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I N  R U M I ’ S  P O E T R Y
Z a h r a  R a s h i d
The Irigarayan proposition to bridge dichotomies through breath 
extends to the so-called divide between Eastern and Western Philoso-
phy. And it makes sense to look to the East for inspiration in a philoso-
phy of breath, since many Eastern traditions, including Buddhism and 
Sufism, include breathwork in their somatic practices. In my paper, I 
wish to show how Rumi – a 13th century Muslim theologian and Sufi 
– used breath or nafas in his Persian poetry to outline how breathing is 
an originary phenomenon.
Jelaluddin Rumi lived in Konya, in modern-day Turkey, and was 
ranked as one of the most prestigious scholars in his city. His life took a 
turn on meeting Shams of Tabriz, who became his spiritual companion 
and mentor. After this point, Rumi turned to poetry to express his ideas 
to his students in his instated spiritual order – the Mevleviye – and to 
his wider audience. My paper will take a few samples of his poetry to 
demonstrate how breath connotes a new-ness through the “gift” of life 
that it endows upon us, and how this creative, endowing and primal 
nature of breathing is linked to an open-ness to the Divine Other and 
to others. This in turn will help us develop a respiratory ontology that 
aims to conceive of dualities through a new interrelated perspective and 
does not pitch each against the other.
Embodied Rituals in Sufism and Eastern Cultures
As a preliminary, it is important to situate breathing within the 
larger economy of Sufi practices that formed Rumi’s background. Su-
fism is considered the mystical tradition of the Islamicate world, with 
variations stretching across Central Asia, South Asia and North Africa. 
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P O l I g R A f I
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It is worth noting that Sufism, as a tradition, even though it stakes 
its claim to authority through the ethical-legal sources of revelation in 
Islam, has arguably imbibed several different traditions in its process 
of development. The origins of Sufism and its practices have remained 
an important debatable issue within academia, whereby scholars such 
as Arthur John Arberry argue that it originated within the religion of 
Islam,1 and Duncan B. Macdonald2 and Reynold A. Nicholson3 posit 
that the seeds of Sufism are within Islamic thought, while others insist 
on demonstrating its syncretic roots. The latter consisted historically 
of comparative theorists who speculated regarding Christian influences 
on Sufi thought,4 or regarded Sufism as “far from being a natural or 
inevitable growth in Islam […] on the contrary, a direct infiltration 
from an Indian source.”5 This approach and its adherents, referred to 
as “externalists” by Nile green,6 placed an emphasis on locating the 
origins of Sufism within other cultures and traditions. given both sides 
of the debate, lloyd Ridgeon argues that it is important for anyone 
exploring the development of Sufism to remember that such “vertical” 
explorations of origins might not hold as much value as “horizontal” 
explorations “in which individuals and movements are embedded at 
any historical moment disclose valuable details related to the develop-
ment of Sufism.”7
Depending on which region we refer to, historically, Sufi practition-
ers have integrated local indigenous practices, symbols, and ideas. Much 
of this could be attributed to the local and communitarian outreach of 
1  Arthur John Arberry, Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam (london, UK: george Allen 
and Unwin, 1950), 11.
2  Duncan B. Macdonald, Aspects of Islam (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1911), 184.
3  Raynold A. Nicholson, “A Historical Enquiry Concerning the Origin and Development 
of Sufism, with a list of Definitions of the Terms ‘Ṣúfi’ and ‘Taṣawwuf,’ arranged chrono-
logically,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 38, no. 2 (1906): 304, https://www.jstor.org/sta-
ble/25210250.
4  Margaret Smith, Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East (Oxford, UK: 
Oneworld Publications, 1995), v.
5  Robert Charles Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (london, UK: Bloomsbury Aca-
demic, 2016), viii.
6  Nile green, Sufism: A Global History (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 26.
7  lloyd Ridgeon, “The Origins of Sufism,” in Routledge Handbook on Sufism, ed. lloyd 
Ridgeon (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021), 4.
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Sufi orders and figures. for example, Nile green established that Sufi 
personalities in India, before the 19th century, carried significance for 
both Hindus and Muslims regardless of their religious identification.8 
Even in other earlier contexts such as the Middle Eastern regions where 
Islam originated, he argues elsewhere that Muslims in these areas were 
outnumbered by Christians and these regions were more “thorough-
ly Christianized than even Western Europe at this time.”9 As a result, 
it comes as no surprise that, “the Middle East fertile Crescent was a 
landscape of churches, monasteries and saintly shrines […] Tombs of 
Christian saints and prophets were recognised as Muslim pilgrimage 
centres.”10 However, rather than framing this as a question of Sufism’s 
syncretic roots, green encourages us to think of “small-scale allegiances 
based on the face-to-face reciprocity of protection and devotion”11 at 
play, which enabled Sufism to carry weight among followers of different 
religious traditions in India, and in other regions where Islam spread, 
as has been noted earlier in the example of the Middle East. Therefore, 
he concludes: “from a universalising Sufism based on written theories 
of mystical abstraction, we have come to a localizing Sufism based on 
human bodies in emotional contact.”12
Therefore, given the localising nature of Sufism that has been wit-
nessed historically, it comes as no surprise to find heavy Indian or Bud-
dhist influences standing out in Sufi discourse, given that there was 
contact, communication and correspondence between these cultures. 
Such influences can be charted across many somatic rituals that mark 
the relationship that Eastern cultures cultivate with embodied existence. 
Such as the ritualistic movement of sama’ in Sufism, which Schimmel 
compares to other dance rituals in “primitive” cultures.13 Much like 
the other bodily rituals in indigenous cultures, sama’ also aims at cul-
tivating a certain form of embodiment for enabling its spirituality. As 
8  Nile green, “Making Sense of ‘Sufism’ in the Indian Subcontinent: A Survey of Trends,” 
Religion Compass 2, no. 6 (2008): 1057, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00110.x.
9  green, Sufism, 19.
10  green, Sufism, 19. 
11  green, Sufism, 19.
12  green, Sufism, 19. 
13  Annemarie Schimmel, The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (lon-
don, UK: East-West Publications, 1980), 219. 
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S. H. Nasr notes, this ritual has in fact been described by Sufi mas-
ters as a “spiritualization of the body and the corporealization of the 
spirit.”14 This cultivation of embodiment, with direct attention paid to 
the body, was what attracted many Western phenomenological thinkers 
who emphasised experiential reality. Such as luce Irigaray, who pro-
posed turning to “Eastern teachings” for a “return to the cultivation of 
sensible perception”15 or Merleau-Ponty who began his anthology Les 
Philosophes célèbres, with “Two Indian Philosophers” and “Two Chinese 
Philosophers.”16
However, considering the prevalence of such rituals and customs 
across various Eastern cultures, it becomes difficult to delineate where 
they originated and how. Even if the origin is determined, this does 
not imply that the culture or tradition integrating practices from other 
traditions was not experimenting with it in order for it to take on a new 
form. As I would argue, the two explanations of the origins of Sufism 
need not be at odds with each other; external influences could very well 
be shaping a tradition but its own impetus for growth and evolution 
might alter the course as well. As Stepaniants claims:
While Sufism was subject to external influences as much as the whole of 
Islam, and was doubtless influenced by various non-Islamic schools, it would 
be more reasonable to consider Sufism as a product of Muslims’ spiritual evo-
lution.17
Even though she prioritises one explanation over the other, my pur-
pose in quoting her is to demonstrate that both factors were at play in 
the historical development of Sufism.
In the case of breathwork, which is found in many indigenous cul-
tures, we can also argue that Sufism’s internal and external influences 
combined to constitute these practices. far from positing a transcen-
14  Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality (Albany, NY: State University of New 
York, 1987), 128.
15  luce Irigaray, Between East and West: From Singularity to Community, trans. S. Pluháček 
(New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2002), 56.
16  Jin Y. Park and gereon Kopf, “Introduction: Philosophy, Nonphilosophy, and Compara-
tive Philosophy,” in Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism, eds. Jin Y. Park and gereon Kopf (Plymouth, 
UK: lexington Books, 2009), 1.
17  Marietta Stepaniants, Sufi Wisdom (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1994), 14.
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dental principle that unifies or brings together all such practices, and 
portraying Sufism in abstract universal terms, I will instead make the 
case that each culture and tradition holds its unique place in the broad 
spectrum of breathing practices. Of course, as we employ methods of 
comparison, we will encounter similarities and underlying logics that 
unite each practice, but even then, the historicity of each culture would 
beg us to not deracinate it from its original context. Its historicity, for 
our purposes of navigating a respiratory philosophy, may add more 
richness to the depths we seek to explore.
Breathing, Breathwork, and Sufism
Turning to the Sufi practice of breathwork, as we begin to explore 
the heritage that Rumi was a part of, one fact stands out that is com-
mon across other Eastern cultures. That is the absence of any textual 
form of breathwork instructions. This can largely be attributed to the 
presence of instruction in oral forms and mainly relying on the master-
disciple relationship. This means that instructions were passed on from 
generation to generation without any textual sources at our behest to 
understand the content that was transferred. However, this changed at 
the turn of colonialism, when local cultures also turned to print to dis-
seminate their ideas in the wake of foreign hegemony. As Nile green 
has noted with respect to the South Asian region under British impe-
rialism:
Print, then, stood at the centre of the transformation of an earlier ecumene 
in which the symbolic capital of certain forms of knowledge had been guarded 
through the social barriers presented by traditions of secrecy and controlled 
initiation.18
What had been transmitted across generations through proper chan-
nels of direct contact with a spiritual master, was laid open for the pub-
lic through the arrival of print media.
18  Nile green, “Breathing in India, c. 1890,” Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 2–3 (2008): 5, 
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X07003125.
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Notwithstanding the lack of textual sources centred on breathwork, 
we still find replete references to breath and breathing even in pre-co-
lonial Sufi discourse. We begin to see the significance these enjoyed in 
Sufi discourse when we pay attention to the linkages it carried with the 
Divine, the ultimate beloved on the Sufi path to gnosis. According to 
the Sufis, the first human ever, Adam, was created when the Divine 
blew into him. They refer to a verse from the Holy Scripture for Mus-
lims, which states: “And I Blew into it my ruh.”19 Similarly, another 
prophetic saying attributes life being “blown” into the foetus by an an-
gel, during gestation at a prescribed time.20 Since the Sufis believed that 
the source of life or sustenance for our earthly bodies lies in the Divine 
Breath, they viewed each breath as a special reminder of connecting 
to the Divine. A belief that, as we shall see later in our discussion, has 
strong repercussions for how breath is viewed as a “gift.” This notion of 
attaching value and significance to breath was upheld throughout the 
tradition. Even earlier Sufi scholars such as Sahl Tustarī, who resided in 
Basra in the 9th century, have noted the import of breath and breathing. 
His commentary on the Muslim’s Holy Scripture is known to be one of 
the first Sufi exegeses of Divine Revelation, which was later compiled 
into a text by his disciples. While explaining the verse: “god takes the 
souls at the time of their death, and those that have not died, in their 
sleep” (39:42), he claims that it is the “subtle breath [nafas laṭīf]” from 
19  Quran, 15:29. I have not translated ruh in this verse, which is employed in the Sufi tradi-
tion to refer to the spiritual side of each human’s entity. In this verse, it has been attributed 
to the Divine, relating how He put life into Adam after creating him. Verses from the Quran 
are available online, see Quran, online Tanzil – Quran Navigator, accessed October 23, 2023, 
https://tanzil.net.
20  This prophetic saying is recorded in Sahih Muslim, Book of Predestination, Chapter on 
the creation of a human in the mother’s womb and the writing of their sustenance, death, 
deeds and their blessedness or wretchedness. The relevant portion of the saying is: “Indeed 
each of you is put together in the womb of their mother in 40 days, then they become a clot of 
congealed blood for a similar period, and then a piece of flesh for a similar period. Thereafter, 
god sends an angel, and he is ordered to write four things. It is said to him: ‘Write their deeds, 
their sustenance, their death and whether they will be blessed or wretched.’ Then he breathes 
the ruh into him…” Depending on how the text is read, it can be translated as I have done 
above, though another reading could be: “Then the ruh is breathed into him,” which does not 
attribute the action to the angel. Nonetheless the event of spiritual life being breathed into the 
foetus remains. See Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al- Naysaburi, Sahih Muslim, accessed October 19, 
2023, https://sunnah.com/muslim.
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the spiritual self that enables a person to live after they awaken from 
sleep,21 pointing towards the role that breath played in Sufi discourse 
even in pre-modern times.
later, when Sufi scholars systematically brought their ideas into 
print in the postcolonial era, breathing and breathwork remained an 
integral part of their discourse. As Nile green notes, a book entitled 
Asrar-e-Dervish (or The Secrets of the Mystic) detailed Sufi breathing 
and visualisation techniques.22 This book stands out because it draws 
connections between breathing and the wider universe. The author de-
scribes different methods of breathing under differing circumstances, 
which ranged from “ensuring a safe journey” to “meeting a king.”23 
Clearly, for the Sufis the breath serves as a bridge between a person’s 
embodied consciousness and the world it directs its consciousness to-
wards. Similarly, another Sufi manual by the renowned South Asian 
Sufi, Haji Imdad Allah teaches methods of breath control or pas anfas. 
He even teaches a breathing technique that enables a student to mys-
tically breathe the breath of their spiritual master.24 Again, the breath 
serves as a door or window of opportunity that opens our conscious-
ness towards the other, an underlying theme that will be noticed in 
Rumi as well.
In sum, it was against this background of Sufi instruction and ven-
eration of breathing and breath that Rumi may be situated to fully 
understand the sense he created through his metaphorical poetry on 
breath.
A Breathing World: Newness, Creativity and Change
The first instance of his poetry that I would like to cite speaks to his 
readers about the possibilities of creativity and change that each new 
breath carries. He says:
21  Sahl b. Abd Allah al-Tustarī, Tafsir al-Tustarī, trans. Annabel Keeler and Ali Keeler (louis- 
ville, KY: fons Vitae, 2011), 171.
22  green, “Breathing in India,” 8.
23  green, “Breathing in India,” 9.
24  green, “Breathing in India,” 14.
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My life is a new garden with every breath,
My ears hear a new story with every breath
We are the fishermen of that sea
that brings forth a new pearl every day
So that you do not listen to any other’s person narrative
And grant new demonstration to this ancient world 25
Interestingly, the newness and creativity of a changing world that 
Rumi is speaking of is characteristic of any ontology that defines change 
as the basis of existence. Several differing ontologies may base this on 
processes or temporality or any other concept, but Rumi chooses to tie 
this to breath and breathing. It is breath that relates to the adoption of 
a “new demonstration” for an “ancient world.” I am not proposing that 
the other aforementioned themes in the ontology of change are not 
present in his poetry, but my point is to highlight the importance given 
to breath amongst these themes, showing how Rumi deftly interweaves 
breath into his poetic ontology.
furthermore, this possibility for creativity and change is based on an 
openness to the world, or a being-in-the-world in Heideggerian terms. 
Clearly, every breath brings with it a new garden to witness and a new 
story to hear. This shows how Rumi draws our attention to our con-
sciousness and the relations it enjoys with the world it inheres in by 
placing the possibilities for our consciousness within the nexus of our 
embodied perceptions.
To understand this openness to the world, we may employ the argu-
mentation at work in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Merleau-
25  Jelaluddin Rumi, Diwan e Shams, ghazal no. 2228, accessed July 14, 2023, https://ganjoor.
net/moulavi/shams. Author’s own translation. 
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Ponty’s philosophy, even though it was a continuation of his predeces-
sors’ (Husserl and Heidegger) project, is integral for the purposes of our 
paper because of his differing contribution to dialectical phenomenol-
ogy where man is the dialectical junction between pour soi and en soi.26 
He made a difference by putting forth a dialectic that accounted for the 
subjectivity of the subject and the objectivity of the world. His earlier 
works, such as Phenomenology of Perception, focused on the grounding 
of perceptual and other modes of consciousness within the body and 
the system of “self-others-world” that it is embedded in.27 later on in 
his life, Merleau-Ponty wanted to develop an ontology that could “re-
formulate what the traditional correlation between the object and the 
subject […] does not adequately express.”28 The Visible and the Invisible, 
one of his last works, presents a flesh ontology that explicates reality as 
a mesh of relations. As he himself explains:
my body […] is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that 
of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle 
around itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of itself; they are incrusted 
into its flesh, they are part of its full definition; the world is made of the same 
stuff as the body.29
Even in this explication of an ontology, Merleau-Ponty does not leave 
behind the emphasis on embodiment that he began with.30 Rather, as 
glen Mazis believes, his philosophy begs us to
26  Scott Warren, The Emergence of Dialectical Theory: Philosophy and Political Inquiry (Chi-
cago, Il: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 103.
27  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York, NY: 
Routledge, 2002), 69.
28  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Merleau-Ponty in Person: An Interview with Madeleine Chap-
sal, february 17, 1958,” in The Merleau-Ponty Reader, eds. Ted Toadvine and leonard lawlor 
(Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 386–387.
29  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed. ga-
len A. Johnson, trans. Michael B. Smith (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 125.
30  It is important to clarify a misunderstanding that could arise for some readers due to Mer-
leau-Ponty’s emphasis on the body. This misunderstanding chiefly results from a conventional 
perspective in observing thinkers and their works through traditional debates of philosophy 
such as materialism and idealism. Briefly stated, his project brought forth a conception of a 
body that was not strictly materialist. He was able to do so by incorporating the subjectivity 
of the body’s consciousness with its world’s objectivity. It would be reductionist to assume that 
his conception of a body translated to a materialist understanding, especially since he referred 
to such formulations as a “corpse body.” On the other hand, to assume that Rumi stood on 
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leave behind the notion of a contained body – a corpse-body, as he calls 
the notion of body as object – and to see embodiment as the way we are inex-
tricably caught up in relations with all that is, and we, our embodiment, are 
nothing more and nothing less.31
Rumi’s poetic words, through their openness to the ever-changing 
world around them, beckon us towards this mesh of relations that our 
embodiment is inextricably linked to. Therefore, understanding Rumi 
and his breathing as a chance to appreciate the countless possibilities 
that each breath offers in relation to an embodied engagement with the 
world around us, enables us to realise how each inward breath connects 
us to the outward world. By doing so, he can create room within his 
poetic ontology of a world that breathes with us, and each breath of-
fers a new possibility of locating our embodied existence in this mesh 
of relations that we refer to as the outward world. This ushers in the 
potential for newness, change, and creativity because thanks to our in-
terconnectedness with the world, we are emplaced in, we may breathe 
in new experiences.
The gift of Breath: Sufi Conscious Breathing
Another striking feature of his metaphor, which is grounded in the 
Sufi discourse of holding breath as a form of Divine sustenance as ex-
the opposite end of the spectrum of materialism would also be a disservice to his thought. I’ve 
aimed to establish how Sufism and its practices grounded themselves in the material body, and 
my work has precedent in the works of other Sufi studies scholars such as S. H. Nasr (Islamic 
Art and Spirituality), Scott Kugle (Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality and Sacred 
Power in Islamic Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)) and Shahzad 
Bashir (Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam (New York, NY: Columbia University 
Press, 2011)). This can be observed in several Sufi rituals such as breathwork and especially in 
the spiritual order initiated by Rumi that formally incorporated sama’ as a somatic ritual. De-
spite Rumi and Merleau-Ponty’s differing contexts, the philosophical questions of materialism 
and idealism (among others that they faced) were similar, and even though their approach to 
these questions might be based in differing grammars, it can still be studied through a unifying 
critical lens that appreciates their similarities and differences.
31  glen Mazis, “The flesh of the World is Emptiness and Emptiness is the flesh of the World, 
and Their Ethical Implications,” in Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism, eds. Jin. Y. Park and gereon 
Kopf (Plymouth, UK: lexington Books, 2009), 184.
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plained earlier, is the endowing nature of breath. As can be seen in this 
next example:
O you, in whose mercy every breath is a blessing
As all of this mercy, send your mercy towards me
O you, through your taverns, and through the wine of your consideration
You grant a new life to a particle
Every breath is a new life put in the dead,
Every breath is a new relief granted without respite32
Rumi’s address to his Divine Beloved and his engagement with them 
not only shows us the openness to the other or to the world, as we had 
discussed earlier, but it also brings out the nurturing, endowing, grant-
ing or gifting nature of breath. Perhaps one may turn to luce Irigaray, 
who has expounded upon this aspect of breath.33 She termed it a gift 
from the mother to the child. To highlight the importance of this gift, 
she speaks of how the mother gives her breath, or rather shares it with 
32  Rumi, Diwan e Shams, Tarji’at no. 14. 
33  A link to Irigaray’s philosophy is important because, as a scholar, she herself purported 
turning to “Eastern teachings” to bridge the gaps in Western philosophy. Her own work was 
informed by her engagement with her Yoga practice, which certainly differs from Rumi’s Sufism 
but its approach segues into the underlying philosophy of non-duality found in Sufi doctrines 
of Divine Unity. This dialogue between Rumi’s poetics and Irigaray’s philosophy does not im-
ply deracinating the former from his context as long as one consciously mediates the linkages 
between both, while being aware of the tools employed in this dialogue. for any scholar who is 
approaching a historical figure embedded in a unique socio-historical context, the recognition 
of one’s tools is probably more important than being able to accurately recognize the said socio-
historical context. I say this because each scholar is carrying their own tools and, therefore, 
claims that their tools have led them to “the” context of the historical person can be a scientifi-
cally inaccurate claim.
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her foetus, enabling them to survive. In a way, she “passes on physical 
and metaphysical existence to the other.”34
In a similar vein, Rumi feels his breath is a gift from the Divine 
Beloved, who by granting another breath to a body, grants a new life in 
a way. To the extent that Rumi recognises the vitality of the Beloved’s 
breath as sustenance for existence and claims:
The breath of the Beloved is my drink, the breath of the Beloved is my food. 35
This metaphorical poetry then evokes in the reader a deep sense of 
gratitude and appreciation for the next breath that awaits them, inevi-
tably opening the door to conscious breathing.
Unconscious breathing on the other hand, as Irigaray lamented, is 
merely a replication of gestational breathing: “After birth, whoever does 
not breathe, does not respect his or her own life and takes air from the 
other, from others.”36 Rather for her, it is merely a form of “vital breath” 
that keeps us alive and not yet anything spiritual,37 as Emily A. Holmes 
explains: “In a way, the individual is not yet fully born – he exploits the 
breath of others because he breathes unconsciously, without acknowl-
edging the gift of air.”38
The appreciation of breath in Rumi’s poetry in fact does the oppo-
site. It creates a sense of reverence for the Divine gift of Breath and in 
turn marks it as a respectable exchange on both sides, which means that 
it is not merely a “taking” of air on our side but an auspicious accept-
ance. This introduces conscious breathing, which in Irigarayan terms, 
takes us from vital breathing to spiritualised breathing.
34  Irigaray, Between East and West, 81.
35  Rumi, Diwan e Shams, ghazal no. 162. 
36  Irigaray, Between East and West, 50.
37  Irigaray, Between East and West, 76.
38  Emily A. Holmes, “The gift of Breath: Towards a Maternal Pneumatology,” in Breath-
ing with Luce Irigaray, eds. lenart Škof and Emily A. Holmes (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 
2013), 37.
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The gift of Existence and the Primacy of Breathing
Another feature that stems from the endowing nature of breath is 
the primacy of breathing. In fact, this is directly linked to the gift of 
breath, because as breath denotes bringing into existence for Sufis, it 
becomes an originary phenomenon. This can be understood via phe-
nomenologists such as Irigaray and Merleau-Ponty, who emphasise 
how primal breathing is and how that indicates its deep-rootedness in 
any discourse on existence. The former achieves this by detailing how 
breath is “the first autonomous gesture of the living human being” be-
cause it is the first action that the foetus takes without their mother.39 
This “autonomous gesture” not only reveals to us our primordial open-
ness to the world as we inhale and exhale the air “outside” of us but also 
brings forth the primacy of our subjectification as it commemorates the 
beginning of our worldly life. Škof and Holmes aptly summarise:
Breath is also a primal cosmological and biological phenomenon, which 
precedes all ethical and socio-political reflection – it is “breath” that can pro-
vide the human community with its first and primal experience and act of 
communication, that is, of the being-in-the-world-with-others mode. But 
even more importantly – it is precisely through breath that humanity has its 
most natural access to the phenomenon of life.40
Merleau-Ponty has referred to this aspect of the primordial nature 
of breathing in various parts of his works. The first instance is when he 
notes in “The Child’s Relations with Others”:
At the beginning of the child’s life […] the body is already a respiratory 
body. The whole respiratory apparatus gives the child a kind of experience of 
space. After that, other regions of the body intervene and come into promi-
nence.41
Clearly, he acknowledges how crucial, essential and primary breath-
ing is in our study of existence by pointing out that respiration provides 
39  Irigaray, Between East and West, 73.
40  lenart Škof and Emily A. Holmes, “Towards Breathing with luce Irigaray,” in Breathing with 
Luce Irigaray, eds. lenart Škof and Emily A. Holmes (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2013), 7.
41  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Child’s Relations with Others,” in The Primacy of Perception, 
ed. James M. Edie (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 122.
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a sense of space for a child and it is only once they have grown up that 
other forms of interaction with the world such as perception step in. 
Similarly, in Phenomenology of Perception, he quotes the example of fall-
ing asleep as a removal of consciousness from the surrounding world 
it is embedded in: “During sleep, on the other hand, I hold the world 
present to me only in order to keep it at a distance, and I revert to the 
subjective sources of my existence.”42 The “subjective sources” referred 
to here are not any transcendental form of existence, but rather our very 
embodiment, as has been analysed by Berndtson as well.43 This is why, 
for Merleau-Ponty, our embodied consciousness even in the state of 
sleeping, remains connected to the world. He makes a similar case for 
dreaming, regarding which he claims: “[…] the world obsesses us even 
during sleep, and it is about the world that we dream […]”44 He even 
argues for reflecting on how certain dreams are related to “concomitant 
respiratory states”45 and thus:
We must understand how respiratory or sexual events, which have a place 
in objective space, are drawn away from it in the dream state, and settle in a 
different theatre. But we shall not succeed in doing so unless we endow the 
body, even in the waking state, with an emblematic value. Between our emo-
tions, desires and bodily attitudes, there is not only a contingent connection 
or even an analogical relationship […]46
Through the analysis of the relatedness of dreaming and breathing, 
he explains how our embodied consciousness remains embedded in the 
world, even in our sleeping state, showing that these “subjective sources” 
of our existence are primordial for us. He explains:
In this sense the sleeper is never completely isolated within himself, never 
totally a sleeper […] But what, in the sleeper […] makes possible a return to 
the real world, are still only impersonal functions, sense organs and language 
42  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 331.
43  Petri Berndtson, Phenomenological Ontology of Breathing: The Respiratory Primacy of Being 
(New York, NY: Routledge, 2023), 48.
44  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 341.
45  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 331.
46  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 331.
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[…] Sleep and waking […] are not modalities of consciousness or will, but 
presuppose an “existential step.”47
Therefore, in a way, he is also able to demonstrate the primary nature 
of breathing for our consciousness, because it is amongst our “anon-
ymous alertness of the senses” – the “last link” to the world, which 
makes “waking up a possibility.”48 Sleep then is essentially a primordial 
connection with the world. That is why he described breathing as the 
sleeper’s respiration via “some great lung outside myself,” as he claimed:
I am breathing deeply and slowly in order to summon sleep, and suddenly 
it is as if my mouth were connected to some great lung outside myself which al-
ternately calls forth and forces back my breath. A certain rhythm of respiration, 
which a moment ago I voluntarily maintained, now becomes my very being, 
and sleep, until now aimed at as a significance, suddenly becomes a situation.49
Essentially then, the primordial nature of breathing paves the way 
for an ontology that attributes great significance to our connection or 
embeddedness in our surrounding world.
Take, for instance, the following words of Rumi, which speak to 
us regarding the gift of breathing and how that relates to our primary 
existence:
for one moment (or breath) become dead to all that is futile and see
Every breath will grant life to you and become an Isa
for one breath, wash yourself behind the veil of love
like Maryam, through (the miracle of ) breath you will witness giving 
birth to an Isa50
47  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 190.
48  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 190.
49  Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 246.
50  Rumi, Diwan e Shams, ghazal no. 2807. 
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Notice especially the usage of the symbology of Maryam and Isa, or 
Mary and Jesus, which compels the reader to attach the gift of breath 
to birth and subsequently to our primary form of existence. for just 
as Jesus granted a new life to others through his breath, and Mary was 
granted Jesus in the form of an angel breathing into her, it becomes 
clear to the reader that not only is existence tied to Divine Breath but 
it is also constituted through it. Rumi manages all of this by cultivat-
ing a deep regard for breathing in his readers, which demonstrates how 
essential breath is and how primary for existence. Moreover, it is this 
primal mode of breathing that connects us to the Divine Other and 
to others because we receive this gift from them. In an Irigarayan and 
Merleau-Pontian sense, this conveys the notion of being embedded in 
this world and intrinsically connected to it, a concept that enjoys im-
portance in Rumi’s Sufi scheme of breathing.
Breath: the Bridge Between the finite and Infinite
I have expounded upon the creative, endowing, and primal nature 
of breathing with the last subsequently emphasising our interconnec-
tion with this world. finally, I would like to end with a verse by Rumi 
that brings together all the themes by focusing on how each new breath 
is a reminder of our finite existence. This is because once breath leaves 
our body, our life ends. However, it also points towards the infinite pos-
sibilities it houses with the change that a new breath brings. This merg-
ing of the finite and infinite is what Rumi points towards by saying:
The wind of breath through grief polishes my heart
If I take a breath, it annihilates another breath51
There is grief upon the passing of a breath, but this breath polishes 
the heart bringing newness and change because of one resounding fact: 
even though I have lost something, I have gained something else. Notice 
51  Rumi, Diwan e Shams, ghazal no. 26. 
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how Rumi explicates the finiteness of each breath and implicates it with 
the new breath, which annihilates the previous one but brings a new-
ness with it. He does so through the concept of fana, usually translated 
as “self-annihilation” – the central feature of Sufi discourse that aims to 
negate any notion of an “I” that can hinder a Sufi on their path.52 The 
Sufi journey may be qualified as a quest where any illusion of a “self ” is 
left behind. The goal of fana, as Chittick explains, is: “Man’s existence, 
or ego, or selfhood, call it what you will, must be annihilated so that he 
can attain to his true self, which is his existence and ‘subsistence’ within 
god.”53 In a sense then, the aim of fana is to decentre subjectivity and 
place the individual Sufi within a network of interrelations inhabited 
by the Sufi, their world and the Divine Beloved, so that they arrive at 
a conscious realisation “that everything he is derives absolutely from 
god.”54 This objective of annihilating the self can be traced in other 
Eastern philosophies as well, as Berndtson claims regarding the spiritual 
practice of zazen by Zen masters who cultivate mindful breathing to ex-
perience “nothing.”55 In the same vein, Sufi masters aim for fana, which 
marks a complete transformation. It becomes a fertile ground for the 
renewal or rebirth of the Sufi, who emerges in baqa (or self-subsistence 
with the Divine), its “correlative term.”56
52  Some might object that for Rumi and the Sufis of his time, fana meant negating all wrong 
conceptions of our self to attain the “true” self and this does not imply any relation between 
the inner and outer as I have outlined. There does not seem to be any contradiction between 
these interpretations as all incorrect conceptions of the self could inevitably be external (social 
or cultural) judgements or perceptions that one must shed on the Sufi journey. Therefore, even 
in this understanding, fana is bridging the internal and external worlds of the Sufi. However, it 
is important to note that any notion of a “true” self does not downplay the importance of the 
body because that again takes us back to the idealist/materialist categories of Modern Western 
Philosophy, whereby we are identifying Rumi as an idealist ignoring the material body. Rumi’s 
Sufism defies these categorizations and I have repeatedly made this point in my paper through 
my emphasis on embodied rituals being a core of Sufi ideas and practices.
53  William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany, NY: 
State University of New York Press, 1983), 179.
54  Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, 179.
55  Petri Berndtson, “The Possibility of a New Respiratory Ontology,” in Atmospheres of 
Breathing, eds. lenart Škof and Petri Berndtson (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 
2018), 30.
56  Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love, 179. 
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This merging of the finite and infinite, through this realisation of 
our finite existence that carries infinite possibilities in fana and baqa, 
is in effect a merging of dualities. A merging that reminds us of the 
interiority and exteriority accompanied by breathing, for when I inhale 
external air and then exhale my internal air, it reflects Irigaray’s statement: 
“I bear the other within me.”57 The relating of inner-outer dichotomies 
through breath is a case presented by James Morley as well. He studies 
breath control practices in yoga and claims that the aim of these exer-
cises is to maintain a relationship between the inside and outside. In 
his words, breath control is “the concrete experience of the body as a 
relation between inside and outside.”58 Blurring the boundaries of our 
conceptual categories, breathing becomes a powerful tool in any onto- 
logy or philosophy that seeks to describe reality.
That is why, for Irigaray, the air becomes “a clearing for appearing 
and disappearing, for presence and absence.”59 According to Berndt-
son, Irigaray radicalises the Heideggerian clearing (Lictung) and fash-
ions air as the space where Being manifests itself through presence and 
absence.60 This implies that air becomes the “universal dimensionality” 
and our embodiment is therefore a “respiratory openness” towards the 
clearing of air.61
Similarly, for Sufis such as Rumi who emphasised cultivating con-
scious breathing, their insistence on paying attention to breath was in-
formed by their acceptance of how vital it was to bridge the gap between 
the inside and the outside. Once we realise the universal dimensionality 
of the air we breathe, it actualises the possibility of what Sufis practice 
as conscious breathing and what is termed as spiritual breathing by Iri-
garay. Subsequently, our myopic notions of self, inner, interior or other, 
outer, exterior are shaken up and replace our existing self-certitude and 
self-centredness with an ambiguous space of interconnections that un-
57  luce Irigaray, Sharing the World (london, UK: Continuum, 2008), 43.
58  James Morley, “Inspiration and Expiration: Yoga Practice Through Merleau-Ponty’s Phe-
nomenology of the Body,” Philosophy East and West 51, no. 1 (2001): 76, https://doi.org/10.1353/
pew.2001.0013.
59  luce Irigaray, The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger, trans. Mary Beth Mader (Austin, 
TX: University of Texas Press, 1999), 9.
60  Berndtson, Phenomenological Ontology, 91.
61  Berndtson, Phenomenological Ontology, 92.
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derlie our reality. This is, I believe, the true potential of Rumi’s work 
and his service in developing a respiratory ontology.
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