Abstract

By describing Rumi's views concerning the world and with reference to issues such as similarity and purification, the creation and createdness of the world, the unity of existence, and the rules dominating the world, including permanent change, the battle of contraries, the system of the eater and the eatable, the receptacle and the received, and form and meaning in Mathnawi, this paper reveals that Rumi's cosmology was completely consistent with his practical and ethical system. Although he is influenced by Ibn Arabi's theories in most cases, unlike his followers, he never forgets about the world of act and describes it in a way that clarifies the Sufi theories of spiritual struggle and mystic journey.Rumi divides man and the world into the two parts of form and meaning: man's form perceives the form of the world, and his meaning perceives the meaning of the world, which he interprets as the truth. In this way, in order to perceive the world, man must reach the knowledge of the world of the soul and a unity with it through changing his senses from those of appearances to the senses of the interior. When describing either the world of meaning or the world of form, Rumi never forgets the philosophy of motion and perfection: the world of matter is the world of opposites, and there is always a ghastly battle among them.