Two Eyes, One Object: A Comparison of Dieties
as Found in the Bhagavad-Gita and the Poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi

Copyright 1990 by John R. Mabry

Having endeavored to do the impossible, comparing the unknowable to the manifest, I am somewhat surprised to find more like than unlike. At first pondering, the deities as described in the Hindu Gita and Rumi's prolific poems and letters are as irreconcilable as possible. The God of the most tolerant and inclusive of all the great traditions, Hinduism, capable of embracing any form, provides a sharp contrast to intolerant and vindictive Allah, forbidder of divine forms and God of the most repellent of the great traditions, Islam.

To be fair, Rumi's Allah bears only scarce resemblance to the monster God of The Holy Koran, yet the Islamic "flavor" is retained, even in translation. Rumi's Allah is not spending 90% of the text casting ne'er-do-wells into everlasting Hellfire, as in the Koran, but instead plays the sly seductress, dancing around us, wooing us into passionate relations. Krishna, as testified of in the Gita, is also a break with tradition. Whereas the God of the Upanishads is cosmic and philosophical, Krishna is the personal God, and like Rumi's Allah, he calls us to intimate relationship.

Flying in the face of the above statement is the paradox of both of these personal Gods being essentially unknowable. Krishna tells Arjuna we are ignorant of my higher existence...Veiled in the magic of my discipline, I elude most men...I know all creatures that have been, that now exist, and that are yet to be; but Arjuna, no one knows me.1

What Krishna probably means here is that no one knows him in his entirety. To truly know Krishna, the supreme Lord, would be beyond the human capacity for comprehension. Whereas the Gita's claim is qualified, Islam makes few bones about this "unknowability;" the Koran never tires of reminding us of our ignorance. Yet in Rumi's vision the Supremely Unknowable, though never fully grasped, is at least approachable. "When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are," he writes, "you will keep saying again and again, 'This is certainly not like we thought it was!'"2

Part of the deities' unknowability has to do with their transcendence. Both are, in their own ways, immanent as well, but the imagery of the transcendent is strong in both bodies of work. Krishna knows that we (through Arjuna) are aware of his immanence, and so strives to make us aware that what is tangible, ordinary and most of all present, is also that which is beyond and ungraspable. "This is my lower nature; know my higher nature too, the life-force that sustains this universe."3 Krishna's sovereignty extends far beyond the world, in fact. "Neither sun nor moon, nor fire illumines my highest abode--once there, they do not return."4 The spatial distance of the God's domain is echoed by Rumi when he tells Allah, "Like a bee you fill hundreds of homes with honey, though yours is a long flight from here."5 Rumi's God is not at home in this world. He is an ever-present, yet ever-absent visitor.

Humankind, recognizing the spark of divinity in itself, apparently also needs reminding that God is also beyond not only the world, but humankind as well. The danger is of over-identity with the deity--the remedy seems to be putting humans in their place. Arjuna, terrified by the vision of Krishna's entirety, has no arguments about his place in the universe, but the practice of mysticism lends itself to possible abuse. There is no greater sin in Islam that to suggest that Allah could be incarnate, yet the sufis had this deplorable habit of screaming out "I am God!" in the midst of their ecstasies. Rumi says of one man that he cried out, drunk with divinity, "There is no God but me. You should worship me." In the morning, when he was informed of his behavior, he swore "If I say that again, bring your knives and plunge them into me. God is beyond the body, and I am in this body. Kill me when I say that."6 The truth lies between the man's two statements. Though he cannot deny the experience of divine union, he cannot (on pain of death, most likely) but insist on God's supreme transcendence. Rumi speaks of Allah as being "...in each of my atoms. Each of my raw nerves..."7 Allah says "I am so close to you I am distant. I am so mingled with you I am apart. I am so open I am hidden. I am so strong I totter."8

Hand in hand with transcendence is omniscience. Krishna speaks plainly of his own numerous incarnations: "I know them all, but you do not, Arjuna."9 He also says that he is the source of all knowledge, the object to be known and the knower of it's final truth.10 Likewise, Rumi admits humbly "I can't know, only you can."11 He grapples with profundity, saying

You can't be spoken, though you listen to all sound. You can't be written, but you read everything. You don't sleep, yet you're the source of dream-vision. Your ship glides over nothing, deep silence, praise for the ONE, who told Moses on Sinai, You Shall Not See Me.12

In the Gita, Krishna spends nearly the entire tenth chapter describing himself and his attributes. He is not just a general, he is the god of war! He is not a sacred month, but the most sacred month; he is not just a poet, he is Vyasa, the greatest poet; he is not happy to be merely an elephant, he is the king's mount; he is not just a weapon, he is a thunderbolt.13 Krishna is the archetype for all earthly types, like the Vedic Perusha, the archetypal man. Krishna is thus the model, the Platonic ideal, which lends its identity to incarnate forms. Similarly, for Rumi,

Every object and being in the universe is a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining, as though covered in satin. If the man had seen even a tributary of the great river, he wouldn't have brought the innocence of his gift.14

It is in the forms that we catch a glimpse of the ideal. It is through the god of war that we can begin to grasp the excellence of such a general. It is through a stranger's kindness that we can begin to fathom grace. "All giving comes from There, no matter who you think you put your open hand out toward, it's That which gives."15 It is by this way of knowing that we catch wind of our own divine identity. Rumi tells us that

You'll tell it to yourself. Not I, or some other "I," You who are ME!

As when you fall asleep and go from the presence of you self to the Presence of your Self. You hear That One and you think, "Someone must have communicated telepathically in my sleep."

You are not a single You, good Friend, you are a Sky and an Ocean, a tremendous YHUUUUUU, a nine hundred times huge drowning place for all your hundreds of you's.16

The deity, then is more complicated than simply immanence and transcendence; he is so closely interwoven into our very perception of our surroundings and ourselves as to be completely inseparable. Forgetting such lofty concepts as archetypes, transcendence and omniscience for a moment, one can't even go for a pack of filter Kings without somehow conceptually dealing with God.

You are my face. No wonder I can't see You. You are the intricate workings of my mind....17 You are the moon: I am your face in a pool. How could I forget that night you said, holding my head, 'I am yours always. Your love came from me; I am your soul.'"18

One doesn't normally think of Islam as being pantheistic, yet Rumi echoes many of Krishna's teachings about the unity of All. Krishna instructs Arjuna "See all the universe, animate and inanimate, and whatever else you with to see; all stands here as one in my body."19 Rumi could very well have been answering the God with the funny blue skin by saying, "One look at you, and I look at you in all things, looking back at me; those eyes in which all things live and burn."20 Krishna reveals that "He who sees me everywhere and sees everything in me will not be lost to me, and I will not be lost to him."21 This is a grand truth that Rumi learned well, for he instructs his own pupils, saying "Let your eyes see God everywhere. Give up fears and expectations. The Friend, the Beloved, your Soul, is a River with the trees and buds of the world reflected in it."22 This pantheistic vision holds vast implications, expounded on by all mystical traditions. In particular, it is most common to find that once the mystic has accepted himself as a part of the All, he begins to see the All as himself. Rumi says,

Remember that no man is without it. If man was without it, he would never have said "I," because it is this enemy within him which is saying "I." The day this enemy is found and erased, or shed and crucified, that day the real "I" is found. But this "I" is a different "I." This "I" means you and I and everybody; it is an all "I."22

Rumi implies in the above verse the painful dying process inherent in spiritual growth, and the resulting wisdom one is able to grasp as a result. Though Krishna makes no mention of this important catharsis, he acknowledge the importance of this enlightenment by saying "When he perceives the unity existing in separate creatures and how they expand from unity, he attains the infinite spirit."23

This is, for Rumi, a dangerous position to take considering the consequences of blasphemy in medieval Islamic culture. Hats (and turbans) off to those sufic theologians who turned all kinds of philosophic gymnastics trying to reconcile the orthodox Allah with the divinity of their experience. Of the orthodox, Rumi wrote "...be calm with those in duality."24 One must wonder if they would be so patient with him.

Not satisfied to inform Arjuna that he is in all things, Krishna continues to say that he is all things, past present and future. When he says "I am the rite, the sacrifice, the libation for the dead, the healing herb, the sacred hymn, the clarified butter, the fire, the oblation,"25 he is, from a Vedic point of view, laying out an equation: The Sacrifice=the Universe (therefore, if) Krishna=the Sacrifice (then) Krishna=the Universe. And he claims this status for all of time: "I am the self abiding in the heart of all creatures; I am their beginning, their middle, and their end."26 This, too, finds its parallel in Rumi, when he relates simply to his friends, "It's the Voice that first said, There is no Reality but God. There is only God."27 Husam pulls him by his ear and shouts at him to wash his mouth, but the damage is done, the truth is out. Rumi even announces the Persian equivalent of "Tat tvam asi", "You are that."28 Krishna claims to be all things to all men, saying,

"I am the way, sustainer, lord, witness, shelter, refuge, friend, source, dissolution, stability, treasure, and unchanging seed. I am heat that withholds and sends down the rains; I am immortality and death; both being and nonbeing am I."29

Again, Rumi must experience this from the other side, grasping intuitively what Krishna knows so well: "Thirsty and dry, I complain, but everything is made of water! Lonely, yet my head leans against your shirt! My wounded hands, your hands."30

Once having accepted the Unity of All in God, it is not long before we consider the Unity of Gods in All. Ecumenism has always been a touchy subject in exclusivistic traditions, especially Christianity and Islam, but also, apparently in many Hindu sects as well. Krishna does not pussy-foot around the subject, but states bluntly "When devoted men sacrifice to other deities with faith, they sacrifice to me, Arjuna, however aberrant the rites.29 Knowing me as the enjoyer of sacrifices and penances, lord of all worlds, and friend of all creatures, he finds peace."30 Rumi comforts his listeners with a teaching story about four men who speak different languages (and so can't understand each other) all asking for a bit of money. A ruckus soon erupts, and Rumi ends the tale, saying,

If a many-languaged master had been there, he could have made peace and told them: I can give each of you what you want with this one coin. Trust me, keep quiet, and you four enemies will agree. I know a silent, inner meaning that makes of your four words one wine."31

Speaking more directly, he says,

We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk-drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves, with thirst, to meet it.32

Another important point of convergence is with regard to the believer, the beloved of God. One of the primary topics of importance in the Gita is action. Krishna makes it very clear that his devoted should not renounce action itself, but the fruit of action. This is demonstrated by the deity when he tells Arjuna "The lord of the world does not create agency or actions, or a union of fruits with actions; but his being unfolds into existence."33 Krishna strives for no object of desire, yet still he must act34, for "What if I did not engage relentlessly in action? ...these worlds would collapse if I did not perform action."35 Rumi calls the fruit of actions by another name: "Don't let others lead you," he says, "They may be blind, or worse, vultures. Reach for the rope of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will."36 Self-will, wanting for the self, desiring the fruit of action.... Krishna commands us, saying, "Surrender all actions to me, and fix your reason on your inner self; without hope or possessiveness, your fever subdued, fight the battle!"37 We are told by Rumi that one who can follow this example is himself divine: "The One who acts without regard to getting anything back is God. Or a Friend of God."38

Friendship to God is the sole domain of the personal diety--being indifferent to God is not nearly so comforting or appealing--and it is in this area that both deities excel, even hot-tempered Allah. "Keep your mind on me," Krishna tells Arjuna, "be my devotee, sacrificing, bow to me--you will come to me, I promise, for you are dear to me."39 If the Blue-One seems to be a little chilly, Allah more than compensates in his gushing: "Noah, Noah," said God, "I will raise Canaan and all these others from the dead if you wish. I don't want you to grieve."40 This demonstrates not merely fondness from the deity (Krishna could just as well be talking to his bloodhound), but that the human is respected by the deity, to the point that the thought of the beloved in emotional pain causes like pain in the divine. When Muhammed has been so overwhelmed by a vision that he passes out, Gabriel cradles him in his arms. "Awe serves for strangers," Rumi comments, but "this close-hugging love is for friends."41

It would be an understatement to say that this study has been revealing. Hinduism and Islam are the most diametrically opposed religions the planet knows, and yet it is telling that in the mystical literature of each, we find a unified vision of the cosmos. Each, of course, retains the flavor of the original, yet Huxley's "perennial philosophy" runs like a thread through each. Rumi even concedes (amazing!) to reincarnation: "I burn away; laugh; my ashes are alive! I die a thousand times: My ashes dance back--A thousand new faces."42 And this is perpetually our experience: the journey inward is familiar, it is only the outer paths by which we have come together that open onto different plains. The single object of divinity, seen through different eyes, must of course be understood in the context of the seekers' prior disparate experience; the inner experience of the mystics, we find, agree on most every detail.

NOTES

1 Vyasa/Barbara Stoler Miller, trans. The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishan's Counsel in Time of War. (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), p. 74.

2 Jelaluddin Rumi/Coleman Barks and John Moyne, trans. This Longing (Putney: Threshhold Books, 1988), p. 22.

3 Gita, p. 74.

4 Ibid., p. 128.

5 Jalaluddin Rumi/Coleman Barks, trans. We Are Three (Athens: Maypop Books, 1987), p. 22.

6 Jalaludin Rumi/Coleman Barks, trans. Delicious Laughter (Athens: Maypop Books, 1990), p. 30.

7 Jalaludin Rumi/Andrew Harvey, trans. Love's Fire (Ithaca: Meeramma Publications, 1988), p. 68.

8 Ibid., p. 24.

9 Gita, p. 49.

10 Ibid., p. 130.

11 Love's Fire, p. 28.

12 We Are Three, p. 9.

13 Gita, p. 93-94.

14 We Are Three, p. 46.

15 Delicious Laughter, p. 50.

16 This Longing, p. 49.

17 Ibid., p. 58.

18 Love's Fire, p. 53.

19 Gita, p. 98.

20 Love's Fire, p. 22.

21 Gita, p. 67.

22 This Longing, p. xv.

23 Gita, p. 119.

24 This Longing, p. 60.

25 Gita, p. 85.

26 Ibid., p. 92.

27 Delicious Laughter, p. 126.

28 We Are Three, p. 40.

29 Gita, p. 86.

30 We Are Three, p. 3.

31 Ibid., p. 11.

32 Ibid., p. 25.

33 Gita, p. 59.

34 Ibid., p. 44.

35 Ibid., p. 44.

36 We Are Three, p. 44.

37 Gita, p. 45.

38 This Longing, p. 26.

39 Gita, p. 152.

40 This Longing, p. 52.

41 Delicious Laughter, p. 106.

42 This Longing, p. 96.