| Author Quoted | Reza Arasteh |
| Title Quoted | Rumi the Persian: Rebirth in Creativity and Love |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1965/12/18 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1963 |
| Quotation | It is a great pleasure for me to have your book on Rumi. I am reading it with great interest as I like the Sufis and admire them. In fact I will shortly be lecturing on Sufism to the novices and young monks here. Your book will help me in this. I think your book would be even more interesting and valuable if there were allusions to other mystical writers and traditions by way of comparison. You might be interested in some of the works of St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic who is thought to have been influenced to some extent by a Moroccan Sufi, Ibn Abbad. Though this hypothesis of influence is very shaky, there are many points in common. In connection with Rumi, it would be worthwhile to examine some of the mysticism of pure love among the Flemish mystics of the fourteenth century and thereafter. Of course there is always Eckhart too. |
| Quotation Source | The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 41 |
| Letter to | Reza Arasteh |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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