=kit091.txt

KIT 91 - LAHUT - THE DIVINE INHERITANCE

            As we know, perhaps the main thrust in Pir-o-Murshid's
teaching is gaining awareness of one's divine inheritance which he
calls the seed of our personality. In Sufism it is called
Lahutiya.

            "The one who is conscious of one's earthly origin is
an earthly person, one who is conscious of one's heavenly origin
is the child of God."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            "You may think of yourself as a plant in which only a
little bounty latent in the seed is manifest. Yet in you the seed
that caused the whole existence - God - is to be found. The seed
out of which the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit are
made arises again at the end of the cycle. The same God so little
of whose perfection manifested in the plant arises again and again
in its pursuit of excellence trying to emerge as perfectly as
possible in the midst of human imperfection."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

            For the Sufis, as soon as we do this, we discover the
bounty of what they call the divine names, asma ilahi. For the
Sufis, the word 'names' (the sound of the Wazifa) carries a
particular significance (also for Hinduism: nama rupa), because we
are talking of the divine language. Each object has its specific
signature-tune - each object is the configuration of a composition
of vibrations which we perceive as sound. We try to reproduce
these sounds in our Mantrams or Wazaif.

            "Then God makes him journey through his Names (that is
His archetypes) in order to show him His signs. Thus the server
comes to know that he is designed by every name. It is through
these names that God appears to the server."
IBN 'ARABI

            If you have followed the previous KIT's, you will have
noticed that the Sufis distinguish different kinds of signs, ayat,
through which God reveals something of Him/Herself by means of
clues. The first one in alam al nazut was through the forms of the
world; the second in Arwah, by dint of that which transpires
through our nature of the divine nature. Now at the Lahut level,
after passing though the Jabarut state where we forego our
conscious act to give vent to the divine point of view, the divine
nature is revealed directly notwithstanding any signs that might
have been culled in our personality.

            We remember that the forms of the world and the
idiosyncrasies of our personality were signs - clues as to the
formless Reality. Now that any vestige of forms has faded away, it
is the divine attributes (which the Sufis call His Names), namely
the archetypes of which our idiosyncrasies the exemplars, that
reveal themselves.

            Is it possible, realistic, to see things from the
divine vantage point? Let us remember that we are describing here
a very advanced level that can only be reached after experiencing
the previous ones leading up to it. It is that transit that we
need to look into. At some point Ibn 'Arabi said: one only knows
the archetype through the exemplar. What meaning does roundness
have for us if not through round objects? Our minds extrapolate
between the experience we have of the round objects experienced.
Somehow when we see a round object, what is common between all the
round objects we have previously perceived is subsumed: that is
what we mean by the archetype. The question is: could we have any
notion of roundness without having experienced round objects? It
may well be that it is just because roundness is written into the
software of our minds that we recognize roundness in objects. But
how can we reach it? What do the divine attributes mean to us?
This is the complementary way of grasping the attribute in the
divine mind. Such is the significance of a method used by an early
church father, Tauler, which proved invaluable to Martin Luther.
It is called significatio passiva.

            In the presence of the Psalm verse in justitia tua,
libera me (may Thy attribute of Justice liberate me), he
experienced a movement of revolt and despair. What can there be in
common between this attribute of justice and my deliverance? And
such was his state until the young Luther perceived in a sudden
flash that his attribute must be understood in its significatio
passiva, that is to say: Thy justice whereby we are made into just
men, Thy holiness whereby we are hallowed... Similarly in the
mystic theosophy of Ibn 'Arabi, the divine attributes are
qualifications that we impute to the Divine Essence... as we
experience it in ourselves.

            To grasp the divine archetypes, Martin Luther was
extrapolating between the two poles of the same reality: the
archetype and the exemplar - which is what one does at the Malakut
level...

            "Know that there is no form in the lower world without
a likeness (mithl) in the higher world. The forms in the higher
world preserve the existence of their likeness in the lower
worlds. Between the two worlds there are tenuities which extend
from each form to its likeness.... These are like ladders for the
angels, while the meanings that descend in these tenuities are
like angels."
IBN 'ARABI

            This realization establishes a new mode of
relationship between God and the creature (or sentient being), the
two poles of the same reality are the nature of the relationship
between the lord and the vassal originating in the Iranian
chivalry: FUTUHAT.

            "The divinity seeks for a being whose God it is. The
divine sovereignty has a secret and that is thou."
SAHL TOSTARI

            We establish God's sovereignty by our recognition of
our divine office which facilitates God's manifestation of His/Her
qualities, sifat.

            "Each manifest being is the form of a lordly Name 'ism
rabbani'. The Rabb becomes a reality in relationship with a being
who is designated in the passive form."
H. CORBIN

            "The divine suzerainty has a secret (sirr robbubiya)
and that is thou."
SAHL TOSTARI

            "By actuating the divine nature in my personality, I
confer upon God a mode of existence."
IBN 'ARABI

            However, if one has reached the perspective of the
Lahut level, one proceeds more radically: one captures directly
the seeds of those qualities we inherit irrespective of what we
have made of them in our personality so that in the Tawhid one
will be able to customize them in one's personality in a new
dispensation while disintegrating one's previous personality
rather than adapting it, which could be a compromise.

            There is no way in which we can gain a clue as to the
divine magnificence vested in our divine inheritance, or even of
what it is, unless we reverse our vantage point and look at things
from the divine point of view. This is indeed the main objective
of Sufism. To achieve this, one needs to let go of one's personal
self-image, which is an outgrowth of what one really is. If we
cease identifying with it, it will dissolve to give way to a fresh
dispensation from the seed which is our divine inheritance.

            "Oh God! Do away with my Nasutiyat (human
idiosyncrasies), so that Thy Lahutiyat may replace it."
AL HALLAJ

            "The soul acquires only those qualities in which it is
interested, and the soul keeps only those attributes in which it
is interested. However many undesirable attributes a person may
have, one can lose them all if one does not approve of them."PIR-O-MURSHID

            Here, at this level we are overwhelmed by the
inexhaustible bounty of possibilities of which so little ever
materializes at the existential level. It is called by the Sufis
sometimes the level of possibilities, imkan.(Buddha refers to this
level in the arupa meditations - meditations beyond form which he
encountered on the way to illumination). In Islam, it is the
treasury.

 "There is no thing whose treasuries are not with Us."
QUR'AN 15-21

[ Fn(sa) kit091__1 ]


            "I am not authorized to give you the key to the divine
treasury, you have to discover it yourself."
NIFFARI

            For clarity sake, let us recall that at the Arwah
level, we were facilitating the unfurling of the potentials of our
being in the process of becoming. But here, at the Lahut level,
since our notion of time as an arrow has collapsed, we are
experiencing conditions that favor our being aware of the immortal
dimension of our being. The Sufis refer to a different causal
chain than Laplacian determinism; they are talking of what one
might call a horizontal chain of cause and effect.

            "When one says that the Truth most glorious
comprehends all beings, the meaning is that He comprehends them as
a cause comprehends its consequences, not that He is a whole
containing them as His parts..."
JAMI

            In our meditations, if we can let go of our personal
identity, and reverse our consciousness so that instead of looking
for God as the object of our cognizance, we try to open ourselves
to God's revealing His\Her vision in pre-eternity, Azaliat,
irrespective of ourselves in our temporary state, we will find
ourselves in sync with the following perspective of al Hallaj who
left an unforgettable testimony of what was revealed to him in a
meditation:

            "In His Self He contemplated in His pre-eternity
(Azaliayat) all the invisible... This is the original state in the
absence of all creatures, of all qualities... Then He entertained
a dialogue through a thought, by means of all His thoughts. He
conversed with Himself. Then He contemplated Himself in the
attribute of love, because in its essence, the essence of all
essences is love. Then He contemplated in His attribute of love
all the other attributes of His Being. Then He glorified Himself
in Himself... He looked into pre-eternity and created a picture.
This picture is His picture, the picture of His essence. And when
God beholds anything, He creates His picture in it for all
eternity.... Then He saluted it and congratulated it for its
splendid countenance."
AL HALLAJ  

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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:


[ Fn(sa) kit091__1 ]             

No offense intended, and I beg pardon if I give offense to anyone,
and will accept requests for restitution (tikun) for same, BUT:

Why is the Koran always using a plural form to refer to Supreme
Being (translated 'Us'), whereas Judaism usually -- but by no
means always, since it often uses the dual if not plural form,
'Elo(k)im' -- uses the singular

(I do not know if in the Hebrew it is masculine singular, or if
rather it is gender_neutral -- I think the latter.  If so, all
that Feminist Theology was just one Red Herring. )

If so, then it may be that much of the revelation of the Koran was
on a level lower than the revelation of monotheism -- maybe even
as low as the Upper Mezzanine in that 7_heaven Department Store --
that is, the upper half of the astral plane, where all the genies
and other fun beings hang out -- 

I don't mean to be theologically competetive, much less
triumphalist -- there's room for everyone and everything in every
religion, at least after all the Commentariasts have finished
doing their thing -- and every religion contributes its own
insights -- and anyone, "one to me is fame and shame, said the the
mind to the brain" (Leary, Psychedelic Prayers)




