=kit121.txt

KIT 121 - THE ART OF PERSONALITY:
Sparking the growth of the personality -
an emerging construct unfurling in the cosmic symphony.

CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER

The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis.

"Cogito ergo sum."
DESCARTES. (I think, therefore I exist)

[ Note (sa):  The usual English translation is:  'I think
therefore I am']
[Toenote kit121_1]

- or is it : I exist because I think.?
[ The preceeding remark is by PVK ]


"I am that I become."
MOSES. (not I am that I am) 
[ the parenthetic remark is by PVK ]

[ Footnote (sa) kit121_2 ]

When we say "I am," we are declaring that we identify with a
notion of what we think we are. What we really are remains an
enigma enshrouded in the dark unknown, "the secret treasure that
loves to be known," according to the Sufis. Moreover, rather than
"who I am," it is more relevant to ask "who am I becoming." "Whom
I am" is only a static cross section of the dynamics of the
evolution of my being.

That notion "I" is what Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan calls the ego,
which he defines as a faulty notion of our self.

"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."(HIK)
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

The ego is not to be confused with our personality, which is a
real - though evanescent - ephemeral construct of human
idiosyncrasies (qualities and defects). It is endowed with a non-
spatial configuration of our imagination which translates thinking
and emoting - a way of envisioning oneself versus circumstances
and an emotional attunement - into an ubiquitous mental fabric in
flux. This corroborates Descarte's statement that existence
involves thinking or knowing - or the act of consciousness. Both
our notion of ourselves, and our personality, are of the nature of
the level of existential reality we call thinking.

While our ego is a notion, our personality is an - albeit
ineffable - reality. It is of the nature commonly ascribed to
mental activity, which is a valid mode of reality (though not
configured or located in space) that fashions our subtle bodies,
aura, and the countenance transpiring through the features of our
face and our demeanor. Thus in the personality, fiction gets
actuated into matter - mind over matter - the psycho-bio feedback
recycled as a feed-forward.

"If you go to further depths of matter you find what we call mind"
DAVID BOHM

Moreover this mental formation, emerging within the momentous
global thinking of the universe, itself evolves by disintegrating
and reconstructing itself recurrently in the forward march of
becoming. This is like the sequence of notes we perceive as a
melody, or the cliches of a film that we perceive as a continuity,
failing to grasp the discrete units in the series. It is a
continuity in change: perennity.

Buddhists emphasize the ephemeral nature of all formations,
physical and mental. Illusion is seen as the error of hanging onto
that which is elusive. But the Sufi, Jami, points out: The world
may be illusion, but through it a reality transpires.

It is an evolving reality transpiring through vanishing outbursts,
like a tide erupting as evanescent waves.

Such is the elusive nature of our personality, which is our
realization configured in a formative process in a fluid
structure. Our identification with it gels it to the point of
psychological sclerosis, hence Buddha's deprecation of the hoax of
identification. This is where our ego - which is what we
erroneously identify with - hampers the unfoldment of our
personality. Hence the meaning of Pir o Murshid's description of
the real ego concealed behind the false ego which is the "I am"
buried under the bush.

Our sense of what we could be if we would be as we might be frees
us from this imbroglio. Hanging on to what our personality has
become as it evolved though the past is illustrated by Lot's wife,
who turned into salt because she looked back.

"The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past."
EULER.
[ Footnote kit121_3 (sa) ]

Thus we see the role of our quest for freedom from conditioning.
It is triggering off creativity, which represents precisely the
aim of ascetics, but in creativity, we are infusing our
involvement in life with a dose of freedom, thus preventing it
from incarcerating us in an inextricable rut.

So how can we enhance our creative activity in fashioning this
mental vision that crystallizes as that psychological construct
that is our personality? The clue is to be found in the activity
of a composer. Consider your personality as a symphony taking
shape within Pythagoras' "symphony of the spheres" formulating -
albeit an incomparably unequal likeness of its excellence and
bounty - yet an exemplar of that cosmic model and transcendent
archetype.

"The secret of the art of my science, the science of my art,
nobody knows but myself. I am endeavoring to fashion a model for
the human commonwealth in the language of music. For each theme an
instrument, for each instrument a theme. Not just a melody with
accompaniment. Each theme, enjoying initiative, yet each theme
limiting its incentive in the interest of the whole. Such is the
harmony of the stars.."
j.S.BACH

[ (Note (sa) If I recall, Sikander Kopelman once tried to find the
Source of this quote, and noted, in an issue of The Message, that
he could not.]

Indeed Newton confirmed that each star is impacting every other,
and each is concurrently reacting to one another in harmonic
interaction.

The lover of music attains sooner or later to the most sublime
field of thought by completing his individuality, in which is
hidden the purpose of man's coming on earth. The art of
personality is like the art of music: it needs ear training and
voice culture. To a person who knows life's music the art of
personality comes naturally.

"When a man looks at every soul as a note of music and learns to
recognize what note it is, flat or sharp, high or low, and to what
pitch it belongs, then he becomes the knower of souls, and he
knows how to deal with everybody. In his own actions, in his
speech, he shows the art that harmonizes with the rhythm of the
atmosphere, with the tone of the person he meets, with the theme
of the moment. To become refined is to become musical; it is the
musical soul who is artistic in his personality. Spoken in
different tones, the same word changes its meaning."
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN.

In fashioning your personality, you are projecting a sophisticated
mental formation in the mind field of the universe. Once
conceived, it is endowed with a sustained perpetuity like a
symphony configured in the mind of a composer, regardless of
whether it is or has ever been written down or performed.

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"COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY":
Ie, footnotes by sa: 
So Toenotes is my footnotes to my footnoes

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(1)   

TEXT:
"Cogito ergo sum."
DESCARTES. (I think, therefore I exist)

[ Note (sa):  The usual English translation is:  'I think
therefore I am']
[Toenote kit121_1]
'am' suggests 'Being (static); 'exist' suggests 'becoming'
(dynamic)
That distinction appears only in 20th century existentialism,
espeically Sartre, but also that pompous old obscurantist if not
collaborationist Heidegger.
It is said that Descartes dropped cats out the window because he
believed they had no souls.
What he meant by 'soul' I'd hate to imagine.
Nor would I like to imagine how Spinoza, a truly religious man,
could ever have so looked up to that pompous fraud that he
patterned his Ethics after Descartes' pseudo_geometric style. ]

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(2)

TEXT:
"I am that I become."
MOSES. (not I am that I am) 
[ the parenthetic remark is by PVK ]
[ Footnote (sa) kit121_2 ]

[ Footnote (sa) kit121_2 ]
[ Note (sa).  This is a statement by Moshe Rabenu only in the
sense that in orthodox Jewish tradition he is said to be the
author of the entire Chumash.  
Exodus (SheMOT) 3:14 -- 
V_AMoR AeLoHIM AeL MoSheH , AeHYeH ASheR AeHYeH 
And the LORD said to Moshe, I will be what I will be
I do not know how one can read the first 'AeHYeH' as 'I am' rather
than 'I will be', but I do not have Rashi's commentary at hand.] 

This is expressed in the vision of Ezekiel by the image of the
Merkava, the 'throne_chariot' -- the throne is always going
forward. 
PVK makes this point often, in the notion that the 'Divine
Programming' is not entirely fixed, but is subject to change -- I
suppose, in response to feedback from humanity. 
    
And that, which to more severe theologians, eg Pope Ratzinger,
might seem almost blashemy, would fit with the Sufi saying, often
quoted by PVK, 'I was for love of Thee that I created the
Universe.'  
And that fits with Buber's notion of I_Thou.

Incidentally, this is the distinction in the philosophy of
mysticism between 'static mysticism' and 'dynamic mysticism' --
the question of whether the primary ontologic category should be
regarded as Being, or as Becoming. 
If I recall, this point is made by Evelyn Underhill, and by
Huxley, but I don't have those books at hand now. ]


(Reform Judaism, though it tries to detour around theology, 
implicitly applies that notion to halacha. But Reform is a bit of
a joke, practically Camp, except for eg Larry Kushner out in
Sudbury Massachusetts -- take the train out to Lincoln, walk or
ski over to the ponds, and just keep going.))

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Once at an Abode Camp mid_1970's PVK was giving mini_darshan, and
I blundered into asking him, 'What about philosophy.'  

(I had really wanted to ask him if I should go back to grad school
and pick up my Ph.d in philosophy; I'd dropped out to go to New
Buffalo commune, to help build a viable model of an alternative
lifestyle, and about 7 years later that all fell apart for me, and
so I wound up instead with a double_major, Haverat Shalom plus
Abode Sufism, and that's where I'm still at.  R. Chayim Heikel of
Amdur writes, in his book Chayim v_Chesed, that the hasidim have
no rest in this world nor the next, for they are always jumping
form one rung to the other. )

So PVK said, some say that philosophy is like looking for black
cat in a coal mine.  And then he went on to suggest that I focus
more on people.  I was a bit disappointed in that answer, and
mentioned it to Gedalya Persky, who was Camp Director.  He said
back to me something like,, 'Heck, you already got your money's
worth from this Camp.' ]' 

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[ Footnote kit121_3 (sa) ]

I'd rather phrase it, 'We are drawn by the future more strongly
that we are pulled back by the past.'
As I recall, I made some notes on EULER from 'The World of
Mathematics', in one of my edits of one of the PVK Zenith
seminars.
So they're likely to be on this hard_disc somewhere. ]

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