=kit098.txt                

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[ Editorial Note (sa), "More of Less"  (Celso, Celso's Bar and
Grille, Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, near New Buffalo commune ]

Here's a bit of boilerplate, Mate:

[ 'SOS' = 'divergent text from the SO SURESNES KIT' ]

[ Skimming only, I find no significant divergence in the Kaivan
KIT XX text from the SOS KIT XX text ]*  

There are however some discrepancies in what is and what ain't a
quote:

[ IMPORTANT EDITORIAL NOTE (sa):
All of my set of KIT's -- ie, this Save_As__Text_only copy of the
Kaivan set of KIT's -- should be cross_checked against the
origianal hardcopy, or better, against the original input,
presumably held by ZR at Suresenes -- as I notae elsewhere, in
1999 he had offered to bring me a CD of that input when he came to
Israel.
I am finding numerous instances where was I took as a quote from
HIK , because it is in italics and blue_font in Kaivan, is in
non_italics in the hardcopy, and hence is presumably by PVK, not
HIK.
I make that mistake when the passage in question is the not_last -
- usually, the first -- of 2 or more quotes, of which the last is
identified in Kaivan, and in hardcopy, as a quote from HIK.
When I make this assumption, I cite it as '(HIK)' or as '(HIK,
presumably)' or some equivalent phrase.
When the citation is in the hardcopy and in Kaivan, it almost
always occurs as 'Pir-o'Murshid Inayat Khan', though sometimes as
some equivalent honorific. ]

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* I have cross_checked the Kaivan KITs against the SOS KITs
thatI've got 
only by skimming the starts and stops of the paragiraffe (1), not
by reading the sentences.
(1) A 'paragiraffe' (singular, 'paragraph') is, obviously, an
extended paragraph, eg a KIT.  ]

Kaivan KITs 61__72 are published as SOS KITs 61__72 (with Kaivan
KIT 30, published as SOS KIT 31 ) in a booklet by the SOS, long
flogged or peddled , as Everyman progresses, at Zenith Camp, it
should only evolve indeed into an 'Institute'. ] 

[ I also happen to have at hand, thanks to Rinatya Nachman (24
HaShalom, Rosh Pina 12000, Israel, renatia@bezeqint.net ) xeroxes
of the following KITS, which I hope similarly to skim if not
precisely peruse:  SOS KIT's:  96, 97, 98, 101, 102,  105, 106,
107, 110 ]

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KIT 98 - Peering into the Basics
of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan's Teaching
Regarding [SOS 'games of' ] the Ego   

[ N.B. The SOS hardcopy I have is also headed, 'Games of the Ego'
]

The primary process upon which Pir-o-Murshid bases the training of
mureeds revolves around his adage "make God a reality, so that God
is no more just a belief or concept." To make God a reality, one
needs to "awaken the God within." It is realistic, rather than
based on a belief system - God transcendent. It means discovering
and identifying with the holistic dimensions of our being, which
Murshid calls our divine inheritance, rather than limiting
ourselves within the constraint of our commonplace self-image.

Somehow to validate ourselves against self-doubt we, maybe
unconsciously, resort to a deceptive strategy; being defensive may
lead to being sanctimonious, pre-possessive, overbearing, self-
righteous, or arrogant. This is a very dangerous syndrome often
found amongst people dedicated to a high ideal or purporting to be
"spiritual" who incur the risk of stumbling between the horns of a
dilemma: the ideal versus reality. This leads to incongruity,
inconsistency, ambiguity, a mismatch in our self-image between
parading make-believe self-validation while floundering in the
abyss of self denigration.

Therefore, the first step is "MUHASIBI", matching our motivations
with our objectives, and our objectives with our values.

We ask ourselves why we are doing this or the other thing and what
our motivations are in our relationship with another person.
Somehow our attitude towards people, and consequently our way of
handling people and situations is a function of our own self-image
which is ordinarily deceptive. This self-image is commonly a
device used, probably unconsciously, to protect ourselves against
the onslaught upon our self-esteem by others - a built in strategy
which proves ultimately counterproductive because it does not
enlist all our resources. In our ignorance of the bountiful
qualities of our real being, we resort to a perfunctory strategy!

Investigate whether you are resorting to this strategy. Are you
yourself parading an imaginary self-image to protect your
vulnerability? If so you may detect the same strategy in others.
This representation of what is really one aspect of our real
being, with which one identifies, is precisely what Pir-o-Murshid
calls "the false ego." Murshid defines the "false ego" as a faulty
self-image. Our faulty self-image avers itself to be an inadequate
and misleading support upon which to establish our identity, and
its consequent effect upon our handling of our problems may have
disastrous consequences. Hence it is a fraction of our being with
which we identify, whereby we are not enlisting all our
potentialities. The crucial issue is therefore unmasking the hoax
of what Pir-o-Murshid calls "the false ego."

"The false ego is what that ego has wrongly conceived to be its
own being. It is not that the false ego is our ego, and the true
ego is the ego of God, it is that the true ego which is the ego of
God has been reduced to a false ego in us."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Sardonically, 
[ Footnote (sa) kit098_1 ] 
our defense system may in extreme cases, be blown up to the extent
of parading a puffed up masquerade of selfish disposition,
oppressing and down-treading kindred beings who themselves nurture
an inferiority complex, or at least a poor self-image, and do not
have the gall, the impudence, perhaps even the impertinence or the
ruthless heartlessness to counter this assault on their vulnerable
self-esteem. Since by deceiving themselves, they fool others,
maybe unawares, the less discerning may submit to their
patronizing impact.

This is how this false notion of ourselves may develop: In our
youthful, trusting, germane naivet, we believe in our projections
of ideal values to which we pledge allegiance. Soon we get hurt by
people, wounded, disenchanted, rejected, disenfranchised. The need
to provide protection against further assaults upon our
vulnerability becomes imminent, urgent, imperative, compelling!
What are the resources which promise to provide us with a shield?
Where can we find a healing? Outside, in friendly, compassionate,
reliable support from the brigade of dedicated helpers,
counselors? Or inside - in our very in-built self-healing
propensity? Our self-esteem, our self-confidence, our ability to
make way in life is at stake!

Our programming equips us with several strategies. The perfunctory
one (the commonest) is simplistically reactionary and fraught with
rudimentary emotions. See if you can detect these strategies in
yourself, then you can earmark them in others:

1.  If abused or humiliated:  anger, resentment that can
exasperate into hatred with the ensuing cruelty.

2. If oppressed or repressed by a despotic or tyrannical ego: 
either aggressivity, spite, or resenting having to yield by losing
one's self-respect.

3.  In one's endeavor to validate oneself by vying in valor or
emulation:  feelings of envy or jealousy may be aroused.

4.  If one grounds one's self-esteem on one's vying with the
Jones's in one's possessions:  covetousness and greed may ensue.
(A curious trick of the ego is that the egoist sees in every other
person a pronounced ego. "Why has he got a higher rank than me?")

5.  If there has been a pattern of being punished or disadvantaged
by having owned up, or stood for what one believes, or simply
being up-front:  a tendency of being devious, cowardly, or
manipulative may ensue.

All these reactions (and probably many more) evidence our rather
perfunctory and therefore inadequate efforts in dealing with the
challenge to our being accruing from the psychological
environment. They may present themselves as a shield, a dressing,
a parade, or a masque concealing or camouflaging our real being.
The consequence of their effect upon our self-image is confusing,
contradictory, ambiguous, incongruous. It could work sardonically
both ways: it can bloat one's ego to the point of making one
megalomaniac, judgmental and contemptuous or on the other hand
self-defeating and demeaning. It can lead toward sanctimoniousness
or toward false modesty.

According to Pir-o-Murshid:
" This ego feels vain when it says: "I cannot bear it. I am better
than the others." And so one's weakness is presented as strength."

(HIK.)  
In the hardcopy, the quote, in italis,  begins with 'This ego ...'
In Kaivan the preceeding sentence is not in italics nor in blue.]


Failure to reconnoiter these features in our personality as
strategies obstructs one's discovery of our true identity, which
would help in our overcoming or transmuting them. On the other
hand, to remove these protective displays, or crutches would
trigger off dangerous withdrawal symptoms: otherworldliness,
helplessness, listlessness. Yet, they aver themselves to be
counterproductive in the long range.

Since they are reactive, defensive, and therefore only engage a
small, peripheral area of our psyche, to forestall the withdrawal
symptoms that one would trigger off by removing them, it is
advisable to replace them gradually by enlisting the rich gamut of
resourcefulness latent in our various inheritances. Removing them
with the kind of will that we develop when identifying solely with
this area of our psyche (which Pir-o-Murshid calls "the false ego)
can only cause conflicts and result in a split in our personality.

No doubt by failing to recognize and own features in our
personality like guilt, resentment, anger, jealousy, covetousness,
they would simply conceal themselves in the unconscious and erupt
uncontrollably or make us feel mortified and frustrated. But if we
become aware of the way the universe conflues in us (as the ocean
in a wave), which is what Pir-o-Murshid means by God
consciousness, then we would muster a transpersonal will which is
what is meant by the divine will that would supersede the limited,
egoistic personal will. This could be illustrated by plugging a
battery into the charger.

Furthermore, it is in the nature of life that life is continually
self-organizing itself as us, and to achieve this we are
concomitantly dissolving at the jagged ends. This could be
illustrated by a flower: for the fresh petals in the center to
unfurl, the jagged ones at the periphery need to fall apart. One
does not have to chase them away; they will disintegrate to give
way to the new dispensation.

Besides, Pir-o-Murshid presents an original concept of the will,
which he illustrates by the yacht's captain harnessing the wind
but directing its momentum in the direction s/he wishes to steer
the yacht.  One could represent the wind as the self-organizing
faculty written into the programming of the universe and our will
in availing ourselves of this force, yet bending it according to
our personal initiative (which is what we mean by our will.) In
this case it is clear that we are not talking about a will of a
fraction of our being, that has alienated itself from our whole
self (which Pir-o-Murshid calls the false ego), because our will
is a "customized" expression of the divine impulse (in this
illustration, the wind).

More importantly, since our false ego represents only a small
portion of the bounty of our being, by calling upon it to meet an
undesirable onslaught upon our being, one is failing to actualize
the virtual potentialities that lie in wait in the wider range of
our being: the seedbed of our personality; whereas if we place a
buffer between the challenge of the psychological environment and
ourselves so as to discover that bountiful underpinning of our
personality, that challenge will act as a catalyst rather than an
onslaught spurring those latent potentials. One tends to evaluate
one's idiosyncrasies on the strength of one's self-image. If one
discovers wider areas of one's self-image, latent idiosyncrasies
will surface.

This is the reason why Pir-o-Murshid attaches so much importance
to becoming aware of what he calls our divine inheritance.

"The fulfillment of this whole creation is to be found in man and
this object is only fulfilled when man has awakened that part of
himself which represents God Himself. The same God, so little of
whose perfection manifested in the plant arises again at the end
of the cycle, trying to emerge as perfectly as possible in the
midst of human imperfection. The one who is conscious of his
earthly origin is an earthly man; the one who is conscious of his
heavenly origin is the son of God."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

"Since the ephemeral being manifest the form of the eternal, it is
by the contemplation of the eternal that God communicates to us
the knowledge of Himself. You know yourself through another
knowledge, different from that which you had of yourself, because
it is through Him that you know yourself."
IBN 'ARABI

Pir-o-Murshid points to the efficacy of meditation to downplay our
false self-image and therefore overcome the counterproductive
strategy of the false ego, thus mustering all our resourcefulness
by discovering the bounty latent in us.

The false ego is overcome through meditating upon the true self
which, in reality, is God. It takes a powerful impact, involving
our being in its very substance, to bring about a change so as to
shift our identity from the constraint of the commonplace self-
image. This is where meditation culminates in prayer.

"When they stand before God to learn, they unlearn all things that
the world has taught them; when they stand before God, their ego,
their self, their life, is no more before them. They do not think
of themselves in that moment with any desire to be fulfilled, with
any motive to be accomplished, with any expression of their own;
but as empty cups, that God may fill their being, that they may
lose the false self."      
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

The beauty in this is that, when man-the most egoistic being in
creation, who keeps himself veiled from God, the Perfect Self
within, by the veil of his imperfect self, which has formed his
presumed ego-by the extreme humility when he stands before God and
bows and bends and prostrates himself before His Almighty Being,
makes the highest point of his presumed being, the head, touch the
earth where his feet are. He in time washes off the black stains
of his false ego, and the light of perfection gradually manifests.
He stands then first face to face with his God, the idealized
Deity, and when the ego is absolutely crushed, then God remains
within and without, in both planes, and none exists save He.

In that state, called Fana-fi-Allah, when the soul is absorbed in
God, we lose the false sense of being and find the true reality. 
Then we finally experience what is termed Baqa-i-Fan, where the
false ego is annihilated and merged into the true personality,
which is really God expressing Himself in some wondrous ways. 
This is the same also as Nirvana, where the true reality of life
is experienced and expressed by rising above themselves.

"If this limited self which makes the false ego is broken, and one
has risen above the limitations of life on all the planes of
existence, the soul will break all boundaries, and will experience
that freedom which is the longing of every soul."      
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

PVK makes much use of the word 'sardonic'
Clearly it is an important critical concept in his evaluation of
"this wicked world" (as he not infrequently termed it, at least in
the 1990's)
But I ain't sure that he uses it quite right.
If it ain't the mot juste, that don't mean a more apt word exists.
Rinatya Nachman once remarked that since PVK does not speak
conventional German, German must change.


So us_'n 's got to figure out what PVK does mean by 'sardonic'.
I think of the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus.
"and laughed while they watched him die" -- Ricky Sherover sang
that in "Jesus was a Working Man" -- some old CPUSA song, I don't
doubt -- "When Jesus was a little lad, the hills rang with his
name / He argued with the older men, and put them all to shame" --
"So they got them one of the traitor's trade / and all too human
was he / He went and sold his savior for / a handful of silver
money"
"Now two thousand years have come and gone, and I can't help
wondering too / if the dreams of that poor carepenter are ever
coming true"

Ricky was Jewish of course.  We all are.  Me, Carl Shrager --
"sometimes I wonder" how the rest of you ever got here. 

Sikander Koppelman was the first Secretary of the SO USA.

("Look over yonder / bright star turning over / and it won't go
down "
"Sometimes I wonder / if other people wonder / the way I do "

She sang those songs with Joe Hickerson, who later worked at the
Library of Congress in folklore, and I think also at the
University of Indiana.  So hopefully he preserved all her songs.

Her sister, Leslie Sherover, lives out in Oakland, California.
Ciel went there once, and said, this was one of the few places
where she could feel at thome as an Afro_American.


I ain't got a dictionary at hand -- for this one would want rather
a good one, someting by those Oxford chaps no doubt -- but best's
I recollect, 'sardonic' applies to a mocking, even sadistic,
attitude or turn of speech.  I don't think it's predicated of
situations.

