The Sufi Path of Love

In referring to form and meaning or the outward and the inward, Rumi employs another set of terms which emphasises the "negative" face of meaning in relation to the "positive" side of form. From this point of view form is "place" and meaning is "No place", form is "colour" and the sea is "colorlessness" For meaning is opposite to form and can only be attained by form's negation, by "formlessness"
"Everyone has turned his face towards some direction, but the saint have turned in the direction without directions." (MV 350)
"In the direction without directions all is spring: any other direction holds nothing but the cold of December." (D 20089)
"He appears to be still and in movement, but he is neither this nor that. He manifests Himself in place, but in truth He has no place." (D 6110)
"You are from place, but your origin is No-place Close down this shop and open up that, shop! (M II 612)
"How long will you give signs? Silence! For that Origin of signs has no sign." n." (D7268)

William C. Chittick received his education in the US. He holds a PhD in Persian language and literature from the University of Tehran. An Associate and later on Assistant Professor at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy 1976-79, he became the Assistant Editor of the Encyclopedia Iranica at the Colombia University in 1983. He worked as the Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the State University of New York, Stony Brook from 1983-1991 where he presently holds the post of the Professor of Comparative Studies. He has published numerous books, among them. A Shi 'ite Anthology; Imaginal Worlds; Faith and Practice of Islam; The Self-Disclosures of God: Principles of Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology; The Sufi Path of knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination; The Vision of Islam and Sufism -A Short Introduction.