The Masnavi, Book Six (Oxford World's Classics)

'Until effaced no one can actually
Enter the Court of Holy Majesty.
What is the meaning of the heavenly ascension?
Non-being: the mystics' law school and religion.'

Rumi is the greatest mystic poet to have written in Persian, and The Masnavi is his masterpiece. Divided into six books and consisting of some 26,000 verses, the poem was designed to convey teachings about divine love and unity to the disciples of the Sufi order that he founded, best known today as the Whirling Dervishes. Like the earlier books, Book Six interweaves amusing stories with homilies and lyrical flights. The longest of all the six volumes at nearly 5,000 verses, its themes focus on self-annihilation in God and the oneness experienced at the end of the Sufi path by the realized mystic. Rumi is believed to have completed it shortly before his death on 17 December 1273.

This is the first ever verse translation into English of the entirety of Book Six of Rumi's Masnavi. It follows the original by presenting Rumi's most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets.