Essay:   The core of a Rumi poem is energetic rather than fixed or static; field theory

    Clearly the core of a Rumi poem is energetic rather than fixed or static. But what does this mean to the casual reader? What might be confusing when one begins looking at certain kinds of poetry as essentially energetic is that the words themselves are syntactically fixed or static just as the words in this sentence are static.  To begin to understand poetic field theory we have to appreciate that there is a quantum dimension to Rumi’s language as well as a static structural aspect to his poetry, just as the experience of passing through a door into an unfamiliar space requires a physical door or threshold. Staying with this metaphor of comparing the structural or static language of a written ecstatic poem to a physical door or threshold, as soon as this threshold is crossed the field of the poem takes over and we are in a position to experience the ecstatic nature of language.

    What differentiates an ecstatic poem from a conventionally (linearly) structured poem is that the ideas or images in the poem seem to be oriented around a field, which helps explain why the poem would not shatter if the order of the images were rearranged. As long as all the ingredients of the poem are there, the intelligence of the poem coheres, the field remains strong or viable. 

    Chopra compares the self to a hive of bees that organizes itself around the queen. There is “an unseen center that holds (each of us) together”; he calls this invisible center “conscious (or) creative intelligence”. The aspects of ourselves that we identify with – our thoughts and emotions, “hopes, beliefs, loves, hates. . .emerge from a dimensionless place”(Chopra, The Higher Self, cassette, 1992), whereas our true center of being is what gives us form, makes us real. 

    This invisible center of cosmic intelligence, this “spiritual entity” (our true self) manifests in myriad ways and forms, “coursing through every word and thought. . .(It) holds us, nurtures us in our growth. . .nestles us securely in the word and the word in us”(Chopra). . .

    I replayed this last statement several times. . .Chopra has a slight speech impediment and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t saying , “nestles us securely in the world and the world in us. . .” as that would head us off in a different direction. Satisfied that he said “word”, I return to the notion of Rumi’s poem forming around a field (as opposed to a structure). . .a field of creative intelligence. Going back to Chopra’s metaphor of the mobile bee-hive. . .The bee hive is not tied to a physical place, it is oriented around the queen bee. This analogy isn’t perfect because the queen is a living entity, whereas the center of consciousness to which Chopra refers us is unknowable, except as it manifests. It is quantum and (except as it manifests) it “blends into nature as a whole”, and not “just” nature but the infinite, of which it is a unique expression. . .

    The intelligence that Rumi taps into is not, in other words, limited to his intelligence alone. . .His words are like the hive hovering as a collective unit around the field of the queen, or this invisible center that Chopra refers to as creative intelligence.  

    I am beginning to see the poem as a body in the Ayurvedic sense of a body. . .that is to say, it is a density of energy. . .“According to the Rishis, from pure consciousness arose the sound OM. In turn, the five elements took birth. These five elements take the form of the human body”(Tiwari, Ayurveda: A Life of Balance, 1995,9).  Without going further into Ayurvedics, this explanation of the origins of the body, helps us understand how the human being, who is made of sound, might create a body of meaning out of sound. (It is worth recalling that Rumi never wrote his poems down; that detail was handled by his scribe.)

    In the verse that follows “Wake and walk out”, Rumi / Barks, expresses all of this beautifully in poetry  (Barks, The Soul of Rumi, 2001,193):  

Form is ecstatic

There is a shimmering excitement in

being sentient and shaped. The

caravan master sees his camel lost

in it, nose to tail, as he himself is,

his friend, and the stranger coming

toward them. A gardener watches the

sky break into song, cloud wobbly with

what it is. Bud, thorn, the same.

Wind, water, wandering this essential

state. Fire, ground, gone. That’s

how it is with the outside. Form

is ecstatic. . .