taught and met his spiritual mentor Shams of Tabriz.

Today, we will meet two guests who bring very different generational, cultural, and linguistic dimensions to our exploration of Rumi and his work.

Kabir Helminski is a Sufi sheikh of the Mevlevi tradition.

He leads a Sufi community in the U.S.A.

He's an author and co-founder of the Threshold Society and the Baraka Institute.

Parisa Soultani is currently co-producing a documentary film on Jalauddin Rumi.

She's also the host and co-producer of the One Through Love Project, a gathering of Rumi lovers, scholars, dervishes, Sufi teachers, and practitioners from around the world.

Welcome to "Global Spirit: Rumi and the Sufi Path of Love."

Welcome, Parisa Soultani.

Welcome Sheikh Kabir Helminski.

This promises to be a true sohbet, a soulful conversation, as we explore the world of Rumi, the gift of love, the world of Sufism.

So, Kabir, could we start at the very beginning?

What is a Sufi?

A Sufi is someone who is following the way of Sufism, and Sufism is a mystical path, uh, within Islamic tradition, uh, that really is about the purification of the heart.

The word in Arabic and other languages would be tasawwuf, which means self-purification.

So it's a path to God using love as a vehicle.

Parisa, I know you're working on a feature-length documentary film about Rumi, and you're also hosting a multilingual web site in honor of him and his work, and I believe it's in 4 different languages, right, English, Turkish, Farsi, and Arabic?

That's pretty impressive.

Now what's the intention behind the web site?

If I were to, uh, say the intention in a few different words, that would be [Speaks Farsi] which means, um, closeness with the divine is the intention.

We use the best of all the gifts, and, um, we try to bring all these beautiful souls who have in some ways touched or gotten in touch, even though momentarily, with that divine love, with a degree of that divine love that Rumi so often talks about.

So let's look at your film footage now.

OK. Hello.

I am Parisa Soultani, web site host and co-producer for One Through Love, the first cinematic multilingual web site based on the teachings of Jalauddin Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.

[Singing in foreign language] Let's feel and see the love we can create and send out to the world together.

[Singing continues] Wonderful.

That's thrilling to see.

In my own travels around the world from Michigan to Marrakesh, I've encountered countless people in tavernas, bookstores, mosques, uh, country walks, who read Rumi.

It seems to be what the poet Adrienne Rich called "a dream of a common language," that that's what will bring us all together, that there is something that we understand, that we admire to cr-- to give us a kind of universal language, but what is it?

Can we go back to that again?

What is it that people can identify with from Michigan to Marrakesh?

Well...Rumi says... [Speaking Farsi] He says, "hin."

"Hin" is like a word like "hey" as if he wants to say, "Wake up."

[Speaks Farsi] "Say something new."

[Speaks Farsi] "Fresh."

Why?

[Speaks Farsi] "So that the both worlds become refreshed "from this new word, new speech that you can bring to this world."

[Speaks Farsi] "So that it will transcend the boundaries of this world."

[Speaks Farsi] "And become endless."

This is really what he's doing, what he's asking us to do, even though so much time has passed from all of those revelations.

I--I love the idea that it's refreshing us.

It's--it's as if we can get lazy about our own spirituality, so it can wake us up to read a magnificent poet, listen to a wonderful philosopher, and yet the news is very old because I would s-- I--I think his major message is love.

That's what we are trying to dig for and--and reveal out of our heart-- out of the human heart, but are we talking about the same love there as we are in the West?

Kabir, could you talk a little bit about the-- how refreshing it is to hear about love like this?

Um... love is more than emotion, and Rumi's entire work can be viewed as, uh, expressing the knowledge of love, and knowledge and love go together.

Uh, we need knowledge to love at a high level.

Otherwise, we will love imitations.

We won't know what to set our heart on, so this is one of the primary teachings.

What is truly worthy of our love?

The maturity of spirituality is to increase our capacity to love and to be loving the divine at the same time that we love humanity and we love nature because we see the divine through humanity and through nature.

We see the source of it all, which is love, and that love's intention in creating existence was to manifest itself.

The purpose of existence is to reveal love.

I love the mystical dimension you are lending our--our idea of love.

I've had friends from abroad who've come to visit us here in America, and they say that we've just reduced the word of love when we say, "I'd love a good pizza."

Uh, so in other cultures, we have many--many more sophisticated levels of this.

In your own background, is the word "love" used in exclusive instances in Persian and Turkish, or does it have wider mystical applications like this?

Well, the truth is that, um, just the same way that you're seeing in the U.S. that people say, "I'd love a pizza," in Iran, too, they are tossing around the word ishq, uh, very easily, in all the, you know, pop songs that you hear on television or when children are even trying to talk about their favorite toy.

The word "ishq" is used in that way, but, uh, the, uh, mystical and the literary, uh, backbone, uh, of love is so powerful in Iran, given its history and its powerful language for poetry, that, uh, things like this can hardly do any--anything or inflict any damage or loss of value for that core concept, and-- But Rumi is very generous in, uh, respecting every real form of love, even the lower levels-- so-called "lower levels" of love, the way a child might love its teddy bear.

Yes.

It's a kind of metaphoric love because the teddy bear can't really even respond, and yet, there is some kind of love there.

So every form of love is a stepping stone to higher forms of love, and if we don't go through these stages of metaphoric love, uh, we have little chance of reaching the absolute love.

If you love others in that divine love, it's a different kind of love than the love that wants to possess.

This is a love that brings unity.

Wonderful, and yet throughout human history, we've seen countless examples of people who have been on a righteous, poetic, soul-infused path and yet intensified their journey when they met the mentor.

The meeting of the mentor, the meeting of the guru is transformative.

It's one of the most numinous images in history.

It's also at the core of the great story of Rumi when he met Shams of Tabriz 800 years ago.

There are so many versions of this story, which is--is right?

When things become legend, many versions come out.

Can you tell us what you think happened the day when Shams spotted Rumi?

Shams-i-Tabriz is a very--ahem-- mysterious figure.

We know little about him before his appearance in Konya, but he himself tells us that he searched the world, looked among many sheikhs-- so-called sheikhs, so-called spiritual teachers, looking for one person worthy to receive what the Unseen had given him to transmit.

Shams was pure potency.

His words were few but very powerful.

If you read, uh, Rumi's "Masnavi" and you know Shams' words, you'll see how Rumi elaborates on them with incredible beauty, but the source, the power behind Rumi is Shams-i-Tabriz, and yet Shams said, "Until I met Rumi, "I was like a stagnant pool, and Rumi got me flowing."

So they needed each other.

Shams was a person appointed by the Unseen with one task-- to bring this extraordinary knowledge of love, transformative power of love, to bring it to one person who would have the capacity to be transformed by it and then to share it with humanity.

It's analogous to the meeting of Melchizedek and Abraham.

Abraham instantly recognized the spiritual authority of Melchizedek, and yet we don't know Melchizedek, but look how big Abraham is.

Uh, beautiful.

Parisa, what do you think happened when these two great poet-seeker-lovers met on that destined day?

Rumi was already a very achieved human being in the path that he was in, a theologian, jurist, highly respected.

He had the, um-- he was called sheikh al-Islam.

Means the sheikh of the sheikhs, and, uh, Shams asked him, "Are you ready to gamble everything for love?"

And he said yes, and he lived up to that.

When these two men met, the question that Shams of Tabriz asked of Rumi, asked of Molana, was really a question of capacity.

He basically-- if we strip away all the factual details, he was asking Rumi "I am an ocean, "and I'm ready to flow "right into your soul if you have the capacity.

Do you?"

He gave the right answer.

Shams knew that he's ready.

That's why they call it the meeting of two oceans.

These two oceans-- and that was just the beginning of it.

Wonderful, and I love the way you tell it, too.

The enthusiasm is palpable.

There is so much energy in these ideas, in these notions of love, a kind of vital force that's moving through our heart when we hear the music and the poetry that it doesn't surprise me that the whole tradition of the whirling dervishes came up out of this as if you can't keep this to a cerebral and intellectual pursuit.

So at this point, I'd like to turn to a film clip of the Sema ceremony in Konya, Turkey, long associated with Rumi.

A piece that you narrate, Kabir, so let's have a look at that, and then when we come back, some more reflections.

[Music playing] [Man singing in foreign language] Kabir: In the ceremony of Sema, the sheikh stands on the red sheepskin and acts as a channel for the lineage.

Sema is a meditation in motion.

It's a way of drawing to our inmost center.

It's a way of joining in community with others, in a beautiful form of worship.

The sheikh's main responsibility is to be there as an empty channel and as a point for the semazens to connect to, so the sheikh has to hold a certain state of emptiness, of pure presence, presence with love.

In the turn, time and space dissolve.

We enter timelessness, spacelessness.

The effect of it is to draw consciousness into the inner dimension... and yet the body is moving 360 degrees with each step, and the mind is saying, "Allah, Allah, Allah," with each revolution, and the heart is opening in longing for God, and at the same time, you discover a still point in your own being.

Surprisingly, what came to mind as I was looking at that footage was one of my favorite poets W.B.

Yeats, the great Irish poet who described the paradox of the dancer finding a still point in the middle of the dance so much so that you cannot distinguish the dancer from the dance.

It's a wonderful thought, and that seems to be at--at the heart of the Sema ceremony.

Does this make sense to you, Parisa?

Oh, yes.

Um, absolutely, and I just, uh, wanted to also ask, uh, Kabir to, uh, comment on this, um-- the position of the right hand and the position of the left hand when these dervishes are whirling, which is so important.

There is a symbolism in that, that these dervishes are not turning only for themselves.

So you were doing it beautifully.

Continue.

Yes, and I want to hear from you because-- So the right hand...

Yes, the right hand... is receiving, uh, higher divine energy.

It's passing, in this case, through Parisa's heart, heart of the human being, and it's coming out her left hand to be bestowed into this world of existence, so the Sema is also an act of service, too.

It's not a method to get high for the individual.

Uh, in fact, it's a self-sacrifice.

It really is work.

It really is a, uh-- a struggle.

even though it should look graceful, inside, it is a struggle, and it's a transforming of that energy to bring it into the world as blessing for--for this world.

Is this similar to what the Christian mystics in the Middle Ages called the unitive consciousness, that we can be so broken and isolated, and yet that's an illusion because we are connected, and yet it takes a spiritual practice for us to get it, for us to realize there is some unity?

Is this similar?

Well, we recognize exactly the same thing, and we call it tawhid, oneness, and, uh, it is a state that the human being can reach, and hopefully, having reached it, will remember it in everyday life and will be able to look on all of humanity with that glance of love, with that realization that everything is one, not in the sense of everything is the same.

Good and evil is not the same.

Uh, you know, virtue and vice is not the same.

Violence and peace is not the same, but there is a design.

The oneness is in the design.

War reveals the preciousness of peace.

Uh, dispersion reveals the preciousness of gatheredness.

Uh, so everything serves a divine purpose in the end just as there is only one to be worshiped no matter what the religion, and, uh, in some sense, it's your longing for the divine that, um-- that is the motivation behind that worship.

So, Parisa, could you help us with the next film clip and-- and introduce our speaker Cemalnur Sargut?

What I think is important to say about Cemalnur Sargut from my own perspective-- well, there are facts about her.

She is a Turkish sheikha, she is a public speaker.

She has--she is loved by so many people and all of that, but what's really important about her is that she is one of those souls vibrating in every moment.

You ask her a question, she doesn't need to say.

With her eyes, she will give you all the answer and, like, set you on fire, so that is, um, something that is very important about Cemalnur Sargut, and you will, I'm sure, feel it through the-- through this film sequence.

[Flute playing] [Man singing in foreign language] Pretty provocative film clip, isn't it, and you're right.

There are sparks flying from those fingertips, but in a sense, it begs the question.

She makes it seem so accessible, so sensible to live like this, but why is it so difficult to encounter God as one rather than encountering Him or Her like this with the fist, which is what happens in many corners of the world?

Why is it so difficult?

There is an education of the heart, that human beings are egotistical unless they are somehow educated not to be egotistical.

So the spiritual training, uh, needs to include an opening of the heart and a sort of relentless, uh, positive view.

Uh, it doesn't mean you see everything the same or accept everything as good, but you do your best to see what is positive in every situation.

Even something negative, the positive side of it is that we learn that "Well, no, "I would rather not-- I hope I'm not like that."

Um, so we learn from the negative, but we don't habitually live in that state of looking at the world negatively to find its fault.

Instead, we begin to see the world with gratitude.

Uh, we begin to see everything as a divine teaching, a communication from divine reality, and this slowly shifts our perspective and increases our patience, uh, and our objectivity and lessens our reactivity.

So there are very practical teachings that, uh, need to be integrated into ourselves so as to continually appreciate, to be grateful, to--to trust that all of this is meaningful and is for the education of my soul.

Wonderful.

There does seem to be the practical, and then there's the more esoteric.

Maybe this kind of devotion moves from one to the other throughout a lifetime.

With that in mind, Parisa, can we go back to your program, your web site, the Gathering of Lovers, in which we have a wonderful performance here of "Listening to the Sound of the Ney."

So let's look at your film clip.

Thank you.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Parisa, uh, this is a--a wild thought as we were discussing a little while ago that on one hand, so many people think of Rumi as the ecstatic, right, but people really throughout human history have hurt, they've been fragmented by the wounds of life, and what do you think about the suggestion that people around the world are identifying Rumi because he addresses this fragmentation, this hurt?

Yes, and why does the fragmentation hurt in the first place?

Why are we uncomfortable with the idea of separation?

Because we used to be connected.

So Rumi starts by recognizing the pain of humanity, starts by recognizing that "I know you're in pain.

"I know you're suffering "because you have fallen apart and away from the true Beloved," and when people hear this story, it doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter what they do.

It immediately resonates.

"Oh, that's my story, too.

"That's right.

"I'm unhappy because I'm not connected with the Beloved."

It's funny.

This is a different Rumi than many of us know in the West, and yet it's a more complex and a much fuller Rumi.

"Listen to the Ney."

Listen to-- but also listen to the breath that's coming through the ney.

It is the breath and lips of the Beloved that is playing the music of our lives.

Dr. Ghomeshi is really trying to explain to us the word "ney" there because ney doesn't just nee--mean the reed flute in Farsi.

It means, uh, nothing.

So Rumi says, "Listen to the ney, who is ney," meaning listen to the one who has been stripped away from its me-ness.

Listen to the ones that have nothing to lose, who've lost everything inside just like the ney, but not only that, that at the same time listen to those reed flutes that are touching the lips of the Beloved, meaning they are connected.

I did a study years ago on the universal notion of soul, and in virtually every culture, every language, the word "soul" is connected with breath.

Soul comes in with the first breath of God into the human being, and then the soul leaves at the last breath.

It's quite moving to realize that headhunters from the Philippines to basketball players in New York all feel this sense of soul and the connection with vital breath, not just any breath but vitalized breath, which in a sense brings us to the zhikr then, the--the notion of the--the divine breath coming through us.

♪ La illaha ♪ ♪ Il Allah ♪ ♪ La illaha il Allah ♪ ♪ La illaha il Allah ♪ ♪ La illaha il Allah ♪ ♪ La illaha il Allah ♪ Kabir, voice-over: Zhikr is the foremost practice in Sufism and, indeed, in Islam, and Zhikr means remembrance.

It is the awareness of the divine presence through the heart.

The heart is the organ of perception by which we sense the divine, by which we sense the sacred, and through which we feel gratitude and a sense of wonder.

♪ La illaha il Allah ♪ ♪ La illaha il Allah ♪ Kabir, voice-over: Awareness of the breath becomes a way of becoming more spiritually conscious.

We begin with the fact that divine spirit breathed life into us, and when we're unconsciously alive, we're unconscious of the breath.

We breathe like a machine, but the more we awaken to the fact that breath is a gift, the more in a sense we receive something quite subtle and energizing from the breath, and we begin to sense that our awareness of the breath connects us to spirit as a whole.

♪ Allah, Allah, Allah ♪ ♪ Ah Allah ♪ Kabir, what a beautiful, heartfelt sequence.

Of course, you have some marvelous attention there about focus and breath, how close they are to the spiritual life, but what also struck me was the role of the drum, how the role of the drum and its vibrations but also the--the possibility for synchronizing everyone in a group has its own spiritual function.

Can you somehow bring those together for us?

Yes.

Well, what you've seen is the communal practice of--of zhikr, which is an example of, uh, a practice that develops a resonance among human beings.

The drum reminds us of the heartbeat, uh, but voices are united in pitch and rhythm and tone, and they're also, uh, using, reciting names of God, which have a sacred energy in themselves, but the essence of remembrance is to have a heart that is awake to the divine presence, a heart that knows we are living in the presence of the divine and is thankful for that.

So we don't stray too far from this magnificent body of poetry, how about if we hear another poem, a short ode from John Cleese?

Almost 800 years ago, Rumi wrote, "What is to be done, o Muslims, "for I no longer recognize myself.

"I am neither Christian nor Jew "nor Buddhist nor Muslim.

"I am not of the East nor of the West "nor of the land nor of the sea.

"My place is the placeless.

"My trace is the traceless.

"'Tis neither body nor soul, "for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.

"I have put duality away and have seen that the two worlds are one."

Parisa, there are worlds within worlds within worlds of this poem that John Cleese just read.

Where do you begin?

Well, since it's a circle, we don't really know where to begin.

Wherever we begin, we will fall in that circle again, but I guess, uh, we will be going around the same center, and, uh... he's saying... [Speaking Farsi] "O Muslims, what should I do now?

I don't recognize myself anymore," and in order to understand this, we really want-- need to know which I he's talking about that he doesn't recognize... and he's asking the Muslims, and Muslims doesn't mean only as far as a faith but "O people, o those who thought "you are all emptied of yourself "and you have submitted to the divine will, "you have not.

Go relearn it and come back."

Beautiful, beautiful.

Uh, Kabir, do you think that this is a necessary and inevitable stage of the spiritual quest, the fact that you have to endure some lacerating self-doubt in order to earn a revelation, in order to earn some wisdom?

I think this poem is an example of a very high state, uh, not of self-doubt but of reaching a state of awareness where your cultural conditioning is transcended.

He's saying what we are is pure eternal spirit, and...this is a--a high realization of where spirituality can bring a human being.

And then there is the question of which Rumi?

For centuries, we somehow endured a world in the West without Rumi.

How we survived I don't know, but then a couple hundred years ago or so, the translations started to flow back into the West.

So why don't we look at a performance by Coleman Barks, the wonderful translator, and the musicians Jai Uttal and David Darling?

♪ Allah, Allah ♪ ♪ Allah, Allah, Allah... ♪ Barks: Why do we go to look at the Grand Canyon?

Why do we look at the Brooks Range?

Why do we go to Tibet?

You know, it's all longing.

[Drums and flute playing] The whole impulse to move out, to go out is a--one of the great human activities, isn't it, and, uh--and that surely has a lot of longing in it as does, uh, the creation of art and the creation of--of anything really.

[Singing in Farsi ] Today like every other day... we wake up empty and frightened.

[Singing continues] Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we lost be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways... to kneel and kiss the ground.

Would you like to have revealed to you the truth of the Friend?

Leave the rind and descend into the pith.

Fold within fold... the beloved drowns in his own being.

This world is drenched in that drowning.

I am so small I can barely be seen.

How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes.

They are small, but they see... enormous things.

Pale sunlight... pale the wall.

Love moves away.

The light changes.

I need more grace than I thought.

[Singing continues] Barks: So there can be, um, an Islamic Rumi, and there is, of course, and there can be a, um, Christian Rumi, and th-there's all different faiths.

There can be a Buddhist Rumi, too.

Uh--um, and there can be an all-religion Rumi.

I think it's, uh-- it's OK now to say that you're all religions, that you're no religion, that you're all of them.

When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one.

When you are with no one but me, you're with everyone.

Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone.

When you become that many, you are nothing, empty.

Parisa, you've had the joy of working with Coleman Barks, and you understand the--the role and the debate of translation in the modern world.

How do you-- would you-- how would you characterize Coleman's translations and his contribution?

I want to say from Rumi himself, um, what--how he thinks that he can be understood because when we talk about translation, we--we almost want to know who the person who said all these beautiful poetry that we are trying to translate is, and Rumi says... [Speaking Farsi] "Ayenah" means "mirror."

He says, "I'm a mirror.

I'm a mirror.

"I'm not the man in the scripts or within the written articles."

So then take that and imagine a person like Coleman Barks sitting down with such rich material.

I interviewed him, and I asked him, "What is it?

"Are you--do you have to put yourself in some state to be able to achieve it?"

So that's what I love about the work with Rumi is that, uh, something is just happening.

I just got to get out of the way, you know, and when I--I work on the poem and, uh--and it's really going well, I--I--I do finish the 30 minutes, and then I just bow.

I just--something in me wants to bow, like, "Thank you," you know?

So Rumi again says, "If-- an in-sonnet comment-- "If a complete human being touches ash, "it turns into gold.

"If an incomplete one takes gold, it turns into ash."

So it is very important that the English-speaking world through the translation of valuable people like Coleman Barks and Andrew Harvey have access to this, but readers should also always keep in mind that right now you're speaking to Andrew and Rumi, Coleman and Rumi, and there's nothing wrong with that, but we need to know that.

That's very helpful.

Um, I've also read academics who feel that it is futile to try to translate James Joyce into Portuguese or Dostoyevsky into Spanish.

Why even try?

Because the literal language with our great authors is so delicious, it's so magnificent, and yet, the world would be bereft if we didn't have at least our own versions of the world's great literature, right, so, Kabir, as someone who wrestles with this every day, What side do you come down on?

Should we reach for some literal translations or try in earnest to honor the translators who went before us or begin in the spirit that you just expressed so beautifully that "What I do "will be taken in the spirit of this great poet, and I hope I'm up to it"?

I think to, uh, translate poetry we need poets, not academic translators.

We need people who, uh, are--yes, poets, but poets who also understand the context, uh, and the intent of the speaker, not just translating the words.

So some people may criticize a poem and saying, "Well, this is not exactly what he said in Farsi," and that's a very futile criticism because if you translated it word for word as it is in Farsi, it won't sound very good.

So we have to find a way to touch hearts, and we have to use the--the possibilities inherent in our own language, but the most important thing is to remain true to the intent of the speaker and to have it touch the heart.

With that in mind, let's turn to another translator Andrew Harvey, who was filmed by you and the One Through Love project.

So let's hear Rumi through the eyes, ears, and heart of Andrew Harvey.

Harvey: The lamps are different, but the light is the same.

So many garish lamps in the dying brain's lamp shop.

Forget about them.

Concentrate on the essence.

Concentrate on the light.

In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire, the light streams towards you from all things, all people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought, passion.

The lamps are different, but the light is the same.

One matter, one energy, one light, one light-mind endlessly emanating all things.

One turning and burning diamond.

One, one, one.

Ground yourself.

Strip yourself down to blind, loving silence.

Stay there until you see you are gazing at the light with its own ageless eyes.

I find that spiritually tectonic.

It's moving something in us that's a kind of soul earthquake.

I think because there is an urgency there that is pretty profound, and what's at the heart of urgency?

The challenge to action.

What is he urging us toward?

Parisa?

I don't think Rumi is urging towards anything.

Um, he's--he's inviting us.

It's--it's an invitation, and it's... not an invitation to some other planet.

We don't need to go anywhere.

It's an invitation to lift the veil because that's-- as he says, you are--you are the only veil between you and the divine.

All you need to do, just get out of your own way.

So it's an invitation to getting out of one's own way, but I never feel a sense of urgency with Rumi.

I mean, with Rumi, it's all good news.

It's energy and happiness and...the uplifting of the human soul.

You know, but there was something that he was intoxicated by... Mm-hmm.

and it is the beauty and generosity of the divine.

He was overwhelmed by his perception of the beauty and generosity of the divine, and he wanted to share it.

That's how I would say it.

Yes.

He just-- he was--he was just so much wanted to share that beauty with as many people as could receive it.

Yes.

You said it so beautifully.

You know, people say Rumi was passionate.

He was full of passion.

He was passionate about only one thing, right?

He was passionate about God, and there's a perfection to be glimpsed in every moment.

That's a beautiful chord on which to end this symphonic conversation.

Thank you, Parisa Soultani, thank you, Sheikh Kabir Helminski, and also thank you for helping us connect this path of love, the path of the heart with the global spirit that we're trying to evoke in this program.

Thank you very much.

I am Carlos Santana, and I hope you connected and return to this series "Global Spirit."

Thank you.