When Civilization Lost Its Soul

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. Rumi, Hafez, and Saadi! Three extraordinary voices of the Persian literary and spiritual tradition were standing before me. They invited me to sit. A servant appeared carrying a silver tray with delicate glasses filled with rose sherbet. I accepted one. The drink was cool, fragrant, and delicious. For a few moments, nobody spoke.

Then Rumi turned toward me. “So,” he began, “you have come from the modern world.” “Yes,” I replied. “We have heard remarkable things about your civilization,” he continued. “You have traveled into space, explored the depths of the oceans, and created machines capable of performing tasks once considered impossible.” “That is true,” I answered.

Rumi smiled. “Then tell me something. Has the human heart progressed as far as human technology?” I hesitated. He looked directly into my eyes. “Have you learned to love one another better than the people of our time?” I remained silent.

Rumi continued. “In my Masnavi, I spoke of the mirror of the heart. A mirror does not create the image it reflects. It allows us to recognize what stands before it.” He paused. “There is a beautiful saying often associated with my philosophy: ‘The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.’ Whether or not those precise words came from my pen, consider their meaning.”

He pointed toward a rose. “When you recognize beauty, kindness, and goodness in another, something within you responds to those qualities. But what happens when you stop seeing another human being as human?” I looked at him without answering. “You begin to justify cruelty,” he said quietly. “Your world has developed extraordinary instruments for seeing distant stars. But has it developed the wisdom to recognize the humanity of the person standing across a border?” The question unsettled me.

Hafez picked up a rose. “Look at this flower,” he said. “Does its fragrance distinguish between an Iranian and an American? Between a Muslim and a Christian? Between the wealthy and the poor?” “No,” I answered. “Then why,” he asked, “does humanity, which claims to be superior to the flower, struggle to practice the generosity that nature offers so freely?”