The Profound Wisdom of Rumi’s “We are born of love. Love is our mother”
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, known simply as Rumi in the Western world, was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic whose influence spans centuries and continents. Born in 1207 in Balkh (present-day Afghanistan), Rumi lived during a time of tremendous upheaval, as Mongol invasions forced his family to migrate westward across the Islamic world. They eventually settled in Konya, in what is now Turkey, where Rumi would spend the most productive years of his life. His statement that “We are born of love. Love is our mother” emerges from this context of displacement and spiritual seeking, representing not mere sentimentality but a philosophical and theological assertion about the fundamental nature of human existence and the cosmos itself.
To understand this quote fully, one must grasp Rumi’s unique position within Islamic theology and his revolutionary approach to spirituality. Though trained as a conventional Islamic scholar and jurist following his father’s footsteps, Rumi experienced a profound spiritual transformation in 1244 when he met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish and mystic. This meeting fundamentally altered the trajectory of Rumi’s life and thought. Where previously he had been a respected but conventional religious figure, Rumi became a spiritual revolutionary, emphasizing direct mystical experience with the divine over rigid doctrinal adherence. His declaration about love as humanity’s mother reflects this post-Shams philosophy, positioning love not as one virtue among many, but as the fundamental principle underlying all existence. This represents a dramatic shift from the more juridical, rule-based Islam Rumi had previously taught.
The historical and cultural context of Rumi’s statement cannot be separated from the Sufi tradition, the mystical branch of Islam that emphasizes experiential knowledge of the divine and the transformative power of love. During the 13th century, Sufism was flourishing across the Islamic world, offering an alternative to the sometimes sterile formalism of conventional religious practice. Rumi became not merely a participant in this tradition but one of its greatest exemplars and teachers. His famous Mevlevi Order, founded after his death by his son, institutionalized his teachings and created the famous whirling dervish ceremony, a moving meditation on spiritual ecstasy and union with the divine. The quote “We are born of love. Love is our mother” encapsulates the central concern of Sufism: the recognition that behind the apparent multiplicity and separation of the phenomenal world lies an underlying unity, and that love is the force that both creates and sustains this unity.
What many people do not realize about Rumi is how his teachings were largely forgotten in his native Islamic world for centuries, and how his rediscovery and reinterpretation in the West has created a version of “Rumi” that would likely perplex the historical figure himself. Rumi’s works, particularly his masterpiece the Masnavi (or Mathnawi), a spiritual epic of over 25,000 couplets, were well-known in the Ottoman Empire and remained influential in certain scholarly and mystical circles. However, his ideas fell into relative obscurity during the modern era, particularly as Islamic civilization underwent dramatic transformations following European colonization. It was not until the late 20th century that Rumi experienced an extraordinary renaissance in the English-speaking world, becoming the best-selling poet in the United States by the early 2000s. This Western rediscovery, however, has been marked by significant reinterpretation and secularization. Many popular English translations of Rumi’s work, particularly those by Coleman Barks, remove the explicitly Islamic theological context and present Rumi’s writings as universal wisdom divorced from their theological moorings. This has created a paradox where Rumi is far more widely read in the West than in the Islamic world from which his thought emerged, often stripped of much of its original meaning and context.
Another lesser-known aspect of Rumi’s life is the deep pain that shadowed his spiritual development. The disappearance of his beloved teacher Shams of Tabriz—who likely died or left Konya under mysterious circumstances—plunged Rumi into profound grief. This personal anguish became transmuted into some of his most beautiful and moving poetry, where he explores the theme of divine love through the metaphor of human separation and longing. His statement that “We are born of love. Love is our mother” carries within it an understanding of love not as mere romantic sentiment or comfortable emotion, but as a transformative force that encompasses suffering, yearning, and the dissolution of the separate self. Rumi’s personal experience of loss taught him that true love involves complete vulnerability and surrender. This nuance is often lost in contemporary appropriations of his work, which tend to emphasize comfort and inspiration over the challenging aspects of genuine spiritual transformation.
The cultural impact of this particular quote, and Rumi’s teachings more broadly, has been profound and far-reaching. In contemporary Western culture, especially from the 1990s onward, Rumi has become a touchstone for spiritual seekers often disillusioned with organized religion. His emphasis on direct experience, universal love, and the transcendence of sectarian boundaries appealed to the countercultural and New Age sensibilities of Western audiences. The quote has been featured in countless books on spirituality, self-help contexts