=kit114.txt

KIT 114 - UNCONDITIONAL LOVE  

[ Footnote (sa) kit114_1 ]

PIR O MURSHID cautioned his representatives:

"We are being tested in our love."
(HIK)

There are those with whom we resonate quite naturally by the gift
of affinity, or those whom we admire, those dear to us, even if we
do not see eye to eye with them. But we are challenged in our
capacity to love by those whom we find difficult to love, or who
make themselves difficult to love, whose personality we criticize,
or whose actions we condemn, those who have treated us unjustly or
even abused our confidence. In fact this is precisely where
dislike or simply incompatibility escalates to the point of
culminating in resentment. It is resentment that constitutes the
veil separating us from our celestial counterpart and will block
access to our celestial home in the hereafter.

"The mind is a world, a world that man makes and in which he will
make his life in the hereafter as a spider lives in the web it has
woven."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

Should one remain encapsulated in one's ego self-image, and one's
love is oriented towards the personal dimension of the loved one,
one's human love is bound to be vulnerable. One is on tenterhooks
as to whether one is still being loved, one may be trying to
validate or prove oneself in the eyes of the loved one, or one's
love may easily get tarnished by criticism, resentment - a battle
of egos. This is where the wisdom of the perennial spiritual lore
bespeaks another dimension and a further all-encompassing
perspective, removing the impasse. It consists in including
dimensions of one's being and that of the loved one which one had
failed to countenance.

"The false ego is that which that ego has wrongly conceived. 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."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

By the same token, one opens to a perspective whereby one sees how
everything and every  being is interconnected with every other.
This is traditionally called the Divine point of view -let us call
it trying to see as one imagines the universe would see -
everything in reciprocal context rather than in the content of
one's personal grasp.

 "The outlook becomes wide, as wide as the Divine eye. We occupy
as much horizon as 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."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

According to the Sufis, the loved one becomes the mirror in which
one sees oneself, in all the dimensions of one's being in which
the bounty of the universe converges.

"Behold the world entirely comprised in yourself.  The world is in
and man is a world ... . The heart of a barley seed conceals a
hundred harvests. Behold the world kneaded as dough, the angel
with the fiend, the cherubim with Satan."
MAHMOOD SHABISTARI (OCTOGON PRESS, 1969, P 15 & P 27).

[ Footnote (sa) kit114_2 ]


 Of course, the more sensitive we are, the more idealistic, the
more we entertain a nostalgia for beauty, unaware usually of the
fact that this is the way in which our intuitive sense of the
Divine perfection, of which we are an imperfect exemplar, is
disclosed to us in form.

"All faces are His face."   
"My heart has seen the Lord in the most beautiful of forms."
HADITH

"God said to love: 'if not for Thy beauty, how should I pay
attention to the mirror of existence?'"
RUMI (D 26, 106)

The dervishes highlight the dichotomy: splendor (as beauty) and
power (as majesty) - masculine and feminine archetypes.

"When God has decided to adopt one of his servants as a companion,
He opens the door to memory. When the servant exults in this
recollection, God opens to him the door of proximity. Then he
lifts him to the spheres of (respectful) familiarity, inviting him
to sit on the throne of unity. At this stage, He frees him from
the veil and invites him into the sphere of unity and from the
perspective discloses to him the majesty and the magnificence."
Al kharraz (p.13)

"When God manifests His glory to a man's heart so that His majesty
predominates, he feels awe (haybat), But when God's beauty
predominates, he feels proximity (uns)... . There is a difference
between one who is burned by His majesty in the fire of awe and
one who is illuminated by His beauty in the light of
contemplation."
HUJWIRI, KASHF AL-MAHJUB, TR. NICHOLSON,   P 376

This is why the personal dimension of love is associated with
beauty and majesty, in their more overt expression, in their
physical form, but more so in their subtle mode. This is to be
grasped in the splendor that transpires through that which
appears, rather than in that which appears. In its more advanced
mode, it is the beauty or majesty of a human personality.

"There comes a time in one's evolution when every touch of beauty
moves the heart to tears. It is at that time that the Beloved of
Heavens is brought to earth."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

But to grasp it in another, as indeed in oneself, we need to come
to terms with the fact that we are many-tiered, and that these
many-faceted effigies of our being are intermeshed. Moreover they
change rapidly in accordance with our thoughts and attunements.
Furthermore, let us realize that the deep core of our being
remains immaculate within its own defilement. Should we identify
with it, we will grasp beauty transpiring across ugliness  

"And if you see an ugly face, it is you and if you see Jesus or
Mary, it is you." 
RUMI

Consequently one will have understanding and compassion for the
desperation or compulsiveness in a person who is awkwardly and
counterproductively struggling for self-esteem at our cost - or
ourselves at the cost of another. Should one overcome the
constraint of one's personal identity, and also that of the loved
one (thinking that one is a "condition of God" as Pir o Murshid
enjoins us to do will have that effect) then, instead of being the
target of our judgment, the personal dimension of the loved one
becomes the stepping stone leading to the One who represents one's
ideal, that is the One whom one really loves.  

"It is He who in each beloved being is manifested to the gaze of
each lover."
IBN 'ARABI, II 366, 18

When this stage is attained, love outreaches its personal
dimension and, prevailing over the personal joy and pain of
personal love, sparks ecstasy.

"This is love: to fly heavenwards, to rend every instant a
thousand veils, the first moment to renounce life, the last step
to walk without feet."
SHAMS TABRIZ, DIWAN, TR NICHOLSON, CAMBRIDGE 1898, P.137

Actually, one is really searching for one's self in the loved one,
only to find that it is the Divine Beloved disclosing Him/Herself
by manifesting Him/Herself and actuating Him/Herself in the loved
one that helps us to find our real selves.

"I looked for God and found myself, then I looked for myself and I
found God."
ABDULLAH ANSARI

"I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is me. We are two spirits
in the same body."
AL HALLAJ

For the Sufis, our quest to know "who we are" is our response to
the Divine nostalgia.

The HADITH QUDSI says: 

"I was a secret treasure and I loved to be known."
(HADITH QUDSI)

It does not say: I wished to be known, therefore the motivation
was not the curiosity of knowing,  but love.  

"If it had not been a desire and hope of the fruit, how should the
gardener have planted the root of the tree? The branch came into
existence for the sake of the tree."
RUMI. III 118

"The seed does not show the flower in it, yet it culminates in the
flower; therefore the flower already existed in the seed. 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
trying to emerge as perfectly as possible in the midst of human
imperfection."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

For the Sufis, the original impulse setting off the momentous
process of existence was love, and the mystic's love for God is
simply his/her response to God's love for him/her.

"On the day of ALAST, the Beloved said something else - but in
whisper: 'Do any of you remember? I have hurried to you.' I said:
'who art Thou?' He said 'the desire of all.' I said: 'who am I?'
He said: 'the desire of the desire.'"
RUMI, (P. 69 D 9265-67).

And God in His Perfection turned towards that which was in Him:
the attribute of nostalgia, and this attribute was also a form in
His Essence - which was His essence. Imagine you saw something
beautiful in your essence and you were enchanted by this feature
in your essence! Turning toward pre-eternity, He spirited a form -
His very form and essence. 

"Having thus radiated, He spirited a person "Huwa, Huwa"
(Himself). He considered it for a time amongst His times. Then He
saluted this effigy for a time amongst His times. Then He spoke to
this human prototype, and complemented it on its good appearance.
Then He rejoiced about the good tidings. reaching beyond
everything that is knowable or not-knowable. Then He lauded it and
glorified it and appointed it as the elect."
AL HALLAJ, KITAB AL ISHK. CF MASSIGNON, THE PASSION OF AL HALLAJ,
PRINCETON, 1982.

If indeed love is the magical trigger that sets off the explosion
of life as the cosmos, it remains the mysterious imperative
spurring our human endeavors, evidenced by the scruple of creative
minds for perfectionism, and points to our ponderings concerning
the meaningfulness of our lives, our strivings, our frustrations,
our disappointments, our disenchantment, and perhaps our
reenchantment. Moreover, it is the power of unconditional love
that gives us the resolve to uphold a person's pride while
acquiescing to their flaws and follies. The great paradox is by
loving one's ideal of God espied in a person, one helps that
person to honor his/her real self. Therefore it is love that makes
God a reality.	

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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:


[ Footnote (sa) kit114_1 ]
On 'Unconditional Love'  

The Temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred.  Rav Kook
said, what is needed now is causeless love.

[ Comment (sa):  "Everyone knows" -- that is, it is a part of
rabbinic tradition that -- "the Temple" -- that is, the Second
Temple, that astoundingly expensive imitation_Greek structure put
up by Herod the Great -- 

-- King David did not built the First Temple, because he was not
worthy, for he had been a soldier, and soldiers shed blood.
So it was left to his son King Solomon, Shlomo, Shalom_o , the man
of peace -- with 72 wives he scarcely had time even for a fencing
lesson, as_it_is_said (USA, 1950's) "The difference between war
and peace is that there has never been a good war. -- to do so.

Which does imply a bit of problematicity with regard to Herod the
Great, who, in the words of Jackie Gleason, was "not a nice man".

The First Temple, incidentally, was destroyed for reasons that are
more obscure, and which we don't mention so much.  It is said that
it was destroyed because they did not recite a bracha -- a
blessing -- before reading the Torah.

I suppose that means -- because they diverted mystic knowlege into
siddhi's -- magic, including 'black magic'.

Of course it ain't clear what a Temple was doing in the first
place.  The Torah seems clearly to discourage that.  It says, if
you must build an altar to the Divine, make it only of plain
stones from the field -- uncut stones.

So it is said, when King Solomon built the (First) Temple, he
never cut a stone.  They would bring them in from the field, and
at night the Shamir, some sort of super__cut_worm that lives in
rock_quarries rather than bean_patches I suppose would come -- I
suppose darned amgry that someone had come in and raided the
entire refrigerator -- and cut them, and then go back home to
sleep it off, so I suppose nobody ever so him.

Anyhow, that Herodian pile was razed by the Romans -- not that it
would have won that many competitions in Architectural Digest --
and so to this day we pray, 3 times a day nimimum, that it may be
rebuilt.

So why did they never ask King George if they could do so.  I
mean, they asked King Cyrus the Great, and he said OK , take a few
of my courtiers -- they're only Jews anyhow -- and a bit of grub,
and good luck.

And anyhow, what happened in June '67.

Temple Mount is, and remains, under Jewish sovereignty.

Sure's it's scared to the Muslims too, and it was very nice of
them to take care of it for the past 1400 years or so , but it's
sacred to them only because it's sacred to us.

It's so sacred to us that we don't even ever physically ascend
there, for fear of stepping on the place to which only the High
Priest was allowed to go.

(So what of Sharon's famous visit, that served as the excuse, the
causus belli, for that rejectionist 'Second Intifada ' -- not that
the first one had ever quite stopped -- 


Well, stictly speaking, one can go there, as long as one remains
outside the area that was reserved to the High Priest.
Some say, we can never sufficiently purify ourselves to go there -
- but shucks, we could at least go up to the areas where they
allowed heathens and -- yuck!, as Calvin says in 'Calvin and
Hobbes' - women -- 

So nowadays the rabhbis say, we can't rebuild it because only
Meshiach can rebuild it -- 

Meshiach means, 'The Messiah ' -- it's just lucky for us that the
goyim ain't so smart, because otherwise it's for darned sure some
Christian grouop that makes a lot of pretty good contributions to
the campaign funds of Jewish Congressional candidates would have
been applying, all smiles and nice close electric shaves and all
that, and neckties in the summer too -- for a Building Permit -- 

I mean, it takes them a while to catch on, but sooner or later,
like after a few millenia, they begin to get the idea -- 

Nowadays, of course, we are much too civilized for animal
sacrifice; we simply go to McDonalds's where we are insulated for
3 layers of plastic from any realization that what we are eating
was once alive and had hoped to remain that way.

And anyhow, as the soi_disant Wittgensteinians used to say, back
in the 60's anyhow, by the Verifiability criterion of meaning --
if you set impossible conditions for accepting something -- they
meant, a statement, but I think -- you read it here first -- one
could extend it to cover a possible action -- that it's
meaningfless even to speak of the darned thing.  And that means,
not only can't you say that you can, but also, you can't say that
you can't.  Like, menaingless is meaningless.

Wittgenstein said -- it's his last word in the
Logisch_philosophische Abhanlung, logic-philosophy handbook, which
Moore, which a bit of a genuflect to his own Principia Ethica -- a
rip_off, that, of Russell & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica,
which was for real -- called 'tractatus logico_philosophicus' --
so young Ludwig says -- "Woruber mann nicht sprechen kann, daruber
muss man schweigen " -- like I say, Cf. Heine, or is it Goethe,
"die Vogelien Schweigen in Walde" -- and so the Wittgensteinians,
those bums, gave it a bit of a positivist spin and said, "and you
can't whistle it either" -- a bit of a dig at the old boy, for
Wittgenstein was highly musical, and Malcolm recalls, he loved to
whistle long pieces of classical music -- 

"on Rilke who found living such a hassle / he laid the bread to
hang out in a castle" (sa)

and ended up in a furnished room, with some idiot downstairs
playing the piano badly, so he couldnl't even think -- this is
Wittgenstein, one of the great academic philosophers of history ,
and there he is, trying to finish his later work -- which he never
did succeed in bringing to a conclusion -- and this turkey
downstairs is jamming his thoughts, all because he gave away his
money, a good chunk of it to that fop Rilke , whose words of
wisdom to women were, "do a good night's work" -- 

so anyhow, Malcolm recalls in his biography, Wittgenstein then
bought a large electric fan, and tried to drown out the
distraction of atrocious piano playing with the noise of the fan -

Malcolm recalls, it was only from the kindness of his doctor that
Wittgenstein was able even to die in peace -- though I don't
suppose that Cambridge University was paying him in barley and
herring plus the odd slice of mutton before they threw the bones
to the dogs under the tapestries in the High Table Dining Commons
or whatever Brits do when they can't go out for lunch -- 

so as Malcolm recalls -- this is in Wittgenstein:  a Memoir -- his
doctor offered to let Wittgenstein die in his home -- Malcolm, a
decent and  honest man if a bit of a fool -- Cavell, who should
have 'put paid' as English greengrocers say while stamping their
bills, to the notion that the so_called Wittgensteinians had
captured and continued what Wittgenstein was trying to do, once
remarked -- this would have been in the early 60's -- that Malcolm
had pretty much made a career of saying 'I knew Wittgenstein'

And Aliza Artz, at Chaverat Shalom, once remarked, "Eli Weisel had
made a careeer of being a 'Survivor'"  -- that is, a survivor of
the Shoah.


[ recalls] "Wittgenstein was most greatful for this most human
gesture"- 

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Well, all jive aside for a moment, Rav Kook was a great man and a
great thinker.  As I've noted, it once occurred to me that one
might show an intellectual from Whitehead's Process and Reality,
thorugh the writings of Rav Kook, to the thought of PVK.


That was at a class on Rav Kook given at Joel Glick's Hippie
Yeshiva, Hochmat haLev, in the Old City of Jerusalem, ca. 1986 .

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TEXT:
"Behold the world entirely comprised in yourself.  The world is in
and man is a world ... . The heart of a barley seed conceals a
hundred harvests. Behold the world kneaded as dough, the angel
with the fiend, the cherubim with Satan."
MAHMOOD SHABISTARI (OCTOGON PRESS, 1969, P 15 & P 27).

[ Footnote (sa) kit114_2 ]
	
Well, this is that Roman dude wot said:
'humani sum, et in mihi nihil humanitorum alienum puta'

But fry me a kartofell, there are some places we just don't go,
because it's not nice.  
And that is one of PVK's main teachings, and maybe the one I find
hardest to accept.
Like, me and Rousseau -- either Roussea, even that
lion_lies_down_with_the_lamb painter, they're both utopian naifs -
- I mean, I don't even believe in circumcission -- whatever's
natural, is perfect -- and here's the Bible saying, "circumcize
your heart" --         

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