Valentine’s Day Verses of Mystical Love and Romance from Rumi, Darshan Singh, Guru Amar Das, Baba Farid, and Sultan Bahu
Valentine’s Day provides an opportunity to share these powerful, loving verses of the heart. The words of mystics are directed towards God as the Beloved lover of their soul, yet their words are so loving, blissful, and ecstatic that they are, at the same time, quite romantic and appropriate for Valentine’s Day between soul-mates! I believe the soul-to-soul-mate relationship of romance is a kind of ‘reflection’ of the soul’s relationship with God (soul-to-Oversoul), the ultimate pure love from the Ocean of Love.
“True lovers are those
who love with all their hearts.” (Baba Farid)
Love is the Voice of Two Hearts Beating Together
Below is from, Love’s Last Madness — Poems On A Spiritual Path, By Sant Darshan Singh, Published by Hohm Press (an English translation from the Urdu language, from the book, Mataa-e Noor [Treasury of Light], edited by Barry Lerner and Harbans Singh Bedi).
“Love lends sparkle to this happy, sad world;
Love is the voice of two hearts beating together.
If not the enchanting look of the true believer’s eyes,
What changes rational life into mad existence?
My lonesome mornings yearn for the sound of your footfall,
My anguished nights strain to hear your voice.
Love is not talked of in the marketplace:
Love is unknowable mystery, end to end.
My impatient eyes dare not turn audacious
But for the beckoning of her seductive look.
Love’s capital lasts forever — love is a thing divine;
It makes lovers soar inconceivably high.
Silence would conceal your heart’s secret, Darshan,
Were it not for the telltale tears of your restless eyes.” (Darshan Singh, from the book, Love’s Last Madness – Poems On A Spiritual Path)
“They are not said to be husband and wife, who merely sit together.
They alone are called husband and wife, who have One Light in two bodies.” (Guru Amar Das)
“Lovers remain completely intoxicated in the ecstasy of their love for the Beloved.
They offer their souls to the Beloved while still living, and thus immortalize themselves
in this life and in the hereafter.” (Hazrat Sultan Bahu)
“There is no salvation for the soul
But to fall in love.
It has to creep and crawl
Among the Lovers first.
Only Lovers can escape
From these two worlds.
This was written in creation.
Only from the Heart
Can you reach the sky.
The rose of Glory
Can only be raised in the Heart.” (RUMI)
“Lovers would give up both worlds
and sacrifice hundreds of years of life
for just one moment together,
They jump though thousands of hoops
after the smell of one breath,
and would sacrifice thousands of lives
to satisfy a single heart.
“Lovers are such strange people.
They are not like everybody else.
They don’t carry their souls in their bodies.
Instead, their souls carry them.
People run to the river of the waters of Life
in hopes of becoming immortal,
yet the waters of Life
are always running to the lovers.”
– Rumi, The Rubais of Rumi – Insane with Love”,
Translations and Commentary by Nevit O. Ergin
and Will Johnson, Inner Traditions
You and I – Rumi
“How happy we are when seated in a palace,
you and I,
With dual forms and bodies but with one soul,
you and I.
Birds’ voices and the grove’s moody colours offer
Immortality when we enter the garden,
you and I.
Above, stars will emerge and gaze upon us;
We’ll reveal to them the moon’s splendour,
you and I.
Individuals no more, you and I shall mingle in ecstasy
Full of joy, and beyond the reach of stupid talk.
All the hearts of Heaven’s high-plumaged birds will be rotten with envy,
In the place where our laugh sounds similar,
you and I.
The greatest wonder is this: that we sit here in the same spot,
In Iraq and Khorasan at this moment,
you and I.”
– Rumi, “Where Two Oceans Meet – A Selection of Odes from the Divan of Shems of Tabriz, By Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi”, James G. Cowan, Elements Books