=kit113.txt

KIT 113 - PRACTICES LEADING TO ENLIGHTENMENT

"A light upon a light."
(QR. 24:35)
[ 'Qr.' is obviously an abbreviation for Qu'ran, Koran ]

"I emanated upon Thee a force of love so that thou mayest be
fashioned according to my glance."
(QR. 10:39)

To spark transformation in all the chords of one's being, one
needs to be overwhelmed by something beyond, yet overarching one's
personal dimension, so stupendous that one finds oneself carried
beyond one's commonplace self-image in the far reaches of the
splendor of the universe.

The magical spark that can ignite the fire of fervor in our core
is the miracle of the phenomenon of light. Light lures us beyond
its physical appearance into spheres which we call celestial, from
which we unconsciously believe we have been exiled. More so, if we
stalk light beyond its physical underpinning, as our human
intelligence excels itself, we espy the intelligence of light and
grasp in it a clue to our inadequate representation of what we
mean by God.

As we know, the guiding principle upon which Sufism is based
consists in envisioning ourselves as fragments of the Total Being,
which is the universe, traditionally called God - each fragment
containing and incorporating the totality holistically - in
contrast with the old-fashioned representation of God as "other".
On the other hand PIR O MURSHID says:

"Manifestation is the self of God, but a self that is limited.. It
is in man that divinity can be awakened... The soul is a condition
of God... The soul of each individual is God, but man has a mind
and a body which contains God according to the accommodation."(HIK)

Compare this with IBN 'ARABI:

"God reveals Himself to the potentialities of His being by
projecting His shadow. This shadow is Him and also not Him."
(IBN 'ARABI)

The "divine genes", however, need to be aroused by awakening
awareness. Such awakening calls upon us to shift our vantage point
step by step from its personal setting into its cosmic dimension,
which is in theory co-extensive with the Divine point of view. To
upgrade our awareness we find that shifting our notion of light -
from light perceived externally, to the light of our own aura, to
more subtle levels of light, eventually touching upon the light of
intelligence - triggers off a breakthrough in awakening at a
cosmic scale.

Since spirituality means grasping and incorporating a further
dimension of our being (which is co-extensive with the universe),
it is essential to continually bear in mind that the object of our
search is God emerging in (and as) ourselves, and the subject
searching is God as the ultimate witness, focalized as our
consciousness.

"Learn, oh my friend, that the object of the search is God, and
that the subject who seeks is a light coming from Him."
( NAJM UD-DIN KUBRA )            

These last words were those of a very wonderful Sufi dervish, NAJM
UD-DIN KUBRA, whose whole life was dedicated to unraveling the
mystery of light. For the Sufis, reality (the truth: al Haqq) is
revealed to us through form, while being limited by this device
whereby God reveals Him/Herself to us; hence God as "reality"
transpires through the countenance of God-realized beings:

"If God can be seen, it is in the God-realized beings."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Compare this with the words of another Sufi dervish, 'ALA UD-DAULA
SEMNANI, equally dazzled by the sortilege of light:

"Through Thine own eyes, I look upon Thy countenance." 
('ALA UD-DAULA SEMNANI )

Just like Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, Ibn 'Arabi distinguishes
light radiating from a source located in space from what he calls
"light that has no rays", which Pir-o-Murshid calls all-pervading
light (like radio waves, intermeshed and spread everywhere).

"Light is of two kinds: A light having no rays and radiant light."
IBN 'ARABI

For IBN 'ARABI, while perception takes place through sources of
light located in space (radiant light), vision takes place through
the light within the witness (all-pervading light). 

"As for the light that has no rays, it is the light within which
self-disclosure takes place without rays. Then its brightness does
not go outside itself and the viewer perceives it with the utmost
clarity and lucidity."
(IBN 'ARABI, apparently) 

"For this, the light cast forward by the eyes needs to be stronger
than ambient light."
(IBN 'ARABI, apparently) 
 

"When ambient light is stronger than the light of sight, man
perceives it but does not perceive through it." 
IBN 'ARABI

Pir-o-Murshid points out that this insight is achieved by
converging the all-pervading light as one turns within, and then
focusing that light as a searchlight. 

"First the all pervading light, second the light when concentrated
on one point, and third the light illuminating all that can take
its reflection... You are instrumental in making the all-pervading
light allowed to manifest...The all-pervading light manifests as
such when it finds a capacity where it can be concentrated." 
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Turning within, you will find yourself in a transfigured world;
you will espy the subtle effigy behind the objects transpiring
through their physical appearance. Now notice the affinity between
the nature of the fabric of your subtle body and the etheric
counterpart of the objects, then the effulgence of your aura
(bioluminescence), and the imponderable luster of the auras of the
objects thus viewed.

"I saw myself through the lights which things carry in their
essence, and which are given to them by their realities - not
through an extraneous light."
IBN 'ARABI

If you identify yourself with your subtle body, then you may
discern the beam of your third eye as an extension of your subtle
body.

Turn your eyes back into the space within. Then the same eyes that
are able to see without are able to see within. In closing the
eyes, still the eyes are looking forward. No, they must be turned
inward in three centers, in the center between the eyebrows, on
the bridge of the nose, and downwards towards the tip of the nose.
As the sense of sight is situated in the brain and the sight so
charged with the light from within when turned on to the life
without see through more deeply. The aura affects the brain and
the brain affects the eyes. Thus what the eyes take in effects the
brain and the brain effects the aura. Sometimes the third eye sees
through the two eyes.

"The Sufis have ways of developing the eyes. They show you ways of
looking into space that make the eyes capable of seeing what is
reflected there. From these the past, the present and the future
can be told, and all that surround a person." 
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Furthermore, Pir-o-Murshid taught his pupils to thrust their light
forward through the breath. 

The light is thrown forward by the breath. When one has mastered
the breath, then one is capable of drawing all the forces of life.
And when they are drawn in, and focused in a center, then
illumination comes. ... Then you begin to realize that you are
like a searchlight, wherever you cast your glance.

Breath is then directed through the eyes or radiated from the
heart. Inhale, so to speak, through the eyes and exhale, so to
speak, through the eyes.

In the course of this practice, NAJM UD-DIN KUBRA sees two orbs
(circles) surrounding his eyes. 

NAJM UD-DIN KUBRA (SIRR AL SAYR 57. CF. CORBIN 1071, P83) 
[ Apparently, SOS and hence Kaivan failed to include that quote
here. ]


"At a certain point,
The Sufi sees beyond the eyes - or without eyes." 
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN 

[ 'At a certain point' is maybe not part of the quote, since this
ain't a poem.  (sa) ]


Compare with:

"To rend every instant a hundred veils,
The first moment to renounce life,
The last step to fare without feet...
To look beyond the range of the eyes"
RUMI  
(CF. NICHOLSON: DIWANI SHAMSI TABRIZ, SELECTED POEMS, CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1898)

Light can be cast forth by the breath through the heart. PIR-O-
MURSHID considers this to be more powerful than that of the eyes.

"This power is nothing as compared with the power of the heart."
(HIK)

In a further step, identify yourself with the witness in you - you
as the spectator rather than your subtle body or your third eye. 

"As the eyes cannot see themselves, so it is with the soul - it is
sight itself."
(HIK, apparently)

"The moment it closes its eyes, its own light manifests to its own
view."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN
[ apparently conjoined with the previous quote.]

Compare with IBN 'ARABI,

"Let your state be similar to that of the dematerialized spirit of
the Celestial Assembly."
(IBN 'ARABI)

Yet another dervish in search of illumination:

"The source where these lights take place is the spiritual entity
of the mystic himself." 
NAJM UD-DIN RAZI (CF. CORBIN, 1978, P 110)

"It is as though it returns to the root from which it became
manifest. So nothing sees Him but He."
IBN 'ARABI

"The secret skill here consists in identifying with one's soul
rather than one's consciousness as the witness, yet considering
one's eyes as carrying this light."
(HIK, apparently)

"In man there is a hidden light which is divine light. It is by
the power of that light that his eyes can see further than the
physical eyes can see."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Compare with:

"Were it not for the light that belongs to the souls, there would
be no witnessing, since witnessing only takes place when two
lights come together."
IBN 'ARABI

To perfect the skill leading to enlightenment, envision the light
of your soul threaded through the light of your glance:

"Hence light becomes included in light."
IBN 'ARABI

This could be paralleled with:

"Wisdom is born of the meeting of the knowledge of the heavens and
the knowledge of the earth."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Yet, if one overrides one's tendency to ascribe one's glance to
one's soul as envisioned as an individual entity, then one awakens
into a yet further dimension of the witness.

"All things and beings on the surface seem separate from one
another, beneath the surface, they approach nearer to each other;
and in the innermost plane, they all become one."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Then:

"The light of dawn rises on the soul in such a way that that part
of the paramount realities emanating from the celestial
constellations and their angels who are their souls predominate in
it... They are reflected on the bodily habitation."
( SHIHABUDDIN SUHRAWARDHI (MAQTUL) )

This quotation is from SHIHABUDDIN SUHRAWARDHI (MAQTUL), perhaps
the most prominent advocate amongst the Sufis for working with
light. He weaved the threads of the original Mazdean tradition
(that of the Magi) into the corpus of Sufism.

An intriguing Zoroastrian, AZAR KAIVAN was a Sufi initiate
stalking the light.

"When I passed in rapid flight from material bodies, in every
sphere and star, I beheld a spirit."
AZAR KAIVAN (CF DABISTAN, NY. 1937, P 55)

 As one puts this into practice, it becomes clear that the clue to
insight into the meaningfulness of experience is found by spotting
one's celestial identity.

"Perfect realization can only be gained by passing through all the
stages between man, the manifestation of God, and God as the only
being; knowing and realizing ourselves from the lowest to the
highest point of existence and so accomplishing the heavenly
journey."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

Compare again with IBN 'ARABI:

"God acquaints them with what corresponds to them in each world by
passing with them through each world... The spirit in man is a
heavenly subtle organ, the "HIMMA." When it is lavished upon him,
he is reunited with the heavens."
(IBN 'ARABI)

"You thought that you were the Spectator, the witness (Shahid) of
what you experience, but the real witness in you is your angelic
counterpart - the witness in the heavens."
(SHAHABUDDIN SUHRAWARDHI (CF CORBIN 1939)

The practice prescribed by Pir-o-Murshid consists in bridging the
discontinuity between the physical plane of which we are generally
conscious, and the celestial spheres by first toggling between the
two intermittently, then eventually by correlating or
extrapolating both.

"The soul in its manifestation on the earth is not at all
disconnected from the higher spheres, it lives on all spheres,
though it is generally conscious of only one place... Only a veil
separates us."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

To contact the celestial spheres, it is helpful to turn the eyes
upwards.

"As man evolves, he ceases to look down on earth; he looks to the
heavens. If one wants to seek the heavens, one must change the
direction of looking... Look up first, and when your eyes are once
charged with divine light, then when you cast your glance on the
world of facts, you will have a much clearer vision - the vision
of reality."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

You will discover that your aura is many-tiered, ranging from
infra-red to ultraviolet, as you shift your attention from one
chakra to the next. To trigger off this upward thrust, feel the
incandescence of your aura, (phosphorescence). Now represent to
yourself a flame transmuted as it rises, ascending in your spinal
cord envisioned as a chimney.

"By closing all the senses one helps that fire to blaze and once
the flame has risen, it lights up all the centers within, so all
things within and without become clear... And the flame rising
from it illuminates the globe  -  the head."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

As soon as you turn your attention to the source of the light of
your being, then it seems to dawn upon you like the morning sun.

"Each time a light rises up from you, a light comes down towards
you. Light rises towards light and descends upon light - it is
"light upon light". When the substance of light has grown in you,
then it bears an affinity to what is of the same nature in Heaven.
Then the substance of the light in heaven which yearns for you is
attracted by your light and it descends towards you."
NAJM UD-DIN KUBRA, SIRR AL-SAYR

"The light of dawn has risen upon my soul and there will be no
more sunset."
AL HALLAJ

As SUHRAWARDHI announces, it will affect the "body habitation."

"The seer's own soul becomes a torch in his hand. It is his own
light that illuminates his path. It is just like directing a
searchlight into dark corners which one could not see before. It
is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand
before, like seeing through people like with x-rays when they were
a riddle before. He sees the cause behind the effect. He who looks
at this marvel begins to see the divine evidence in every face as
a person can see the painter in his painting... The glance of the
seer opens, unlocks and unfolds all things. As it falls upon a
thing, it makes that thing as it wants to make it. This is not
actual creating but it is awakening that particular quality which
was asleep."
PIR-O-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN

"This cannot happen until I become a light. As long as I am not a
light, I cannot perceive anything of this knowledge."
IBN 'ARABI  

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