(The Role of Thought in Rumi’s Therapy)
The phenomenon of thought (fikr) holds a unique and profound position in Rumi’s worldview—so much so that he sees the human being as entirely thought. In his famous verse, he declares:
O brother, you are nothing but thought
The rest of you is bones and sinew.
If your thoughts are flowers, you’re a garden
If they are thorns, you’re burning wood
In this view, a person’s essence is not their physical form but the quality and direction of their thinking. Rumi treats thought not merely as a cognitive process but as the very axis of one’s spiritual and emotional being. This closely aligns with the modern psychological understanding that our perception and interpretation of reality, rather than reality itself, determines our emotional responses, a principle central to cognitive therapies.
He attributes endless sorrow and emotional suffering to the mind’s captivity in compulsive and misguided thinking:
All people are enslaved by thought;
That is why their hearts are weary and sorrowful.
Just as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) seeks to help individuals identify and challenge distorted patterns of thinking, Rumi’s approach to healing begins with bringing awareness to thought’s movements, illusions, and influence over the soul. However, Rumi goes beyond merely managing thought; he seeks its transcendence through the awakening of the heart and union with deeper truth.
He warns against unquestioned thoughts, likening them to a veil over the true self:
From these enchantments, make thought itself thoughtless,
So you may see the pearl of meaning within.
In other words, the aim is not simply to think better but to disidentify from thought as one’s identity—echoing what contemporary psychology explores in mindfulness-based approaches and metacognitive therapy: observing thought rather than becoming it.
Rumi thus invites the reader to shift from being ruled by the mind to becoming its master:
Though thought leads you in many things,
It is not a true guide on the path to Truth.
Ultimately, the goal is not to suppress thought but to liberate the self from its tyranny—to move, in Rumi’s terms, “from thorn to garden”, from entanglement in mental brambles to the blooming of spiritual clarity and presence.
In this, Rumi’s voice harmonises deeply with modern psychotherapy’s emphasis on metacognition, defusion from thoughts, and inner awareness—yet it transcends these concepts by placing thought within a broader, mystical path of transformation.
