The Passing of Nevit Oguz Ergin
You are receiving this email because your name was one of those in Nevit Oguz Ergin’s personal email directory.
It is with great sadness and joy that we share the news of Nevit Oguz Ergin’s passing on July 25th, 2015, at 9:56 p.m., a peaceful end to a 10-day fast.
Some of you may already know that Oguz Bey suffered from Parkinson’s, gout, and any number of other chronic conditions.
On our new website, ReadingRumi.com (Nevit Ergin page), you will find a story he wrote after coming home from his hospital visit last April.
The family preferred to keep Oguz Bey’s passing private. Because the family is spread across the globe, there was no formal service, and his ashes were given to his oldest son who lives in Northern California.
Oguz Bey worked up until he started his final fast, putting the finishing touches on the Rubailer of Rumi, which should be out sometime this year. It is being published in Turkey. It features the Persian version of Rumi’s over 1,700 rubais [quatrains] photographed from the 1367-68 C.E. original of the Divan-i Kebir currently housed in the Mevlana Museum in Konya, Turkey. It also includes the Turkish and English translations of the Persian. As soon as we know the exact date of the book’s availability, we will let you know.
Also in 2015, Oguz Bey created Unknown Rumi, a selection of 100 of the rubais from the soon-to-be-published Rubailer. As in the Rubailer, each rubai is in the original Persian and its Turkish and English translations. As well, Oguz Bey has written a comment about each of the rubais. It is perhaps his most accessible work and, along with The Sufi Path of Annihilation, a culmination of his spiritual journey here on earth. The book is available on Amazon in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and I believe in India. For all countries, it is available through the website, ReadingRumi.com.
Finally, for legal reasons, the Society for Understanding Mevlana passed along with Oguz Bey. However, we have a new website, mentioned above, ReadingRumi.com. Although the site is brand new, we do post a Rumi poem each week (translation by Oguz Bey), and if you would like to receive the posted poem in your email on a weekly basis, you can sign up for the (free) service on our home page. We also have a new Facebook page, Reading Rumi where we post the poems as well.
We encourage you to write a comment about Oguz Bey on the home page of ReadingRumi.com, on the Nevit Ergin page of ReadingRumi.com, or on our Facebook page, Reading Rumi.
What an understatement to say that this wonder man will be missed -- beyond reckoning. His gift to the world is priceless. His final wish was that we continue reading Rumi, that we each follow our spiritual practice, that we each wage a fierce battle against self, that we each reach our Beloved, that we each die before we die.
May God eternally bless Nevit Oguz Ergin.