=kit104.txt

[ I (sa) ain't got a SOS copy of KIT 104 ]

KIT 104 - The Test of Authenticity

It is significant that mainly amongst contemplatives do we find
people who are in a high state of attunement. We ourselves may
also spark a spell of ecstasy in our meditations. Also, the
prayers of glorification of the devout may lift their souls to a
state of exaltation.

"Man thinks, speaks, and acts according to the pitch to which his
soul is tuned."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

People, particularly initiates, lament that they fail to maintain
that "high" in everyday life. The social environment, particularly
the trauma of pain, exercises a compelling impact upon the setting
of our consciousness, coercing it into our ego, which devises
strategies for our self-defense. Projections, denials, pretensions
are strategies which parade a useful though deceptive image of our
real self to safeguard our self-image, which is not by any means
what we really are. By the same token our concern about adapting
ourselves to the challenge of the environment has the effect of
constraining us in our self-image, which is not what we are but
what we think we are.

Accomplished contemplatives are able to maintain their "high", by
observing a combination of two complementary outlooks:

I. the doubt that their assessment of situations, including their
self image, is reliable (this is applying the theory of 'maya' -
unmasking the personal bias) and

II. continually (with unrelenting diligence and observation)
maintaining the alternate perspectives (the wide embrace, looking
out from inside, and the overview) which need to be examined here
in more detail.

The reason contemplatives, or devouts are able to escape from the
commonplace conditioning, and thereby maintain (or recapture)
their high, is because of an enhanced sensitivity to the grossness
and greed and guile that they ascribe to "the ways of the world."
And there is a passion for the "sacred" to which they give
priority beyond their "earthly" needs (which in our day and age
need to be met in the appropriate proportion). All depends how
either figures in our list of values.

The trouble is that to attune to the "sacred", it is helpful (or
easier) if we find ourselves in an environment, both physical and
social, which favors that attunement. That is our fragile
attunement seeks to lean upon a support system. Inevitably, owing
to the flaws in our human nature, this support system may prove
manipulative, may be administered in the form of a "display" of
spirituality whereby the adherent ascribes sacredness to the
device rather than what it represents, (hence the destruction of
idols in Islam). The same may apply to ascribing sacredness to the
personal dimension of role models, instead of their cosmic or
transcendent dimension. This is idolatry. The Sufis replace
tassawuri Murshid, the image of the Murshid with tawwajeh - to
resonate to the pitch to which the teacher is attuned at the crest
of his/her conscious reach, rather than envision his/her face.

Since the Sufis were conversant with the nomadic life, they could
not rely upon having a temple or church, or mosque or synagogue as
a support system (albeit the prayer carpet introduced an
extraterritorial space in the profane environment). Consequently
they had to construct the temple out of their own body, and a
temple of light out of their own aura, finally discovering that
what they thought was a temple averred itself to be the priest (or
priestess) in themselves and in others.

If the altar which embodies our projections as being a sacred
object, (a totem) avers itself to be made of gilded cardboard
boxes (as in Bernstein's Mass) and the guru a phantasmagoria of
make-believe, (as has often proven to be the case amongst self-
styled role models, on further inspection) then our faith which is
vested in them collapses in dismay, outrage, offense, indignation.

When the hoax is unveiled, the feeling of having allowed ourselves
to be fooled reeks of betrayal, and proves demeaning to our very
self-esteem which was riding high on the "spell" sparked by the
"display".

"What is the sign that one is ready to awaken from sleep? It is
when a person begins to think, "All that I have dreamed and
understood seems so unreal; there are some realities of which I am
vaguely aware, and yet compared with them all I have studied and
done seems to be of no account." As the dawn comes after the night
of darkness, so he sees light appearing; but he has not yet seen
the sun; he is only beginning to awaken."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

It is our concern for authenticity, together with our realization,
that triggers off our doubt, which in turn unmasks the hoax of our
belief in wishful thinking, and eschews reliance upon a support
system for our "high." This has the effect of opening the door to
genuine experience and the ensuing realization. It was the wise
man (not the heckler) in the Bernstein Mass who pointed out that
the wonderful scenario was in fact a sortilege, an enchanting
display. How judicious it is to thrash people's simple faith-when
their only way to uphold it is through belief-is of course
questionable, as is illustrated in the famous story of Moses and
the shepherd.

It is only safe to let go of the support system if one can replace
it by genuine spiritual experience, as indeed is the problem in
withdrawal symptoms after addiction. Otherwise one falls in a hole
which is the dark night. One cannot exit from that dark night by
the same door through which one entered. That can only occur if
the fictitious display, and the role model parading
sanctimoniously to exercise dominance over the believers, is
replaced by a clear sense of the immaculate and germane sacredness
inherent in its very distortion in real life. That transit is
personified in the Bernstein Mass by the transfer of leadership
(or rather the metamorphosis) from the high priest to the
redeeming child with the candle, chanting, followed by the crowd
who had been stymied in the dark night.

The art of so doing consists of being able to keep riding the tide
of doubt in an ongoing way while promoting the progressive
transformation without allowing ourselves to be bogged in by it.

This is precisely the process that any spiritual group needs to go
through to respond to its own need for authenticity, and you may
have noticed precisely the transforming journey that we have
shared in the Sufi Order.

This is why Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan beckons upon us to self-
generate the "sacred" in ourselves by "awakening (arousing) the
God within."

All genuine spiritual groups embody a transmission equipped with a
support system that needs to be updated to meet the process that
their adherents go through.

The risk, however, is that unless we are sharply perspicacious,
when we are bereft of the sacred support system, our doubt may
induce us to slip back into our trite personal self-image, our
middle range vantage point, and our commonplace thinking.

The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience
the different phases of manifestation, and yet not lose its way,
that it may regain its original freedom, in addition to the
experience and knowledge it has gained in the world.

The doubts of pupils prove troubling to their teachers. The
teachers themselves need to honor the truthfulness of their own
doubts rather than denying them, or circumventing them. It is by
making that journey, passing though the dark night of doubt while
clearly seeing the way out by themselves-negotiating that transit
from the "apparent" to the real-that those leading may give a
helping hand to those floundering.

When the teacher wants to offer his/her hand, the teacher must
know that s/he is in the water at the same time. It is not that
the one who is sinking is sinking, but the teacher also is in the
water. The sinking people might drag him/her down with them and
make him/her sink. S/he must be moving his/her legs and hands to
stay afloat while at the same time holding the mureed from sinking
down.

For this the teacher needs to spot where the incongruity in
his/her own thinking, and that of others, causes the bottleneck.

There comes a time when a mureed gets an idea which does not fit
in with the teacher's idea. It does not mean that it does not fit
in with the teacher's idea, but s/he does not allow the teachers
idea to fit in.

The clue resides in the fact that, unless we are clearly self
aware, we tend to confuse our real being with our self-image which
is only the notion that we make of "who we are". Indeed the
personal dimension of our total being carries within it the
potentialities of our total being (this is the holistic paradigm),
and therefore opens a door to the extensive being somnolent within
us (the Creator buried in His creation, H.I.K), and of which our
personal being is a "relative and temporary sub-whole." If we can
envision this fragment of our total being in its relation to our
total being as carrying within it the potential of our whole
being, then through its door we can arouse its bountiful
potential, but not if we identify with our self-image which proves
misleading. This is the criterion of discernment. The awakening
that we seek hangs upon this "discernment" - our ability and
acuity in spotting this disparity.

If someone asks us how we feel, unless we are very perspicacious,
we tend to fall unawares upon the "I" with whom we identify, not
the "I" that we are. Here lies the conundrum.

This requires us to have explored in meditation the wider areas of
our being, beyond the personal nexus of our psyche (and body) and
consequently see for ourselves how constraining and deceptive our
self-image is in our assessment of our problems and our validation
of ourselves.

"We occupy as much horizon as is within our consciousness, or as
much as we are conscious of. We are as great as our spirit, we are
as wide as our spirit, we are as low as our spirit, we are as
small as our spirit."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Having seen this, we are now able to see the personal dimension of
our being in its context - in its relation with the whole. This
will save us from confusing our self-image with the personal
dimension of our total self.

Then we reverse our perspective.

"When I open my eyes to the outer world I feel myself as a drop in
the sea; but when I close my eyes and look within, I see the whole
universe as a bubble raised in the ocean of my heart. The one who
tunes himself not only to the external but to the inner being and
to the essence of all things gets an insight into the essence of
the whole being; and therefore he can, to the same extent, find
and enjoy even in the seed the fragrance and beauty that delights
him in a rose. He, so to speak, touches the soul of the thought."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Now we can see how our personal bias in our representation of
occurrences perceived as "outside" load our psyche with
misrepresentations which undermine our self esteem. Consequently
we seem to reach what we thought to be "outside" from "inside" and
moreover capture the budding of our recurrently renewed being as
it surfaces from inside.

In the person who participates actively in his/her own creativity,
God can gain a greater degree of perfection.

Then we need to reconnoiter the psychological gravity pull
exercised upon our psyche by our concupiscence-which enlists "the
way of the world", with its trail of unkindness, manipulation, and
suffering-and give vent to our bewondering at the splendor and
meaningfulness, which we ascribe at first to God as "other" in an
awakening "beyond life", and then in an overview we see it coming
through real life - awakening in life.

"How is higher consciousness attained? By closing our eyes to our
limited self and by opening our heart to God who is all
perfection. . . Illumination is obtained by rising above one's
earthly condition at the command of one's will and realizing one's
immortal self which is God within."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

There is a stage where, by touching a particular phase of
existence, one feels raised above the limitations of life, and
given that power and peace and freedom, that light and life which
belongs to the source of all beings. In that moment of supreme
exaltation, one is not only united with the source of all beings,
but dissolved in it, for the source is one's self.

Now only can we zero in on the personal dimension of our being,
envisioning it in its relation (in its context) with the totality
(in the cosmic outreach and transcendent mystery crowning our
being) without slipping back into our trite self-image.

"True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has
come to earth and has realized there his spiritual being."
(HIK, apparently)

"In man is awakened that spirit by which the whole universe was
created."
(HIK, apparently)

"The key to spiritual attainment is to be conscious of the perfect
One who is formed in the heart."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

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