=kit021.txt

KIT 21 - Reflections on Noor's Birthday

Today, my sister Noor's birthday, and her memory is stronger than
ever! In the minds, hearts and souls of many, she is ever present,
an example of dedication and self-sacrifice to an ideal of
solidarity and compassion.

For many, women particularly, she personifies a projection of the
feminine need to place herself at the service of a cause of mercy
to which she could hand herself over altogether. This hallowed
need is however, rarely fulfilled, either because life has its way
of drawing one into its hum-drum patterns, or because this need is
only triggered off when the call for help suddenly crosses one's
way and shrieks of urgency. Even then, the human need for comfort,
security, and the instinct of self-preservation outbalances this
need of the soul to serve a great cause.

Thus the reason why Noor is so personally meaningful for so many
women is because she represents that which so many women would
have liked to prove themselves to be by giving expression to an
area of the soul where sacredness is realistic, that is, feasible
in real life (a feminine characteristic which, in most cases,
remains tentatively latent).

It is this dimension of feeling which is the stuff of which heroes
are made. But the price is terrifying. The inevitable outcome of
undaunted courage is the ordeal of torture and death in the most
devastating circumstances as a victim of the cruelty and sadism of
ruthless and merciless men and women, poisoned by hatred born of
resentment. The humiliation to which the captives, delivered into
the hands of their executioners are subjected, may prove even more
excruciating than the bodily torture. Yet, here is an extreme case
of the basic reconciliation of the irreconcilables behind all
real-life situations defined by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan as "the
Divine perfection suffering from the limitations of the
existential condition." In this case, it is only the circumstances
devised by the oppressors that are humiliating, but when one
carries one's dedication to the service of the victims of tyranny
to that point, one holds one's head high and unmasks the bad faith
of the tyrants, instead of cringing. This is precisely what Noor
did when she said, "The time will come when you will know the
truth." It is a sardonic paradox that the one who ventured out to
the rescue of the victims of torture in concentration camps,
should herself be subjected to the ordeal from which she wished to
save them.

Actually, I recall reviewing with Noor the principles upon which
we would establish our handling of the challenge as the cannon
outbursts were groaning at the gates of Paris. Both of us agreed.
also our mother. that so far, we had been spreading Pir-o-Murshid
Inayat Khan's teaching; now the time had come to apply it. There
can be no doubt; it is the teaching of kindness. Inayat means
kindness. To be consequent, it implies sacrificing oneself for the
sake of kindness to others. Of course. this is the Message of
Christ: unconditional love. Simple, yes, not metaphysics, just
reality in ail its painful realism, the axis around which the
human drama revolves. perhaps, the drama of the universe in its
breathtaking monumentality.

Here it was, right at our door, the call for mercy. People were
being tortured, people were being contemptuously dejected like
pariah dogs. There was a scent of war in the atmosphere; the folks
were aghast, afraid, terrified, cowardly. Of course, who would not
be but the stalwart, knowing what it means to stick out one's
head? In such situations, one can tell who is who; the silver
coating is off. Everyone is in life according to the measure of
the price one is prepared to pay from one s advantage or well-
being or security for the sake of the other. For me, this is the
criteria of spirituality, not Samadhi. 

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