Raw Transcriptions Seminar/Retreat Tapes by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan CopyRight 1995-7 by the Sufi Order International All Rights Reserved 1995 MAR 15, 1995 Tape 01 So let us start by simply concentrating on the light in your eyes. Just imagine that your eyes are two beams of light and your whole concentration is on those two beams of light. You can do it with your eyes closed and then from time to time you can open your eyes and see if you can maintain your concentration. If you can't, well then close your eyes again. And you can ascertain that you're really casting light forward through your inaudible. If you turn your head to the right and to the left and you have the impression that you're casting these beams to the right and to the left...they definitely move as you move your head. And actually it is the light inside the cells of your brain which are threaded through the optical nerves and inaudible out through your eyes, well, through the retina and then crossing the cornea and then cast forward into the environment. Now you could make a circling motion like the ziker and then you're really tracing a circle of light. Easy with eyes closed, of course. And then you could cast your eyes from upwards downwards at the end of the circle after reaching the apex of the circle. And then consciously as the head rises consciously cast the light forward inaudible forward. It's as though the lantern of your eyes had gained in intensity by the fact that you had whirled them in a circle just like a dynamo translates more energy than a magnet. That's perhaps one of the secrets of the ziker. Now, you could be aware of the light around your shoulders and forearms. It's not something you see, it's something you feel. And then the light that is cast forward by your heart shakra, you feel it. And so you could do all this together, aware of the light of...at least that part of the aura that corresponds to your trunk and also light cast by your eyes. So you could move your whole trunk to the left, together with your head of course. And then to the right...so that gives you a much better sense of your aura if you move it. And then there's a curious phenomenon if you turn your eyeballs upward and that means your head...oh it doesn't mean your head but you can turn your head up a little bit. It seems to have some effect upon the whole aura which seems to fan out upwards into the infrared...uh...ultraviolet part of the spectrum and when you cast your eyes down or turn your head down slightly then you find that you ...um... your aura seems to fan out into the infrared. And of course when you make the circular motion then it's something like a spiral of multicolored light that extends further and further. I don't know if you can feel the way the light seems to...I don't know how to explain it...it seems to reverse in some sense like space reverses when one turns within according to what Dr. David Boehm called the inaudible estate. We have no way of describing this in terms of our perception because it doesn't correspond to our familiar concepts that we attach to our ordinary perception. That's a very strange kind of experience whereby light that we normally imagine is radiant, that means it radiates from a source of light which is located in space, it shifts from that to what "inaudible" calls all pervading light. The light is not...does not radiate from a source but is scattered...diffused. But instead of thinking of it as being diffused 'inaudible" like finding out as we are doing the circle its diffused internally. I say it's very difficult to imagine this because we're used to the explicate mode of experience. It goes together with the thought that space can be inverted. You can imagine that space is landscaped by the presence of matter and so at certain points it is more concentrated and other points less and so at infinite regress you could find points which...where the de concentration is ...has reached such a point that you could call it the void. That stage "inaudible" of space has collapsed and consequently our whole representation of the physical world, our imago mundi, representation of the physical world collapses and we realize to what extent we are programmed into kind of illusory picture that is not the world it is relatively convenient to live in but not satisfactory. Now let us concentrate again on the intensity of light ...um... I suppose you realize that there are some kind of psychological damages here. For example if one entertains resentment that's a heavy one of course because I'm not teaching people to forgive people who've offended them but now that I said it I must admit that resentment which in the extreme becomes hatred does stand in the way of your...well in the way of illumination and because of the mind/body access it does have an influence on the radiation of light from your...even the cells of your body. So that's something one needs to work with in our retreat. Try to ...it's...it's counterproductive to take oneself to task because one entertains resentment. It's something we need to work with but it's good to be aware of the fact that to be illuminated one needs to love people with unconditional love. And so anything short of that would stand in the way. Of course its a very hard lesson because ..it's not just personal resentment but how can love someone criminal who's subjected people to terrible torture. Especially people you love. It's the only way...the key to this is found in the words of Christ, "They don't know what they do." So we frankly remove any obstacles to ...the obstacles to attaining illumination. The other one is wallowing in one's suffering that we all carry wounds and I don't think that one can prevail upon oneself or other people to transmute suffering into joy. That's a lovely thought but it's a reality that they're suffering and it's a reality that you have to acknowledge and not deny. That would be dishonest but what one can do is to realize that one can be just bubbling over with joy while still suffering from wounds in one's heart. If nothing else enough to give joy to other people and that's the whole purpose of illumination is to fulfill one's purpose in life in terms of not just oneself but the whole in the context of the environment. Here we have the picture of the dervish dancing on thorns and having a crown of thorns on his head and still dancing with glee and alacrity. I don't know if you noticed that your aura seems to burn more brightly as soon as you smile. Now one needs to somehow complete this with the complimentality pole because emotion and mentation, that is mind, the two sides of the same coin...let's say the two pole of the same reality so that while smiling and allowing your soul to dance you could observe what happens at the level of your thinking. It becomes clear, well I think there's some work to do here. I think its a concern for honesty that has effect of eliminating ambiguous thoughts. And maybe the motive in that, something we're going to work with during our retreat is selecting impressions and consequently the thoughts corresponding with them out of the tremendous mass of all kinds of impressions that we are subjected to in our modern civilization some of which are really very helpful. That's where we learn to affirm will and uniqueness, free will. That is particularly true in a retreat because everyone is working with one's defense system or systems at the psychological level. Here you can imagine the son asking the contemplative is protects him herself in order to find him herself, his uniqueness. In order to find oneself, one needs to place, as Budda says, "Sentinels at the doors of perception." Maybe it is more than that. It is more like sentinels at the doors of one's psyche. And maybe not just one sentinel at one threshold, but several thresholds. So that one only ingests those impressions that are in sync with one's real being and that's what we are discovering: ones real being and that kind of clarity has an immediate effect on one's thinking which becomes crystal clear and therefore luminous. This goes very far of course. It um part of what Sufi's call mahaseebee which means self examination...to make quite sure that one is not fooling oneself. In the authenticity of one's intention, that is if one is following up one's values by one's intention or intentions and is following up one's intentions by one's actions there is a total match between these three elements then one's thinking, the mode of thinking, becomes as a crystalline instead of amorphous and blurred and confused. And I think that does mean being uncompromising with oneself. While being in one's heart lenient with others. Not necessarily in one's action because it could encourage permissiveness. To become illuminated one has to become like a diamond. They are both the lattices of matter and the fluorescence both and they're both of course aspects of the same reality. That is one's insight as an illuminated being would be compared with light and one's nature in that of the diamond where the lattices of the um atoms are um perfectly orderly and I would say uncompromisingly orderly so that it um actualizes the order of the universe. Or lets say the orderliness that is written into the um amongst other things of course into the programming of the universe. I dare say that this affects our body also. One of the most fundamental thoughts I've come across was again Dr. David Boehm saying, "Be not surprised if a sense of meaningfulness, or a new sense of meaningfulness, that is a new way of looking at things, is going to free new circuits in the brain. In general, reprogram the circuits of the brain." And if you extend that, then of course, it would effect the whole body. Not just the circuits of the brain but the endocrine glands and the enzymes and the replication of the cells and the DNA, at least the genes that are turned on and off. So it has enormous repercussions. So this basic orderliness of the cells of the body and maybe there's some randomness because that makes for mutation. But then there is free will that shifts that orderliness from a more elementary state of orderliness to a more advanced one. So if you think of your body as a crystal, you are enhancing the orderliness of the cells that can get disturbed by turbulent thoughts or psychological distress. That's why this is bound to have a healing effect besides, as I say, serving as a wonderful underpinning for realization, illumination. Now, don't think of a crystal as static. Orderly, but if it's scintillating it is because it is activated by light. The matter itself, the atoms itself activated by light. In fact the electrons start dancing so um you have that representation of the crystal. It's a more adequate image that you could relate to or concentrate on: give you a more adequate sense of your body in a state which favors illumination, favorable to illumination. Maybe one of the ways of doing this better is to, instead of thinking light and then body, matter, actually enzymes of course, light is matter. Is not other than matter. I think that what you think is the substance of your body is crystallized light. Having got sclerosis to some extent in a relatively static way, it is still subjected to the impact of light and is transformed by the impact of light. Be like light and what we understand by the substantiality of our body at both poles of the same thing then there's an interaction between those two poles. Since there is such a thing as mind over body at least visualizations have an effect on the body itself. If you imagine your body to be crystalline, especially like diamond, while being impacted by the light of the environment and transformed thereby. That's the first step towards illumination. But the further one is a little more difficult to understand. that is the body is not just impacted by the light of the environment: the light of sun or the light of stars...... from within yourself. From, lets say, the inverted state of matter or you could call it maybe the subliminal level of physical reality. What Pir Murshid calls the all pervading light which we referred to a little bit earlier this morning: all pervading light. So to do this you need to turn within instead of just thinking that you're resolving light from the environment. You could um ...there's a lovely picture that um would be helpful here. That is to imagine that a diamond or a precious stone can be seeded. If one, instead of thing of it as static it unfurls rather like a flower for example. Imagine that the fuel for it's seeding is the light that emerges from it from within instead of light that it is subjected to from the environment. I dare say this would effect the cells of your body and therefore create conditions that are favorable to illumination. I think it's important to realize that the cells of one's body participate in the illuminative process. Instead of thinking mind/body like is different from my body, that the cells of your body are privy to your thinking and even ...its not just your brain that is involved in your thinking. Right down to the cellular level. And so now instead of imagining the aura to be around your arms and in front of your heart and so on, imagine it to intersperse the cells of the body and radiate from there outward.And as I say this light emerges from within and um unfurls the latent potentialities within the cells. Perhaps releasing DNA that has been recessive. Potentialities at all levels including the physical level are latent and will only be activated by inside, by our awareness. That's where realization and so spirituality is not just realization, but awakening potentialities that require this insight in order to unfurl. But there's a paradox here because one seems that one needs to know before one does and the opposite is equally true: one knows, one discovers by doing. So if you start working with your, I say the cells of your body by simply thinking of them, by drawing your attention on them and they will start "inaudible" and I say unfurling and then the awakening of the cells is going to trigger off the awakening for one thing at all levels of ones being. That is in the etheric body and the celestial body and eventually, of course, in the realm of one's insides. So that in meditation we are doing something and hopefully the realization will ensue therefrom. All right now there's one last, most important factor--paramount--that I haven't mentioned yet that we are going to work with a lot during these few days together. That is, we have been working with the aura and at first one assumes one is talking about physical light because we have a sense of what we mean by light but that's not what light is but that's what we think it is. But um the um breakthrough of illumination by discovering that one is a luminous intelligence rather than an effulgent aura. There comes a moment when pure intelligence um is able to free itself from it's underpinning and then out of it's own "inaudible" breakthrough. So to define the optimal benefit from these days together, I say for one thing maintaining silence, while it can be awkward, at the meals and so on, as a very powerful method to create favorable circumstance at the retreat. And the reason is because normally one is used to translating ones thinking into words and sentences: semantics. And consequently one's thinking is placed in pigeon-holes, categorized, and suffers some great deal of constraint of course by that necessity. 'n the other hand it helps makes one thinking more complete and therefor more adapted to existential conditions. But one is missing out on an enormous dimensions of thinking and therefore realization so in order to promote other levels of realization that what we encounter in our every day life. If you don't speak, of course it's true that even when we're not speaking we're somehow translating our thoughts into words because we are used to speaking. But if you have adopted through silence for some time of silence then you are less and less concerned about expressing yourself in words and consequently you do not limit your thinking as in the other way. And consequently you will find that your mind is able to grasp things in their context which we hadn't seen before so a very wide spectrum of thought which you could not have handled if you had to express in words and then other dimensions of thinking which we will call transcendental and which don't seem to be related to everyday activities give you a whole sense of the unlimited creatures of your mind. So I'll say that beyond silence of course meals don't take that long so you um grab your food and when you're finished and whatever you had to do, brush your teeth or whatever, then go and sit somewhere in nature. There are very suitable circumstances here and practice the things that we were talking about this morning for example. Each time that you, after instruction are given and you have the opportunity of going on your own and and MAR 15, 1995 Tape 02 Yes, our objective is realization. It is just a word, but you have to know what it means. To have great clarity to understand better the meaningfulness of one's life and that of life in general and so it's very clear that our usual understanding is just inadequate, it's not nearly sufficient and the "inaudible" is because we are caught up in personal vantage point. So what we are doing on this retreat is to modulate that vantage point in several dimensions. We are several cosmic "inaudible" within and it's reaching upwards and overview but we've been highlighting turning within because that's appropriate for retreat. Of course we have to be very careful that it doesn't lead to just introspection which is not really turning within it's just judging things, judging one's own person from one's personal vantage point but still that's one's personal vantage point that's not turning within. What we're trying to do is to enlist latent potentials in our being that will only unfurl if we awaken them. "Inaudible' free will and that which stands in the way is of course our conditioning or habitation we are used to thinking the way we do and becomes kind of an adamant resilient so one needs to exercise very strong drastic methods in order to awaken. One thing you need to do during a retreat is to downplay your usual point of view in order to highlight an alternate one. As long as you stay in your usual point of view you won't be able to access this other dimension and therefor that stands in the way of awakening. Murshid describes it as stepping back instead of walking forward. Kind of withdraw from the impact of the way the world is from your only vantage point--the vantage point you've been programmed into and of course one isn't used to that. There's behind "inaudible" we want to experience that we forestall experience by assumptions and so we stand in the way of our own experience so it's no use saying "I want experience." Of course we want experience but then we have to question a lot of things we have been assuming and so there needs to be some metaphysics in it because otherwise one is just turned around in circles. So sense then not on the physical world there are problems and "inaudible" is tailored by our programming as I call it: habitation, upbringing and so on, culture and so on. And that has very serious consequences, for example, little do we realize that the way the physical looks when you think that that tree is here and that other tree is there is only a way of looking at things. I'm not saying it's not true, but it's just a way of looking at things. It's a perspective and we get caught in that perspective. If you want to find freedom, that is freedom from a perspective, then you need to somehow withdraw from the impact of the way things appear in order to be able to awaken the alternative perspective which is of the universe in which everything intersperse everything else like the radio waves. That perspective we're not used to. Confusing, it looks like a blur and that accounts for the fact that when we turn within we just don't know what's happening and it doesn't get anywhere so we don't feel comfortable with it. Until you look into--now this is the secret, actually--it's from the transit from the internal to the external rather than in the transfer from the external to the internal. Normally when you are meditating the impressions of everyday life keep on being regurgitated in your psyche so the physical world continues to live in your psyche. In as much as the psyche is more internal than the physical you can say you are moving from outside to within and as I say one is so used to thinking of one as the subject observing object other than one's self that one applies the same thing when turning within. Not only do you have to see that mode of reality behind what you experience outside from within. But your consciousness has to be turned within and therefore intersperse the consciousness of all beings. If your consciousness remains localized you can't turn within. Perhaps that's the most difficult part of turning within. Is to realize one's consciousness in the way it functions generally is focalized like a focal point through a concave mirror I think you get light that is focalized. So perhaps a clue, although I don't say this is the ultimate answer, it's just a method that is very helpful, is to think that it is God who is the subject. I say for the moment it's a method we're not going to enter into all the metaphysics behind it. And then you have, it's vague, I mean it's so vast that you have difficulty in grasping it at all so that clue as I said a moment ago is converging one's own consciousness, I mean the consciousness of the universe from within into one's consciousness from within instead of from without. Now that sounds difficult to fathom but then we have an example of it makes it easier, an illustration of it "inaudible". And that is um imagine that the starry skies is really an ocean of light but that light is in what Dr. David Boehm calls "implicate state" that is it's not radiant, it's all pervading light as Murshid calls it. And at certain points in that ocean of light that light field, I think that's the word, it'll probably be excepted in science, that light field which is therefore in an implicate state breaks through or lets say emerges as stars. And so there is a transit from the inner to the outer and from that moment the light from being all pervading becomes radiant, that is it radiates from a source of light localized in space. So this is what we are learning to do in our retreat. Of course in the past we have been working with convergent light from the environment, absolving light, limiting light, all those things that are very simple. You can ascertain that this really happens. But this is the further step "inaudible" one that is um plugging into if you like you could call it light field. It hasn't yet broken up into focal centers of light. And then as you exhale you focalize this light, that is you gather it together and radiate it forth. Now let's just do this. So just beware of the impact exercised by your perception lets say of the physical world and also those thoughts that are in some way a regurgitation of those impressions. So just be aware of the power, of the impact of these impressions of forcing your consciousness to pay attention to them and therefore interfering with your free will, or even obstructing your free will. So you realize that consciousness is focalized, the consciousness of the universe is focalized as your consciousness in order to be able to experience things from a simplistic vantage point because that is the easiest way of experiencing. But its limited of course and consequently its cutting out all the possibilities of understanding our realization that cannot fit into that format. all right so I hope you feel the way that when you're meditating you can see that the thought of the events, your life and so on, it's almost compulsive. Its so much pressure upon your consciousness you find you can't meditate. So it would be like TV which can be quite compulsive: sitting there and watching a show. Now supposing you do the opposite. That you're contemplating something extremely meaningful to you and your cat comes in the room. Well if it weren't that interesting you'd probably look at your cat but if that which you're into is so very absorbing then you'd be aware that your cat came in the room but you won't turn your glance toward your cat. So I would say that's the secret of the first stages of meditation: that you let those thoughts gravitate in that twilight of your consciousness and do not turn your attention towards them. It's like, you could say your consciousness... it's like a searchlight and there's an area which is twilight. Normally one would turn one's consciousness, the illuminated center of the consciousness toward the twilight and then it wouldn't be twilight any more. So don't illuminate those peripheral areas of your consciousness with intense awareness. So rather...there are two way. One is of course the Hindu way which is cutting out the impression altogether and that is not what Murshid says. It's refusal of life, of the reality. It's not acknowledging; denial and so on. It's not totally up front. But then you realize as long as you are highlighting that perspective then you cannot at the same time highlight alternative perspectives. There is no way. If you are looking at a hologram, there are separate pictures in that hologram. You can shift your focus of your glance but you can't highlight two pictures at the same time. You could alternate between them it would take a lot. Eventually one could extrapolate but that takes a lot you see. So it's much easier to downplay the perspective that is forcing itself on you which commonplace. Everybody does that. There's nothing to gain by it, nothing particularly brilliant about it. So there's a sense of withdrawing and that's why Pir once said it's like stepping back, walking backward "inaudible" not used to. There's the story of the wife of Lot who asked not to turn back, in the bible, and she turned back and she turned into salt. So in other words, the sclerosis that we undergo in our image of the world is due to our not being able to withdraw from the impact of the way things appear which is what Hinduism calls "Mayan". So a retreat is a wonderful opportunity to because in life you are called upon to plug into things the way they seem because that is the way our civilization is programmed and we are programmed by civilization. But then you can't see the wood for the trees. You just "inaudible" functioning in the middle range and its OK for the kind of thing which is normally required of one but for a deep understanding of life of course its totally inadequate. And what is more, one is depriving oneself of unfurling a lot of potentialities that are call for expression and which um are important for your self esteem and if you don't do it you'll feel that you've failed in your life and that's why they say in India, "Don't you dare die before you've obtained illumination." obviously very important. They say as they get older. "inaudible" you remember in previous seminars and I can repeat that of course, for example as you're exhaling you are aware that there's an input from the existential scenario into the various layers of your psyche through the intermediary of perception and what I call conception any lets say interpretation of these occurrences. And now what we learn to do in meditation as we've already done many times in the past was to place centennials at the doors of perception. That is not the Hindu method. The Hindu method, the one that you find in yoga is to definitely place a barrier, a real wall between the environment and yourself. Consider the environment to be Maya, to be illusory. I would say it's not illusory its just the way things look in a perspective. Its relative, relatively true. So one would be fooling one's self by rejecting it as by taking it for granted. So the answer is filtering. So we filter out certain things through other things "inaudible". And that is the principle upon which our defense systems are based. We have defense systems in the body, you have defense systems in the psyche. In the body, the immune system. The body refuses transplants of organs that do not either strictly the same DNA of the body or closely related. In other words, it's based on "I" or "Not I", or "Me" or "Not Me". It seems true of our psyche if we have a very strong sense of ourselves then when we look in the environment we come across attunements "inaudible" and so on, "inaudible". That are totally not only out of sync with our being but which being out of sync with our being are nefarious, detrimental to our being, are disturbing to our psyche. So instead of rejecting our impressions, one just rejects those impressions that are unwanted and accept that one wishes to in keeping with our being. So that is an activity of our free will and also a uniqueness because each one of us is different and consequently we affirm our specificity by operating our selectivity. But there's a second immune system which adapts itself to the environment. And if it were not so then we wouldn't be able to eat food but we have to be able to ingest things that are different to ourselves but as you know the food is passed through a whole process so that eventually the minor acid chains are organized in the sequence of the genes of the DNA by the transcription to the RNA by the enzymes. The enzymes of the RNA operate that. That reordering of the food that we eat is totally transformed before it can be incorporated in the body whereas in our psyche we are habituating ourselves to impressions that are disastrous so lets say the second immune system adaptation is overstressed and we don't know how to end the consequences of course that we loose our own identity and that is why I want to say I can see the meaning of psychotherapists who say that we need to have a strong ego, a strong sense of ourselves. Whereas some of the eastern methods of meditation make one lose one's ego in the totality so that one isn't endowed with the wherewithal to deal with the impressions of the world so one is escaping from them because one can't deal with them. One needs a whole education to be done at school. So I would say that it is our validation of ourselves that protects us from the damaging effect of just being exposed to all kinds of impressions. Which is, I would say, the essence of Pir Murshid's teaching. Whereas if you look at the teaching of some of the...well...some of the eastern schools including some of the Sufi schools in the east, crushing the ego and you've destroyed your immune system. You can't fight against impressions that are unwanted. They become insistent and impelling and one is delivered totally in the hands unless one has such a strong sense of, may I say, the special status of one's being that it is because one is outraged by them that one is able to remain untainted. A strong dedication to one's ideal and it's true that this ideal is very precarious and one is questioning it all the time. It's a continuous objective to the challenge of life and one wonders how realistic it is. Sometimes one needs other people who are uphold that ideal to help one to uphold one's own ideal. But of course its true the acid of the ideal is to see it really happen in real life. otherwise its wishful thinking. Now there's a third mode in the defense system. Instead of filtering it is transmuting, distilling. In fact you'll find that of course in the alchemical process. The first process is filtering and then the second one is distilling, turning the bad into good. How do you do that? A new concept of St. George and the dragon: instead of killing the dragon, helping the dragon to develop wings. The story of the mamberata and the monkeys that develop wings. So this is much more subtle than all the kind of judgementalism that we develop when we discover aspects of ourselves that we don't like. MAR 15, 1995 Tape 03 Yes, so we're going to continue the work we started. It's very appropriate to the retreat concentration. So, normally as you breathe you forget you're drawing energy from the environment. You're drawing, obviously, oxygen and other gasses and then repelling them; as you exhale some of the oxygen is incorporated your body. Now what we want to do is very challenging because we want to draw energy from inside instead of from outside. That means that you imagine as you are breathing in instead of imagining the convergence of energy from outer space being funneled into your force field you experience something very different. You have to think very differently like, "I'm drawing energy from a kind of subliminal level of the physical world that is emerging in me." And the way to do it is to imagine that you have put blinds on your senses: your eyes, your ears, and so that you're not connecting with the outside. So it's almost like your consciousness is trying to reach out and it gets blocked and consequently it turns within and then, as I say, by downplaying a certain perspective then you highlight another one so now with these circumstances you can start sensing the way that energy emerges but is funneled as it emerges in you. It's all encompassing and endless of course but somehow it's converged and emerges as a new dispensation of energy. There is a wazifa for that: Ya Muhyi, a new dispensation of energy that emerges from the solar plexus and so I think it's better instead of concentrating on turning within, it's better to concentrate on the way that whatever emerges from within is then radiated forward in the explicate condition or state of the world. And the way to do it is to imagine that you have put blinds on your senses: your eyes, your ears, and so that you're not connecting with the outside. So it's almost like your consciousness is trying to reach out and it gets blocked and consequently it turns within and then, as I say, by downplaying a certain perspective then you highlight another one so now with these circumstances you can start sensing the way that energy emerges but is funneled as it emerges in you. It's all encompassing and endless of course but somehow it's converged and emerges as a new dispensation of energy. There is a wazifa for that: Ya Muhyi, a new dispensation of energy that emerges from the solar plexus and so I think it's better instead of concentrating on turning within, it's better to concentrate on the way that whatever emerges from within is then radiated forward in the explicate condition or state of the world. And as I said, it's as though there is just a lot of activity that we can never know. That is not the object of our cognizance and it's happening inside and inside it's not your inside but it is like you have the access to the inside: inner lining, let's say, of all beings of all reality from inside. It's not like "this is my psyche." It doesn't have a personal identity card. It's totally impersonal. But then, having merged with the totality, now the contrary happens. The totality emerges as you: in you, and as you. It's like having access to an enormous pool of resourcefulness that one hasn't been tapping because one was not aware of it. I would say like, just think that the whole ocean emerges as each new wave instead of thinking that a wave is just the continuance of the previous one. Now, as you exhale, that's where your breath reaches out into outer space but not as you inhale. And instead of identifying with your body and thinking that all these elements like energy is now conferred upon your body, just think that -- well, it is true of the body, but it's easier if you think that you are a being of light; and you think that that light is the template in which the body is being formed, is being configured. And this light that you are is in the process of unfoldment. So think of it dynamically instead of statically; and that it is emerging from an inverted subliminal condition of the universe out of the ocean of light that is, how can I say, subjacent over the, what we call physical world. Now the practices we're going to do now are only valid if you have really adopted this standpoint. If you can really think differently think that you are not drawing energy from the environment but drawing energy from a kind of subliminal state of the universe. Maybe it's a difficult concept for some of you. Think of at least one of the theories of Sufis (? ) that stars are born out of a subliminal level of the physical world that we don't know: that is, how can I say, subjacent to the physical world. And before, of course, one used to say ex nihilo which means out of nothing but it's out of the state of void in which everything is present: so it's not the void, it's perhaps the original chaos where everything is mixed up with everything else. So if you are prepared to adopt this point of view, this way of thinking, then you can do this practice but one must be careful not to overuse it. It could make you "other-worldly." So, place the indexes of your fingers on your eyelids but close your eyelids and press your indexes only on the bottom part of the orifice of your eyes so that you do not press against the cornea, which means the retina; and turn your eyeballs upwards to that you affect the least pressure upon the retina. So now you are blocking practically any input of light from the environment: putting blinkers on your eyes. It is very typical of the contemplative. So place the fourth and fifth fingers of your hands on your lips. Keep them closed. There is a lot of significance. One is not speaking, for example. One is silent. Now, press the little finger of your left hand on your left nostril but do not press your right. So you can inhale through the right nostril; then you can press it so you hold your breath and then open again so you can exhale through the right nostril. And that's what we are going to do. We're not going to inhale or exhale through the left nostril: only the right three times, three breaths. So now you can place your fingers (thumbs?) in your ears and after the three breaths then take your fingers away. Keep your eyes closed. Now, of course it is important to think of all the things we have been saying instead of just doing the breathing. So it requires a lot of attention. So if you remember, when you're breathing in through the right nostril you think that you are drawing the breath in from inside like a hidden source of energy that is subjacent to the physical world and it has a vivifying effect. That's the meaning of Ya muhyi. Remember that you're plugging into all this activity and you hold your breath below the surface that manifests a view in the activity of the physical world but there is always activity going on behind the scene, backstage, let's say, of the universe. What you experience is you turn as you hold your breath and you identify with being a being of light instead of a physical body, and maybe you could identify yourself with breath as energy: as a current of energy. That is alternating, (? pulsing). Now, as you exhale, then you transfer your attention now from your solar plexus to your heart and physical eyes and consciously translate that nebulous inner energy into a very active radiance of light. All right, so let's do this once more. So what you're doing is what the stars are doing and the sun is doing. You are converging the light in the implicate state, the existential state that is what Pir-o-Murshid calls the All Pervading Light and having focused it you now radiate it through your heart center and also through your physical eyes and eventually of course you see also through your third eye and of course your crown center. So there you're transiting from inside toward outside but your not inputting from outside to inside. You could have identified with your electromagnetic field but I think it's nicer to identify with your aura. Now, a further step. Instead of highlighting light we are going to highlight sound. So think that when you hold your breath you think that the original state of the universe is silent. That does not mean that there is nothing there. It means that sound is potentially present but needs to be awakened. Maybe a good example would be a gong because actually there is a lot of activity in the gong even if you don't strike it: atoms, (? ) the electrons, a lot of activity going on. We don't know that. It seems sclerosed. And if we communicate energy to it, that is a surplus of energy, that's (?bi s..r.ked), then that energy becomes intensified enough to manifest to our senses in the vibrations of the air which we call sound. It is actually, really--imagine that you are like a church organ and all the tubes are in a state of awaiting of, potentially they represent different frequencies but then by blowing into them you are giving them energy and now they begin to resound. So in the same way the centers of your body, particularly the chakras, are just like gongs, for example, or just like those tubes. They, lets say they are accommodations. They have their specific frequencies and if you awaken them then somehow there is a shift then from the silent state to the state of resonance: the audible state. And maybe that is so subliminal that you can't hear it but imagine that you are like a very gentle kind of church organ that is producing a lot of inaudible music and every time that you concentrate on the solar plexus, for example, as you hold your breath and on your heart center as you exhale, perhaps you might see if you can feel their vibrations. I find it easier to feel the vibration of--around my arms. It might be the magnetic field around my arms and feel a kind of jiggling effect and if you concentrate more intensely then that will increase. You can feel that you--in fact it's possible the whole body vibrates to some extent. Now you can, by concentrating on a particular center, you can increase the intensity of its vibrations and that's called awakening. Awakening a center. Which has an amazing consequence in terms of our sense of meaningfulness although it can't be expressed in words. So, what Murshid's saying is that one makes the silent life audible and visible. So what we feel here is of our own making, our way of reacting to what is happening. What is happening one couldn't ever experience because it would be the opposite of one's experience as we've already seen. So this is illustrated in the dances of Shiva and Shiva always sits absolutely still with beautiful poise and then begins to move his fingers and hands and head; then the arms and then gradually begins to stand up and dances that wonderful dance of the cosmos and as (sp? Nataraja) and then eventually returns back to the still position. So this is very expressive of (? sp. sotasamad) which is the silent state of the universe that is aroused and at a sudden point it becomes visible and audible and what we do, we are picking up this activity behind, as we say, the backstage of the universe: behind the apparent and the beauty of that is that by picking it up we are able to have some clue about the new birthing that is taking place in us. It is of the same nature as what we are talking about. So let's do this practice once more, now with this in mind. So you feel vitalized, awake, alert, and this reflects upon your consciousness. It starts awakening from its lethargy. You may notice that it's easier to do this if you identify with your electromagnetic field or it could be your astral body that is much more malleable than your physical body and it's not sclerosed as the physical body seems to be. It isn't, but it is much more malleable; it's much easier to do this practice (long pause). So it seems as though your body were kind of crystallized, jelled; and then the life of your body, life of life, as one says, something much more--let's say, mobile or more volatile, more fluid as we call the etheric body or astral body, or whatever. It's difficult for me to pinpoint it but anyway there's that feeling in contrast with the stability of what one assumes to be the body: this fluctuation; jiggling, as I say; very rapid vibration. The higher one's attunement the higher the frequency, one becomes quite unbelievably high and we can translate it in terms of pitch. For example we say: "I hear pitches--notes of a piccolo, flute for example, or the sounds of the vina, or all kinds of different sounds that we could compare it to. Now, the interesting thing is that creativity is born from within and so this would be the clue to working with our personality: for example working with wazifa in order to promote the unfurling of our potentialities. So we'd have to follow the model of creative beings, creative people, the geniuses. So let's try and see a little more clearly into what we are doing here. There is a saying of the Vedanta, Vitavedanta and I think it's to be found in the (Mandelki (sp?) Upanishad. (? I said) that there's comparative different levels of consciousness and says at the lowest level one is the subject experiencing other than oneself. And the second level one is experiencing oneself in the process of being born and reborn again in the process of becoming: of its genesis, of its internal genesis. So if you could say your thought of the object of your cognition in the second state, but it's not the thoughts that simply interpret the events of the physical world but it's thoughts that emerge spontaneously from within. It's a whole new world that is taking shape in you and which we neglect. And if we do neglect it then all those potentialities are stillborn. Think what we are missing in our lives. So how important it is to be able to capture this rebirthing process that takes place from within as it starts emerging. So could you, when you shift from holding your breath to exhaling, could you think that all that ebullient activity of the universe behind the scene is not only manifesting outwardly in the physical world or the experiences you have but is also manifesting as you in your personality, in your unfoldment. So remember these words: The activity of the machinery of universe that becomes, let us say, homonized--it's a word used by (? sp. Thiellard du Chardin)--it becomes human as us. And it's continually happening. It recurs, and is continually recurring: an on-going process, and most of us are not aware of it. The beauty is, of course, capturing it just as it begins to stick its head above the snow, lets say, like the crocuses; just beginning to become the object of our knowledge and then one encourages this creativity by reinforcing it, by concentrating on it and giving it all one's support; and whatever is being born, being ingested, begins to really get concretized in a more tangible way. So let's do this practice again, now with this in thought. So it is a way of, let's say, accelerating the process or incubation of your personality by a conscious creative action. Right now, let us examine--you see, it's a little more complicated than I say, because to be really creative it's not good enough for something valuable to emerge from within. There's also the descent from what one would call: above. And the clue to this is to be able to shift your sense of identity from identifying with the body to identifying with the electromagnetic field or the ether body, astral body, and then even further: identifying with what one calls the akashic body which is like energy that is configured by vibrations like a symphony. So we are talking of different levels of reality. So when you do the practice next time, then as you inhale instead of simply shifting from your concentration from your solar plexus to your heart center, keep moving upwards and from your heart center through what the Tibetans call the wheel of fire which is halfway between your cardiac plexus and your throat chakra or thyroid. So as you do this, if you were concentrating on the heart center were you thinking of being a being of light. And I think that most of us think of light in terms of the physical light such as we have experienced in the physical world. But now try to identify with what in (? ? ) we call the noncreated light or uncreated light. Gregory of Nyssa called it uncreated light. Jakob Bohme, aurora consogense. Just like, well, I suppose.........understand by physical light and can't be limited by it. It is very difficult to define it. Let us say that you become aware of your angelic counterpart instead of your ( ? ) aura. So it does have a countenance but it doesn't have a profile. And so that's what you do when you inhale so that when you hold your breath you definitely identify with being your celestial counterpart, being of nonphysical light, with carrying of something of the attunement of the angelic spheres. So, let's do this and then, yes, well then as you exhale what you could do is you could apply a word of Shahabuddin Surawardi, a Sufi, who says, "You see the world from the vantage point of your celestial double. That is, for example, you see beauty where others don't see it or just see the ugliness. So you are always seeing things from the vantage point of the angels. 'So let's do this practice one last time and try to see if you can apply this while you are doing it. So Pir-o-Murshid calls it the ability to rise into the highest spheres by simply shifting your attunement and consequently your sense of identity. Now, the kind of light that we come across is not the same as the light we came across when we turned within. It's, well, I suppose there's no way to say it. We could say it's celestial light instead of etheric light. It's very difficult to say it. And to rise, you can' hoist yourself up. That's impossible by your will. It's, as I say once more, downplaying a certain attunement like for example the etheric body or identifying, say, with the etheric body, and then highlighting another level which is very different. You feel the difference. It's the kind of level that the churches are trying to communicate, or all religions are trying to communicate, that sense of the heavenly spheres that we've lost touch with and we're like, alienated from our real home and then there is longing in us to recover or retrieve that attunement and then there is no doubt, as Pir-o-Murshid said, what he says is we need to work through the ties with the physical world. He doesn't say sever them. Work through them. But it is true to say that desire does deprive us of our freedom. That's true. So we'll be continuing this but now we have a few minutes before lunch and then after lunch you can go on practicing this yourself. You remember the different stages that I described and then you will go further. God bless you. MAR 15, 1995 Tape 04 You may experience some difficulty in getting to them, receive concentration, those who need help. I remember when I made my first retreat, I thought I'd never be able to maintain. Because one tries, one's so used to using one's will and that's counterproductive and one doesn't know how to, and if one doesn't try, nothing happens and its like a Catch 22. So one does not know how to proceed. And then, I'm speaking from my experience, but you have to remember what I've said and its asking a lot of your memory. It only makes sense if you have a, if you experience it while I'm talking. That's why I've been pausing allot while I'm talking, so you can experience it instead of us talking. And of course I'm experiencing it myself while talking. So it takes some shoehorning (?!) to get into it. I think the key is in the realm of emotion, rather than thought. Because the reason why we find it difficult to concentrate is because there are random thoughts that force themselves upon our mind and we don't have the strength to control them, but the motor behind these thoughts is of course emotion. And even if it seems as thought the thoughts refer to occurrences to which we a subjected and failure to see what part we play in inviting them. The fact remains, and now remember this, its very important, its to be found in the first steps of Yoga. That is we don't really experience the world objectively. Nor do we access our problems objectively. We read the world under our bias of our likes and dislikes. So our experience is distorted right from the start, by what psychologists would call psychological projections upon the object, mainly the world and of course its important for the psychotherapist to know, and of course for the patient to know, how do you feel with regard to this question. That what Dr. Kubler Ross asks, and I'm not interested in how you think about it, that's your assessment. How do you feel? That means that we are the way that emotion involvement in the problem impacts the problem or gives a certain bias to the problem. That's important to know. That its is really how we feel that makes us assess a problem the way we do, and we think that that assessment is absolute, but its relative and therefore not reliable. But in order to access problems totally objectively, we would have to be without emotion and that's the reason, the way of the Sanasin and that's the reason why people leave the world and to have more clarity, not be deluded by maya and that's something we don't have to follow up. But even then our assessment is not reliable. If you know something about physics, you know that by observing the observable, one influences the functioning, so you never know how it is if you don't observe it. Coming back to this, its an assumption of yoga, its the first step in yoga, Sabit Samadi. That one must of course (inaudible 4 words). And what I would say is there are ways of doing it and one is to get into the consciousness of other people, Those involved in the problem, and see how the problem looks from their vantage point. And its doesn't follow that their vantage point is better than yours, but at least you have two vantage points to the problem instead of one, and its less likely to be biased in your favor. And then one could expand one's consciousness into the consciousness of many people and then you would get an even less biased view and that is what I mean by the Cosmic Dimension of Consciousness. To be able to extend your consciousness infinitely. Well, not extending your consciousness, but accessing wider and wider areas of consciousness that compliment, complete your consciousness, your vantage point. So lets do this and then well move further because I think that during a retreat you need very definite instructions, very definite practices to do and what you need to know is what's the next step after this, this methodology. So first of all, it is necessary to be very clear that, well think of your worst problem. I think most of us have a few, but so maybe some are worse than others, they are all pretty bad. So ask yourself, why is it bad? It's detrimental to my well being. It might be physically detrimental, financially detrimental, or morally detrimental. Might be humiliating, several reasons why this particular problem is being deleterious, therefore damaging and why I make an assessment that this problem is standing in the way of my well being. That's the assessment one makes. It's a very simplistic assessment. There are more sophisticated assessments than that. So its obvious that now we are really caught, not just in a personal vantage point, but a personal emotion bias. It's like a bind. And you will understand Buddha when he says it is of course desire that causes pain. Now I'm not saying it's bad to desire, what I'm saying that there is definitely a casual relationship between desire and, well, joy and pain. Not just pain, but there certainly is a casual relationship there. But our objective is not to become hermits or ascetics. What is more, from the Sufi point of view, the purpose of life is to actualize the meaningfulness and splendor behind it, behind the universe, by building a beautiful world, a beautiful people. So that requires involvement, and personal involvement. If you are detached and indifferent and that doesn't seem you are going to be particularly interested in doing this. You are leaving. You are retiring from life. Alright, we will come back to this again, but let us follow the steps I proposed a moment ago. Get back into your feeling distressed about that particular problem you're involved in and think of those people because involvement with a problem is generally with people. Sometimes it is with matter, for example an earthquake or it could be an accident or something, but generally it has to do with our involvement with people. So think of a person who is directly connected with this problem and think of how this person could experience it, the kind of impression the person has of the problem. And you might find that it is complementary, that is their interest is close to yours, your interest is close to theirs. It is not always the case. Might be the problem. How much to give in and then resent giving in because (inaudible) your sacrifice. Now that is one situation, I don't say that all problems are like that. An example of a situation where there is complimentarity between two views, they possess complimentarity between tow interests. Now I hope that you are convinced that one can have some indication as to how things look from the point of view of another person. Perhaps not totally, but some indication. We are not used to doing this, but why I suggest doing it is a step towards what I call Cosmic Consciousness. Extending the consciousness beyond its narrow focus. And the Sufis say, "I see through that person's eyes, through his or her eyes. So what is most pertinent of course is, I see the problem through the eyes of that person and that would make things much easier for you because you would understand why that person is handling thin the way he/she is and that motivation is much more related than one imagines to their set values. Although not the values that they purport, but the values they really validate. Lets say their motivation, if you like. The way that one's values are made realistic, otherwise it's wishful thinking, it's unreal. That's what Moshe means by shattering one's ideal on the rock of truth. So maybe that person's values are different from yours. For example, you may have a very strong sense of being of service, of compassion, and that person has a great sense of achievement at all costs. So they have a discrepancy in the values that upsude (?!) Now there's a proposal of an experiment made by Dr. David Boehm. Suppose you have an aquarium and you have two center cameras and you film the fish from two sides of the aquarium, and then you view those films, and of course those films are different, but somehow you realize that those films are related in an organic way. So its the same reality seen from two complimentary standpoints. And if you were able to extrapolate between those two standpoints, then we would have a much more realistic representation of the motion of the fish, that is whatever we are trying to observe, than if we just look at it from one side of the aquarium. Now we could carry this further and imagine how you look to the person. Your thinking this time of not seeing through his/her eyes but seeing yourself through his/her eyes. You may be very surprised because you may find that the way he perceives you is totally different from the way you perceive yourself. And that explains why the person is handling the problem the way they are because they are assuming that you are what they think you are and that's not what you are, but that's what they are assuming. So you well understand why they are handling the problem on the strength of that assumption. That gives you some protection against being humiliated by people who undermine you, despise you, have contempt for you. We become very fragile and exposed to criticism so (illegible) a protection. (Illegible) calls it a questioning opinion and it gives you freedom. One of the first steps in finding your freedom is freedom from opinion and the best way to free yourself from the opinions of others is to free yourself from your own opinions, then you are free. So now I hope that you say that freedom, or lets say your need for freedom, is going to save you from the pains of involvement. Can we balance those two things, involvement and freedom? Do we have to be either a householder, as they say in India, or homeless, as they say in India too. A Sanyassan, an ascetic, do we have to, can we combine those two? Can we really find some measurer, lets call it the first breeze of freedom, in our involvement with people? Because, as we already said, that would exonerate us from the distress of the judgment that we pass on the situation, which I say is not reliable. Now on retreat you are recognizing your need for freedom. Freedom from involvement, as I say. I find myself that one needs a role model until one doesn't need it any more. Because one is always trying to find oneself in the other oneself who is better able to actualize what one is, than oneself. That's the reason for the role model. So on retreat I find it helpful, and I think probably you will too if you try to get into the consciousness of Buddha. Not in everyday life, but in retreat, of walking peacefully, as he used the word himself, surrounded by his own silence. In a sense, you know, detached. You know he broke this connection with the palace. He left the palace. I'm not advising that at all, but the kind of attunement that comes from freeing oneself from emotional dependence upon one's involvement with them. They resent it. So one is making the relationship golden by bringing the fresh breeze of freedom in the relationship, as Kalin Bron side. And doesn't want to condemn a person to love them because one depends on their love. I'd like you to just peek, just have some kind of (thought) of what it's like to be free. Not free externally, that's not what I'm talking about. In fact we can be a vagabond and be extremely unfree. That's not the answer. There's a kind of external freedom that you are able in infuse into involvement. This is much more subtle than just having a situation, escaping, and then you're not free anyway because there's a guilt feeling or a sense of having failed, well cowardice of course, not meeting commitment. So you see the beginnings of the retreat is really looking with great depth into one's life. And be aware of those two forces that are active in relationship with the physical and also the social environment. So what I suggest is always starting your meditations, in the case of morning meditations certainly, with a breathing practice. Maybe you notice our breathing practices are always somehow associating thought with our breath instead of just trying to be aware of your breath as allot of ascetics do. So this is a Tibetan adage. The mind rides the wind. So a more simplistic interpretation of it is that, of course, the wind is your breath and the way you are exchanging energy with the environment and your thinking is somehow monitored so that it alternates with your inhaling/exhaling. Or then is suspended between inhaling and exhaling. So the breathing practice I suggest now is based upon the adage of a Sufi Dervish and came through the book of (?) So now what (?) God exhales he/she descends from the solitude of not knowing, and I think when one says unknowing it's not He/She knowing himself in the eternal principle of oneself, his/her being, but gains a further knowledge by the fact that the Divine consciousness is fragmented into umpteen numbers of beings. Or lets say vantage points. The consequence is that by the interaction and perhaps the extrapolation of these different vantage points a compliment mold of cognizance is gained which was latent in the principals, but needed to be fanned out in order to be known and (Kali) Sufi is God was a hidden treasure and desired to be known. The word is not Ishka as I had thought is was, but (illegible) which is loved to be known. (ironic that last word was illegible don't ya think?) That's very important because that's Love instead of just knowing. So it was the Divine nostalgia to experience what was inherent in the principles, to see what happens when they are applied, actualized. What is gained in terms of feedback, lets say. And consequently, that nostalgia is called Ishkala, consisted in expressing the divine splendor in terms of beauty. As I say, build a beautiful world, a beautiful people. We are doing exactly the contrary of course, but that almost incongruous that we should speak about a beautiful world, a beautiful people and we are doing exactly the opposite, but that's what it was all about. And therefore as you exhale, think of you exhale as being an extension of the divine exhaling which is powered by Ishkala or the divine splendor which is beyond form, time and space. And so, in a concrete way, building a beautiful house, by a good car and good works and good computer and those things we call the lifestyle, instead of thinking it's counter-spiritual because it seems like greed, think that this can serve that motivation to build beautiful people. Then it is in line with the divine nostalgia. But in the course of doing so, we forgot what that motivation was and started wanting things for ourselves, instead of being of service. And perhaps out to do other people in order to get into their place and steal and so on, all the appropriate things for themselves. So its been at its discretion of the divine Iskala, the divine nostalgia. And of course there's no doubt that by the way this can happen is involving ourselves with the material fabric of the planet with people and institutions and so on. And we get very easily (?) and loose sight of what the original motivation was. So let this be the aim of meditation, and your meditation during the retreat, and just think about how you're involved with people. How the divine motivation was behind your motivation, how there's been a distortion (that's) taken place. Perhaps one disconnected oneself with the divinity of one's being and consequently one was deciding things unilaterally instead of taking into consideration the well being of the whole. That is something you can not trust, to think, well yes, I need a good house not because I want a good house myself. It serves a good purpose. It serves as a tool for my functioning in life and I need a good car also and sometimes I am in one of those exposed situations and I have to vie with the Jones's, otherwise people won't regard me and all that kind of thing we get involved with. As long as you don't loose sight of one's motivation it's alright. But of course one does loose sight of one's motivation. That's the reason why in a retreat one needs to keep on always performing what the Sufis called (illegible), which is self examination. Ask yourself, "Why am I doing this? What are my expectations in relationship with this person? How am I using this person for m_ personal benefit? Am I binding that person, am I freeing that person?" All these things that we need to see very clearly, and to see it clearly one needs to be very honest with oneself. And I said that's going to give you great clarity in thinking, because there's no room for ambiguity, for compromise. Now as you are inhaling, think of your inhaling as an extension of the Divine. Inhaling whereby God extracts the gist, the quintessence of the knowledge that has been gained by the existential condition. And it is , to use the modern language, fed back into the divine software. The ancient Sufis would not have used that word, but it does make things much easier to understand. The technologies that come through our time to serve our intelligence and our understanding. That is, of course, the third stage in alchemy. A (illegible). And then eventually a quintessation, so that the only way the (?) illustration of that would be by the way one extracts perfume from the flowers. So just think of it like that. They're in the programming. I say that because, especially if you're meditating, one tends to continue to in the way one is educated to think, in terms of causality, and in order to awaken, one has to question all those assumptions. And consequently, one has to realize that one is the Divine or together lets say the creative condition, the existential condition, is an extenuation of the being of God. Who is, lets say, experimenting, loving, gaining God desire to be known. And so knowledge is a clueing from this situation that is our awakening, is that way that knowledge is gained. But you see that the ultimate sense of meaningfulness is like the quintessence of knowledge. Know how is like the underpinnings and then eventually one just grasps the quintessence of all that has been gained by our knowledge. So you realize this is exactly the process in making perfume and in order to do so one has to reject the dross, the contingent aspect, so that all that remains is the quintessence. What does it mean to reject or disregard? It means letting go. So inhaling in order to gather in the gist of the experience of the life that we are involved in. Lets say the non emotion instead of the emotion of Ishka, which determined the descent. The non-emotion is detachment and indifference, the way of the ascetic. You'll notice that in involvement the emotions that are (illegible) arouse joy and pain. And in the quintessessation, in the search for freedom, there's a non-emotion which is peacefulness. And what we are seeking for in a retreat is peace, rather than joy or pain. But your emotions are stirred when meditation if you think of your problems and it would be putting your head under the sand like the ostrich if you did not think of your problems. I'm not suggesting that you do not think. What I'm suggesting is the other way around, that you do think of your problems. You get a first protection by the fact that you do realize that your assessment is unreliable and that of the other people. But the only way in which you can awaken, that is to do what God is doing, is grasping at the gist of what is gained by experience. As you inhale you are participating in the divine inhaling by God awake in life instead of awakening beyond life. The words of Murshid "In Us as Us". And that awakening does require freedom. It's very paradoxical, very very difficult. It seems one is being pulled in two directions but what I'm trying to do is find some kind of cognition between these two vectors, involvement and freedom. As I say, find some kind of way of being involved internally and involved externally. I hope you've been able to follow me so far, because that's going to give you a certain degree of peacefulness. Here was a question asked and I do invite questions if they are put into the process e are going through, the practices. The question was, "If I practice on my solar plexus then I become oversensitive to the deleterious impressions accruing from outside, and, but of course, if you remember what I said this morning, one has to place sentinels at the doors of perception so that the impressions that are disturbing cannot reach your solar plexus, that is the core of your being. They can be processed, as I say for example, the soul of a criminal. It is very, very easy to be judgmental and one sees the despair the lead to that criminal act, then one can accommodate better in ones own soul. And therefore I think there is a better principal than placing sentinels, that is an adult method. But I think it is much better to process the integration coming through from outside instead of filtering and projecting part of it. But you see you can do that at vest if you can get into the consciousness of those people who act in a shocking fashion that disturbs you. People we think are obnoxious. The psyche is so delicate. A wound is often converted into aggressiveness and one doesn't know how best to deal with that wound and so as a simplistic way of dealing with the wound is being aggressive. So one's compassion of the suffering of that person makes it easier to find room for that person in ones heart. Now this all applies to the retreat. We just have one more minute. That the ultimate freedom is freedom from conditioning. So while you are meditation, the reason you can't control your thoughts is that you have been conditioned, just like Pavlov's dogs were conditioned. To react to (?). We've been conditioned, all of our education was the conditioning, habits, usages, social environments. Its all conditioning. And. of course, conditioning does rob you of your freedom. And so the last words of the Buddha under the tree where he attained illumination were, "I have overcome conditioning". That's the ultimate freedom. And by realizing where by you are conditioned will give you freedom. That's a secret. And you say, Ah yes, but of course! Yes, I've been conditioned. And so you see that and then, I want to be free. I don't want to react. I want to act. This was supposed to be a silent meditation. MAR 16, 1995 Tape 05 Good morning. This morning we will start with the breathing practice that I mentioned yesterday where we are alternating between experiencing our involvement and experiencing our freedom, detachment, independence. So the mind drives the wind. I think it is important to start with to say a few preliminaries. As one exhales, one contracts, first of all, one's abdomen and then one's chest but, at the same time, one's energy field expands (Noone) is reaching out but one is contracting the abdomen (inaudible). Then one breaths in. It's a little bit like pumping a tire, so that actually one is really converging the energy of the universe but one is expanding one's abdomen and then one's chest. Of course, if you are pumping a tire, then, although you are converging air from the environment, the tire does expand a little bit but not much. And if you observe this, you will find that you can enjoy more oxygen and, what is more, you can evacuate more of the polluted gases because normally four-fifths of our lungs (are) is filled with polluted gases. So it is very important in the morning to evacuate them totally. Concentrate on the exhaling and then you can inhale more easily without effort. Now, just experiment with two different concentrations related with your breath. The first one would be, indeed, expanding your consciousness and (contract and) converging it, or the other way around, so that you think that you are... something like a glance. You see, a glance can encompass a wide panorama or can scan a book, for example. So think (of) that your consciousness reaches into further and further horizons in the starry sky, for example. So it gives you an impression of immensity which contrasts with the sense of one's body as being limited by that boundary that is one's skin. For example, if you identify yourself with your magnetic field. Now that is where...the magnetic field doesn't have boundaries so that will help you and develop a sense of immensity of breadth and then, of course especially if you identify with your aura, then of course, it is easier still because your aura is hurtling through space at the speed of 186,000 miles a second. But the much greater yield of this practice is to be found in identifying with your personality and becoming a more and more bountiful personality and incorporating more and more qualities so we are not thinking in terms of space anymore. It is freedom from the narrowness of one's personal self-image, and now a thought that is related to this, we find in the teaching of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan and that is to think of the outreach of your responsibility. Pir-o-Mushid calls it one's domain. So that is a very good thing to do every morning. For example, you think of the people for whom you assume some responsibility and your family, your acquaintances, as you exhale. And you think of those problems that you need to solve, and you realize that these problems have wide implications. At first one circumscribes them within (one's) the outreach of one's understanding but just become aware that these problems involve more and more people than those that one at first accounted for and, in fact, that also have implications in the universe far beyond those that one is able to assess at first. In fact, those implications are infinite. So that is looking at context rather than content. And now I hope that you see the relationship between what I call the bountifulness of, let's say, your personality and the outreach of your problems. The greater the problems, the more the resourcefulness of your being is being called for and, therefore, called into action, therefore awakened. Here we have for those who are doing wasifas, wasaif, draw attention to the difference between ya Basit and ya Wasi. Ya Basit is expansion beyond any kind of boundary, and one might almost say one's consciousness since the focal center of one's consciousness gets expanded, eventually one's consciousness gets, I suppose, totally dissolved in the consciousness of the totality, so there is a kind of ego loss in Basit, whereas Wasi is precisely what Pir-o-Murshid means. There is a sense of containment, of very wide outreach that one is containing, one is assuming mastery of it. There may be other qualities, like one needs to be clear in one's mind about it, but I think the quality that is the best associated with Wasi is Wali, of course, mastery. Now, as you know, of course, we are alternating between exhaling and inhaling. So now as you inhale, since we are into this application of self-meditation in our everyday life, so the complementary pole of the outreach would be gathering, Jamid. You gather your responsibility. You gather people. You create a world, an area, by your ability to act as an attractive pole which coordinates activities and the cooperation of people. One thinks of a basket and Pir-o-Murshid said the Sufi Order, Sufi movement, actually, in those days, is a basket. That is what an institution is, it is a basket that collects, it is useful to collect flowers and fruit in a basket. So the sense of containment, so this idea of immensity together with containment. So during your meditation during this retreat, you can consider your life and your involvement and, at first the more approximate involvement is easier to reckon with, and then you think there is more and more involvement; in fact, there is no end to it because we are polluting the planet and there are people who are victims of our greed, and so there is no point at which our responsibility stops. So, let's say the buck doesn't stop at the head; it is infinite, and it is in the base of the pyramid, not at the apex. Or not just at the apex. So if you just alternate, then, between ya Wasi and, while you are doing the ya wasi, you think ya Wali and remember the very basic principle upon which Sufism is based, (Fotohot), which means chivalry. One is the vice-regent of God. One has established a covenant of sovereignty with God in his/her function as a Lord, to assume responsibility in the Kingdom and, as you inhale, then Jami; you are collecting elements in your life and weaving them together in a pattern of which you have responsibilities. It is those, of course, there are responsibilities that one has inherited but many of our responsibilities are things that we have taken upon ourselves, so we have collected, and which are now within our domain. There is an adage of Caesar who said sovereignty is a power that one loses by letting things happen without taking control. That is the secret of leadership; if you neglect anything, it falls out of your purview. And so, it interesting because now we can see the relationship between meditation and everyday problems,and that is what I try to point out more and more in the Sufi Order. All right, so that was then, let's say, the cosmic mode As we exhale and inhale, we alternate between reaching out and turning within or drawing toward the center, convergent. The other dimension, that means the other way in which we associate the wind with the mind, is working with energy, is upward, downwards, ascending, descending and, so now we come to that practice that I suggested we do this morning. So now, as you are exhaling, your attention is drawn towards your responsibility, well, towards your involvement, whose concomitant is, of course, your responsibility, and prior to your involvement, the motivation behind your involvement. You have got three as you descend, as you exhale. We start by, just a brief instant, think that I have descended through the spheres and have landed on planet Earth and borrowed a body out of the fabric of the planet. In fact, it is the fabric of the universe, in order to fulfill (my) the divine nostalgia and to, as I said before, actualize the splendor behind the existential state in a concrete fashion in, say, building a beautiful world of beautiful people. So that is a first thought as you descend. It is really an emotional, how can I say, vector which the Sufis call Ishq Allah, the divine nostalgia. So your nostalgia is an extension of the divine nostalgia. And that would then... now the question is whether your motivations are in line with your, with that nostalgia. So you review your motivations. What am I trained to do on the planet? Maybe one was waylaid at some point and had lost one's original motivation out of sight and so one is doing one's thing without being part of the total thrust of existentiation in the universe. Just like a battery that has been cut off from its charger. So the third step was the way in which this nostalgia has led us into involving ourselves with people, with situations, with the fabric of the planet, manipulating it. So now we can get into a little more precision here where we are involving ourselves as people or manipulating fabric of the planet with a view to fulfilling that cosmic nostalgia or whether it is to satisfy our own personal desire. This is really absolutely crucial because when Buddha speaks about desire as the source of the cause of suffering, I think that is what he means. He does not mean Ishq Allah, nostalgia, cosmic. He means where the personal identity takes over and his whole teaching is overcoming the limitation of the personal identity which is just a notion, so that I do think Buddhism is in line with Sufism here. The accent on Ishq, nostalgia, is difficult to find in Buddhism, that is true. It comes through in Sufism. Just (asaba) which means covetousness and... that is for the Sufis the way that the divine Ishq has become distorted. So this is very critical. This is where one is deciding whether one really wishes to dedicate oneself to one's spiritual ideal or whether one is just a man or woman of the world. And then the next step in the descent is already seen. The responsibility that is the result of one's involvement. You have four steps in the exhaling. Sufis call this (danossolat), which means descent. And now we have the ascent as we inhale. (long pause). And now, of course, it is clear that if one frees oneself from one's personal, say covetousness, one's responsibility is much more germane, so somehow to become a good leader one needs to have found internal freedom so one is not pushing one's person anymore, but working for the good of all. And then we have already seen yesterday, the way that we can try and find freedom in involvement with people and with situations and there is no doubt that one is spoiling the relationship by one's dependence upon another person. You are forcing that person to become dependent upon your dependence upon that person. There is a way in which relationship can be freeing, having a freeing effect upon the person so you are communicating your freedom to the people you are involved with. And now we come, we are moving backwards, right? So now we come to our motivations and, of course, if you are able to free yourself from personal motivations, it gives you the power of the dervish, that is,of course, what Sufis call spiritual power, divine power, and Pir-o-Murshid says that very clearly. He says achievement will give you power but the motivation limits that power. If that motivation is impersonal, your power is infinite. So that is the way to develop spiritual power. And then people are drawn to you like bees to the honey because you are communicating the most powerful of all powers, which is spiritual power, the power that moves the universe. So you see how freedom makes for better involvement. But this is not the kind of escapism that people confuse sometimes with freedom. But now we get to this emotional level, the motive behind it all, the power behind it all that was Isqh in the descent and, in the (rouge), in the ascension, it is. In India they call it vairagya. Pir-o-Murshid used the word indifference and independence. Those are the two wings that enable us all to fly. Indifference and independence. As I said, for the way to understand it all is to relate it to how things look from the divine point of view: God('s) extracting the quintessence of what has been gained by the know-how in the universe in terms of knowledge, you see, that is then fed back into the software of the universe, the programming of the universe. So, and we said that the only way that this can happen is by letting go, by rejecting the dross, in fact, the support system. So that does call upon detachment and indifference, indifference to... It's a question of prioritizing that which is important in contrast with that which is less important. What it is all about, like the support system was there in order to make it happen. For example, all that it has taken to build up the blood sugars in a succulent in the desert so that there might be just that moment of glory when the flower into blossom, into flowering of the magnificent way in which the light of the universe comes right through and that has a culmination of that process, that physical process. So the, all those, the blood sugars and so on, that was a support system and the ultimate (test) is, quantitatively, of course, much less; it is like, think of the amount of people it takes for a Himalayan team. And perhaps only one person, or three persons, or two are ever able to reach the summit. So it is indifference, I would say, to the support, well it is the support system that you have build. You have built it for a purpose and the trouble is one gets attached to that support system so ascribe it the value that belongs to it without overdoing it, and if... something that (Shahabaddin) said once, "The support system takes over." That is the trouble with our lives, the support system takes over and we forget what our objective is and we don't have time to meditate because ...life is more hectic and so forth and so on. The support system takes over. But what is important is not neglecting the support system but our emotional involvement in the support system. One cannot appreciate in their fullness if one sets one's heart on the lesser values. (pause) This is where one is highlighting something that one calls bliss instead of joy. Pir-o-Murshid says one pays.pearls... one trades pearls for pebbles. That is what we are doing. There is no accounting for taste. And the world is getting grosser. So this belongs to a whole chapter in meditation, a whole realm, a whole area which Buddha works with a lot... the mobility in the realm of emotion, from the vulgar and gross to the noble and sublime, from the personal to the impersonal, and it is our detachment from the values at one level that are going to release the values at a higher level. There is no way of being gross and noble at the same time. You have to make your choice. And, of course, the ultimate step in the attainment of freedom, if one can call it attainment, is overcoming the notion of the I, the personal I, one's individuality which is tantamount to saying God consciousness, but there is paradox here because, well, then when one exhales again, one has to see one's personal I as the expression of the divine I instead of alienating itself, alienating it from its ground. And what Buddhism is doing and Hinduism, yoga... the first one is simply overcoming the notion of the personal I and to what should normally be called God consciousness although it is not a word that the Buddhists would use, but what Sufism is bringing is the other way around, is being able to see the personal I as an expression of the divine I so that every time you are alternating between inhaling and exhaling, and every time you make that transit from inhaling to exhaling, every time you are more aware of the way your nostalgia is an extension of the divine nostalgia, in fact IS the divine nostalgia. The degrees, (in a Rumi) says, "Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God." It is very paradoxical. Ok, well, you see all that it takes is to do the simple breathing practice. Think of all those stages that you inhale and then you exhale. It doesn't seem to be realistic, but in time, what I always suggest is that you think of these things before you do the practice and then you do the practice and try to remember them, and then I find that then you stop doing the practice and think of them again. And if you do this everyday and everyday and everyday, then you know, your thinking gets much faster and you are able to incorporate all these steps. It's, you know, just like playing the piano, and you get to a point where you play it faster and faster and faster. You can hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling (and) in order to find peace. (laughter). So I said bliss, which is on the way from joy to peace, but there is a concept of Buddha about peace which, as you know is associated with freedom, which makes all the difference, and that is instead of thinking of peace as an escape or withdrawing, or peace as all-pervading, as pervasive, therefore, as active. So it is not not dealing with things, but it is dealing with things in a masterful, peaceful way, with sovereignty. (pause). This is how involvement triggers off joy and pain. And then we try to infuse peace in that involvement, not just as a defense but as a further dimension that can give greater joy and will perhaps make one even more sensitive to suffering but accept it more readily. So have a breakfast break and, as you see our meditations, let's say the theme of our meditations is our life. Instead of forgetting our life and going into an altered state. MAR 16, 1995 Tape 06 And this music could be used as a catalyst before you start meditating or it could, in some cases if it is really appropriate, you could use it while meditating, as a background, and it will help you. The reason is because, as I said, you can't get very far with your will in meditation. The real motive power behind the transformation of consciousness is emotion and there are so many different attunements, many of which are, of course, expressed in music. This morning we were attuning ourselves to a very peaceful state which is a kind of state that is conducive to awakening beyond life, which is called samadhi. But I hope I have made it sufficiently clear that that is not our objective; it is awakening in life and, consequently, the danger about seeking peace is denying the reality of emotional involvement in life and, therefore, frustrating ting something that is part of our being and, in fact, may be the very reason d'être. The reason for existence is what is gained by life rather than withdrawing from it. And so I am going to proceed in absolutely the opposite direction from what we were doing this morning, just as a phase, and then what we want to do is try to see how we can, well, the word is reconcile (here), reconcilables, but how we can somehow sublimate that emotion and find some relationship between our human emotion and our, let's say, divine emotion. It is really two poles of the same thing. So, as I say, if you don't deal with it, it will be stronger than you and overwhelm you and you will be starting to combat it in your retreat, and the more you combat it, the more insistent it will be, your personal emotion. So let us just get into that like...'f course it is nostalgia somehow. I think it is being in love but maybe what we don't quite always see is that we think we are in love with a person and, in fact, we are in love with Love, and that person is a catalyst. In fact, well, I have often said when trying to find oneself in another person it is better to be able to manifest what one is in oneself. I would say maybe in a person who manifests the counter qualities to one's own, there is complementarity instead of affinity. But in a broader sense, of course, it is being moved by the splendor which I referred to in the beginning, which we want to kind of attune to and I would say experience, but in order to attune to it, we need to experience it. Therefore, we are seeking for it in some kind of concrete expression in a person. Not just in a person but in a beautiful sunrise, in music, in a flower, in a crystal, in a situation, the drama of life where there is beauty and ugliness both and where beauty is perhaps very rare and far between to find, but it there also, and we are enchanted when we find it in the middle of the quagmire, like a beautiful flower that grows out of the mud somehow. I think that is the power of love. It is so, as I said, we alienate ourselves from the, how can you say, the source of that power, the divine nostalgia and think that it is our own emotion, our own desire, or whatever. And so it, as I say, it puts one in the condition of dependence upon the support of that emotion in another being, or in a situation or, let's say, in the underpinning. So what I would suggest doing is to try to maintain that connection so that while you feel deeply moved by your personal emotion, you never encapsulate that emotion within the boundaries of your notion of yourself but always think that it is the expression of the, well... The Sufis use the word Ishq Allah, the divine emotion, but you could say that the whole universe is aroused into paroxysms of love anew in each one of us. in the fulfillment of a purpose which is to manifest beauty. And, when I say beauty, I don't mean, necessarily, physical form. It could be, of course. It could be a beautiful action and beautiful music, of course, well, that is a kind of form, but a beautiful action. But sometimes one in one's search for peace in a retreat, one suppresses this very intense emotion that is kind of magical, that is kind of puts one in a state, a very vibrant state and, if one does not (lend/link) oneself to the intensity of this. Not only one is frustrating oneself but one is refusing a beautiful gift. One is, of course, not fulfilling aspects of oneself that need unfoldment, but there is even danger of maintaining oneself in a state of mediocrity for not accepting the gift of life. And of course, I am aware of the fact that nostalgia that are experiencing as love is fraught with pain, and it is true that a lot of monks, for example, have given up, dropped out, let's say, of society because of having been hurt in their emotion and that is not an answer. That is a cop-out, so I think instead of contrasting human emotion with divine emotion, I think that one needs to see the connection, unless of course, (inaudible) in Sufism. Therefore, always feel, as I say, feel the emotion of the universe welling up in every heartbeat as one is deeply moved by something that is shattering and overwhelming at the same time. The pain is there almost like the shadow of the (drowyas). You know, there is always a shadow there somehow. The terrible pain of hurting those one loves maybe inadvertently, maybe by some kind of complexity in the human nature which is incongruous, totally irrational. The psyche is irrational. An extreme case of it is the Simpson's case. The very limit of what I am talking about. And yet, somehow, there are situations one can't help hurting a person, much as one wants to spare the person, one is not living up to one's ideal, or it might be one's ideal of truth, so it is not just purely lack of kindness. So instead of, as I say, denying something that is so important, by bringing it up, one can sublimate it. And the only way to sublimate it is, of course, in glorification. It seems like another direction, a vertical instead of (a) horizontal. It is love that has been, is directed toward an ideal that is already in infinite regress, beyond one's reach, but carries one, hoists one's attunement higher and higher. This is, of course, the secret of what we want to do now which is working through this fear reaching into the higher spheres. You see it is really basically the same because it is based upon bewonderment, just the wonderment, like just walking in nature here, looking at the sky at sunset, or the sunrise, or just share the miracle of people coming together as we are doing now in search of their ideal. Bewonderment of what is coming through in the universe. It is, as scientists say, not just intelligent but it is elegant and there is an ascetic value there and that is what arouses our emotion, is the aesthetic,how can I say, side of that coin, the other side of which is intelligence. We are bewondered by the intelligence but even more so by the elegance with which this intelligence is adorned. It awakens something in ourselves, a kind of innate sense of beauty, as though we are seeking for ourselves, as I say, so we are seeking for the beauty that is in us outside ourselves. There are the words of Plotinus who said, "That which one fails to discover in contemplation, one seeks to experience outside oneself. So that is a key to your retreat now because in life one is continually seeking for some kind of fulfillment, (inaudible) kind of rapport with one's activity, one's situation, the environment, people, and so on. Whereas in the retreat, you are deprived of this communication with the people, the situations in which you are involved and your life in general, although they continue to live, of course, in your psyche. So then one learns to do exactly what Plotinus says, "To find what one is looking in another, to find it in oneself." And there is a kind of act of faith here. I can see why the teacher of Pir-o-Murshid, before he left, when he asked for a boon, he said, "May your faith increase." And he thought, 'Well, may my understanding increase or my love increase or compassion increase, but my faith?' Yes. It is faith in what one might call the God within. That's the faith that the whole bounty of the universe, not just all its bounty but at all levels, including the attunement, is all potentially within us. That is faith, instead of a big man there with a big beard manipulating our lives. Leonardo da Vinci described God as a potentiality waiting to be awakened in us, and that we are looking for this outside. He calls it self validation. That is why I said maybe one is in love with love. Instead of being the Beingness,often one is in love with the support system, and that is why the Sufis destroy the idol which is the support system. The Muslims destroy the idol and so, in the first stage, one seeks a role model in the Master, that is called Tassawuf. Tassawuf, according to Mushid, means the picture. So one is somehow, one's bewondering is fixed on a form and, of course, that form does express reality, but one could miss out on that reality by being too concentrated on the way that it manifests itself, the form, which is only the way it manifests. And so the next stage is Tawajjeh, which is getting to the attunement of that role model, the Master, and that does correspond to a much more advanced form of love where one is in a state of attunement with the being who is in a high state of attunement, who is in a state of ecstasy. And so there is a sense of resonance. And I would say that the intensity of that emotion is far greater than the one which is somehow circumscribed by the form. And then...But there is still the role model there and that means the specific manner in which the divine perfection is actualized, and form manifests, but then there is a further level where maybe the attunement of the being who one is in tune with simply serves as a catalyst lifting one to further levels of attunement and, in fact, that is when one begins to experience or grasp the emotion of the universe. And, one feels very complex because there is emotion at all levels, so it is not just a high level emotion but amongst those levels, there are, of course, very high levels and, when one is open to it, of course one may be the intensity of those higher levels of emotion is so great that, to start with, it hoists one beyond one's personal emotion, like when a person feels (inaudible) or shame that one should wallow in one's storms in a cup of tea, as I used to say, missing out on the celebration of the heavens, but that is the first step. At a further level, instead of having contempt for one's storms in a cup of tea, one sees how the cosmic celebration is enacted in the human drama and one sees that one is participating in the human drama. So if you see your problems in the context of the universe, in the context of the cosmic implications, then you don't have contempt for them; you see that they are the way that, what you ascribe to the celebration of the heavens is really... It is really on earth that the celebration takes place in the human drama. So you see, it awakens one's heart which becomes perhaps even embittered if one does not recognize its beauty. And in awakening the heart, one awakens one's soul. So perhaps this will give some clues as to how one lifts one's consciousness through the spheres because, otherwise, it is just a concept. Angelic spheres, what do you mean by it and so on. Do you still believe in Santa Claus, do you still believe in angels? You see, either we are in the realm of fantasy, wishful thinking and then somehow you get a knock in the head and you are too naive and you have relied upon these fantasies. And then the only alternative is to pick up clues as to what this could be, just an ideal, but clues as to the reality of it in life. That is much more realistic, of course. And this is where the thoughts of the Sufis are extremely helpful. I find, for example, even the forms of the physical world are clues. The, in somebody's word, ayat, which means signs, like the pug marks of a bear in the snow; you haven't seen the bear, but the pug marks give you some sense of, although it doesn't give you a complete sense,of what the bear is like, but it is only a clue. So the forms in the physical world are that. So image that one gets attached to these and has missed out on the reality, of which is the clue, so we are very full of admiration for a beautiful flower or lovely music, and so on, but these are clues and that means that they can act as catalysts to trigger off emotions beyond the emotion that is attached to the form to the clue. And I think that the reason why these clues are...these clues are not only forms of the physical world but also the idiosyncrasies of our personality. They are also forms, although they are not geographical forms, but still they are forms, subtle forms, as Sufis say, and they act equally as clues as to, well, the divinity, that aspect of God that is incarnated, (oulofiyat), the divinity which one mustn't confuse with God, but is one aspect. And so they are clues as to what Pir-o-Murshid calls the divine inheritance, (now) being, as I said, we carry within ourselves potentially the DNA, let's say of the whole universe at all levels. There is a word of Ibn'arabi, " You never know the archetype that is, let's say, the divine legacy in our being in which the whole bounty of the divine being is potentially present." One could say that that is the archetype and idiosyncrasies are the exemplar, and the exemplar is a clue as to the archetype. You never know the archetype but you can somehow reach towards it through the exemplar. So, in other words, by earmarking qualities in your being, (that is the reason for the wazifa in the Sufi training) you are touching upon clues that will give you a sense of what that divine inheritance is, but you can never grasp it totally. You can only use a clue as a catalyst in order to reach beyond the exemplar and try to grasp the archetype in the exemplar. So it is really like discovering God through one's own idiosyncrasies and also by trying to grasp the archetype behind the idiosyncrasies. Idiosyncrasies will perfect themselves and, therefore, become better clues as to what that inheritance is, and discovery of God as the very foundation of one's being. So these are methods which you can used in you meditation that will help you lift your consciousness beyond your self image, your identifying yourself with our self image. You get stuck in it, of course, and there is no way in which you can reach into the higher spheres if you identify with your self image. So just think of the self image as a notion that we have of ourselves that is based upon what we think are our idiosyncrasies and, of course, we are missing out on what we really are, so we would like to have something tangible in our meditation that would help us to.... because I am saying...... you have got to reach beyond the limitation of your self image, but how does one do it? We would like to have something concrete to help us do that. So, let us try and do this. These are the clues that I suggest. For one thing, we have already learned that, of course. Well, of course you start with your body and you think, that's extraordinary, this body; it really is, it originated, I mean these cells, the electrons, this fabric, it is stardust, you see. It broke through, it erupted in the big bang. This body, just imagine, erupted in the big bang. I mean the fabric. It elaborated during the course of time, during the ages, but there is recognition of what this body means. So I am not saying disidentify with the body, but realize that it is our concept of the body that is limiting. Dr. David Boehm once said, "If you go very deeply into the nature of matter, you will find something of the nature of the mind." So this old-fashioned concept of the body as dust... Well, I have used the word "stardust" because stardust is the dust of light, rather than what one would imagine dust to be. Intelligent stardust, that's what our bodies are, whirling in strange kinds of orbitals beyond our understanding and so much a part of the universe that even if we extricate the body from the planet some distance away the body starts being altered. So it starts like this, like, let's say the eternal features of our, nature of our bodiness, let's say, participation in the bodiness of the universe and the extraordinary grace of being able to share in the... I want to say the bounty, but one could say the meaningfulness of the universe in one's very body. So what we want to do is to stop limiting our identification of the body to what we think our body is and, if we were to do that, then for one thing, we would realize that our body is not as sclerosed as we think it is. We think substance is stable, and that it is in a continuous state of flux, that it is scintillating and replicating itself and dying and reborn again, and so on, recurrently. And a fter you know that each wave in the ocean, the whole ocean emerges as each wave in the ocean, so you can't think of your body as separate like there is no edge to your body, so your skin is not the edge of your body. Your magnetic field reaches far beyond your body, your skin and so does your aura, so a whole different way of looking at your body. I would prefer using the word, the gift of being able to share the bodiness of the universe with kindred beings. So, if you do that then you discover aspects of your body that you would have thought other than your body. For example, that the magnetic field is not other than your body just highlighting a certain aspect and downplaying another. Pure energy, just pure energy sprouting effervescent ebullient, all kinds of frequencies, the interaction between these different frequencies. So it is a wonderful and, as I said, not just energy that is converged from the environment but that emerges from within. So you see, your change, the change in your feeling, like whirling around your chakras, just like planets, different kind of direction, a circular direction instead of a unilateral one, and just by this very thought, you are going to enhance the energy flow in your whole being and that rejuvenates you and well, let's see, a clue to longevity. Now when one can, as I say, downplay perspective, highlight another so while you are still aware of this, you highlight the light aspect of your being that, (scientists) say protons instead of electrons. No mass. So no mass. So very different from what we imagine the physical matter to be. So just imagine there is one aspect of yourself doesn't have that solidity which we ascribe to substance. And which is, well, traveling at a tremendous speed and just not located and cannot, let's say, look of the limitation of middle range time and space framework. Now while you were conscious you were highlighting the consciousness of what you imagine your body to be, then light was, you thought light is something that my body can absorb. I can emit light as a, the light that I absorbed is then transmitted. It is not reflected like in a mirror, but transmitted. Yes, but now at this level, this stage, you are identifying yourself with your aura, not your body. Which is part of the same thing, but anyway that aspect of your body that is your aura. At first there is a way, and perhaps you can do it while I am talking. Effulgence, radiance, given forceful resonance, that is burning, the body is burning in order to produce infrared rays and then they are transmuted into all kinds of frequencies. So effulgence, radiance, you notice with a kind of fluctuation with your inhaling and exhaling that the radiance seems to be enhanced as you exhale and then the aura seems to gather together a little more as you inhale and there is a pulsation taking place. It is the light of the universe that is being converged like in a whirlpool. And the frequencies are inordinate but you can, by your concentration, you can ordinate them so that in a sequence corresponding to the spectrum of light so we have the red at the bottom of the spine and the ultraviolet at the top and all those things. I think we already described those different frequencies. But what I would like to draw your attention to is that this aura of light does have a countenance. It does not have profile and so when we say "countenance,' we have difficulty in understanding what that means, but I think it can best be described by the words of the Sufis, "that which transpires through that which appears." So, for example, if you look at the face of a person, you see the contours but, when that person smile, something seems to transpire between those contours. It is possible, of course, those contours do change under the impact of the emotion but one begins to grasp whatever it is that is altering the muscles of the face. Whether it is the emotion of laughing because of a joke, or whatever, and there is an emotion there that expresses itself in a form, but the form seems to be transparent; it seems to let something come through which you grasp if you don't focus your eyes on the form, on the appearance, and then you grasp that which is behind the appearance, transpires. Now that's an example, an illustration. So if you could feel instead of thinking that your aura, of course you know that your aura does not have a profile and, therefore, it does not have a form the way that we imagine forms to be, but still, it does in some way espouse the contours of the body because, well, the cells of the body absorb light and emit light and so on. It basically has some kind of semblance with the body except it doesn't have an edge to it, a small radiant, and with the difference, there is much more light at the top of the head and spine because the nerve cells absorb more light and emit more light. So I would like you just to identify yourself with that countenance,let's say, hue in the fabric of light. And now draw attention to the way that it alters with your thoughts or your emotions. You can just sit and experiment. You can do that on the break when you are on your own. You can see what happens if you identify yourself with that countenance and then you see what happens if you think of someone with resentment, for example, how it affects that countenance or if you think of something very beautiful and uplifting. See how it affects your countenance or then, if you are thinking about a situation that requires a lot of mastery, then again, your countenance changes. And now you remember your face and one doesn't know this but surreptitiously one does somehow identify with the picture one sees in the mirror. This is unconscious but one does. And that sense of identification is going to stand in the way of your identifying with your countenance which is much more real and, therefore, think that your face is not just your face, of course, is well, it's a kind of metaphor. An illustration would be like clay that has some resilience when one tries to impact a form upon it. I mean a sculptor tries to make a statue out of it, but it does resist that form of process and it takes a really great sculptor to be able to get the expression through the form. So think of your face as being a mask that does espouse the reality of your being but still doesn't do it quite as well because of the resilience of the genes you have inherited from your ancestors, your parents and so on. And what is more, of course, that one is playing a role in life to answer the demands of life and the consequence is that one has lost the sense of who one is, and so the sense of who you are is evidenced by your countenance which, as I say, has many facets because it changes over time. Except that you have to take into account the fact that if you reiterate something, it becomes adamant. For example, if you keep on walking the same way then you free your path in the meadow, for example. So attuning yourself to a certain quality, for example like in the wazifa, is going to have an immediate effect to leave a hallmark in the fabric of light of your aura and then, it is true that it changes if you think of something else, if you attune yourself differently. But if you keep on repeating that attainment, playing it back again, you reinforce that hallmark and eventually it really becomes part of the features of your being, it becomes adamant, as one says. That is the reason for the repetition of the wazifa. So you realize that that effervescent configuration of the fabric of light of your aura is the way that emotion, attunement, realization expresses itself as form. That is creativity. That is what life is about. That what at first is pure attunement or realization becomes actualized, accentuated as form. That the form of God becomes more and more manifested in the universe, as the universe. That's why in the Koran it says, "Every face is His face," the face of God. Now, I want to draw your attention to the fact that what we are doing now is the opposite of sitting there and paying attention to the input of impressions from the universe from outside. It is exactly the opposite. So if you want to learn how to meditate then you have to... You see, there is no way you can cut the flow of input from the environment by your will. There is no way. That is why if you are sitting there trying to do it, you never succeed. It is not a good method of meditation, but what we are doing now is highlighting something that seems to be emerging from within, that is creativity, as we said. And it is so.. It can enlist your emotions so strongly, much stronger than the emotions of your involvement with the environment, and it is the strength of those emotions that is going to help you meditate, and will become your random thoughts. So I hope you will just continue to do this now and you will go and sit on your own. Remember this. Think I am playing a role, according to the demands of the situation that I have involved myself in and I have lost my sense of who I am, I have become dependent upon conditions. I have become emotionally dependent upon the underpinning, the support system, and I am missing out on the marvel of life in my little, puny considerations, thoughts, and preoccupations and I am offered the most wonderful gift of creating of, let's say, projecting my own world from within. It is a matter of the degree to which you adapt yourself to the environment, or to which you adapt the environment to your own purpose. So when you are meditating... When you think of the environment, you think I need to adapt the environment to my sense of purpose instead of adapting myself to it. That will help you in meditate. MAR 16, 1995 Tape 07 Sometimes we need a strong support system for one's attunement and realization and, so I think of one provided by the Sufis that is the dhikr. It embodies all the four different dimensions that we have been studying. It ( )the body to not only participate in one's experience but contribute towards it. So just try out what it feels like to make a circular motion with your head. Imagine that you are looking at your left shoulder and then your left knee and then your right shoulder and then your right knee with your third eye, let's say for example. Then casting your glance upwards toward the zenith. Then keep on doing that for the time being as a first step What you could do is to imagine that you are tracing a circle of light but it becomes wider and wider and, therefore, it is a spiral of light extending furt her and further into the starry sky. But instead of its just being one's circle, one line of light, it is the whole, all the different colors that correspond to different frequencies of your aura, are swirling. So it is a very complex spiral. Imagine a rainbow that is set in motion and reaching further and further, sparkling. And actually you're doing something to your body that is reminiscent of the whirling of the planets and stars and galaxies so that somehow your body recognizes something cosmic and, consequently, you are awakening that kind of unconscious memory in the body and, of course, there is (covert) relationship between our body and its ground which is the starry sky. So (there is no way of) describing but somehow you are living that relationship or awakening that relationship but it is not like two different things. It is like two poles of the same thing. So whoever said the potentialities of the universe are latent within the DNA of your cells, but put this way, in so doing, you are awakening consciousness in its focalized form, and also in its cosmic form. Put it this way: that by contemplating the universe, you help the universe to contemplate itself through you. Well, you think the universe is looking at you; you don't think you are looking at the universe. But really it is looking at itself through you. So of course you think of the galaxies but instead of thinking how extraordinary that my glance is able to reach right out to these far distant stars that perhaps don't exist anymore, many light years ago and I am looking to the past. But it is not just that. Imagine that you are out there and not just out there in one single location, but spread out throughout the starry sky. How would you look, that part of yourself which is your individual focal center? How would it look from the vantage point of the stars? So that somehow your consciousness can reach out beyond its narrow vantage point, and this is something that Buddha says when he... In fact, it is the breakthrough in Buddhists and ascetics (sadhana) when he said "Consciousness has extended beyond the boundaries of the personal self." And it is defocalized, you see, and when that happens, then the memory of the whole universe surfaces in you in your memory. And that includes your celestial condition or the celestial condition of the universe. And although, as I say, the genes of the universe are present within you, most of them are recessive and, but we always have the faculty of awakening genes that are recessive, and that is your reaching out into the universe has the effect of awakening the universe within you. I say this because you realize that when we are looking at the environment, we are projecting our psychological projections upon it. We have already said that. So one would think to oneself, "How wonderful the stars look to me tonight." Let's look at things from one's personal point of view. But if you get into the consciousness of the universe then it will overcome your psychological projections which limit your view of the universe. That's the reason for "la", the words "la ilaha. "La" means no. So this, how do you say, the impact of immensity overwhelms your personal projections which are then annihilated. "La" means annihilated. And then what you see then, when you have overcome your personal projections is that it is "la ilaha" which means, it is the divinity of God. It is the being of God. The being of God. It is the existential or existentiated aspect of the being of God, you see. It is not other than God. Like a further projection of the being of God, like in a hologram. So we are saying "la", at first at the inception just to warn, to remind us to overcome our looking at the universe from our personal vantage point so that consciousness expands and then our realization is called upon whereby we see that it is the being of God. And ("llah") means except. There is no God except God. And that is eliminating any personal ...other vantage point than the cosmic vantage point. And interesting enough, the "ha"of "ilaha"... "ha", the "h" always represents breaking away from the circle, that means it's not of the realm of the cycles of existence, of transcendency. The "h" represents the essence of God beyond any qualities that one might ascribe to Him/Her. So the whole universe includes that which is beyond existence, let's say. At least it is adumbrated by (it). So you notice when you hit the "h," it's not "hu," it's "ha." "La ilaha, that is where your head is turned toward the zenith and so you have just a flicker of samadhi while contemplating the universe. You contemplate all its grids, it seems like horizontal outreach, but then you are moving more and more into vertical and you are getting into the higher spheres. All of that beyond the physical nature of the stars and so on. An all-encompassing vision, by extending your consciousness, including the very apex. Now, we intercept the circle, that means the cycles of existence, so it's a rather radical change of tact. When you say "illa," the head descends and confronts the solar plexus. So now there is an about turn totally from looking out to turning within. "illa", turning within, "Illa" means except, so "laha"doesn't mean except. "ilaha" means divinity and "illa" means except, so there is no reality except the divinity of God. "ilaha illa." Two l's: "illa. There is just one "l" for ("ila. il.") So one hits the portal of the solar plexus which gives access to the inverted space, the implicate state of Dr. David Boehm: Everything is everywhere interspersed with everything else. And that means that your being is interspersed with all beings and so on. And what is more, your consciousness is dissolved into a kind of voidness and will then recur again renewed, as you lift your head. So for the moment, one is sinking below the threshold where things can be experienced, so one has to try and give up trying to experience any more, and that is where revelation replaces experience. So here you are passive. As you know, that which is emerging recurrently from within is only the object of our cognizance when it breaks through the threshold, (inaudible) the conscious and the unconscious. And while you are turned within, don't try and grasp anything or understand anything; it is totally the night of the mind and of the understanding. And also the night of one's self, one's notion of oneself, and a kind of collapse of all, let's say, the crutches that one had been resting upon. And it could be, of course negative. Of course it is negative, but it could be destructive unless it were followed by something positive, in fact, more positive than what we left behind. And that comes to bear when you say, after saying "illa," you say "la," well... Actually it is a little more complicated than I am saying. Because the "a" of illa corresponds with that plane which I have already described, where one identifies with one's etheric body or astral body, or subtle body, or magnetic field, or whatever, light field and, if you remember, the thinking...for each sense of identity, there is a mode of thinking. There is a mode of thinking corresponding to this identification, mode of identification is thoughts that emerge from within (exnelo) unaccountably for not determined by causality; whereby we project our attunement or thoughts or realization into forms. So when you say "illa" and the"a" of "illa," think that you are being born again as a different form to the form you had before. That is because when you are in your etheric state, you already are grasping the countenance behind your face already then, afterwards the angelic sphere is even stronger. So there is a correspondence there between the configuration of your magnetic field and your attunement. So let us just say that I can project my being from a deeper place than the way I project my psyche upon the environment, so that somehow one is aware that one is not just privy to the rebirthing of one's being but one is actually a participant in this creativity, in this renewal of oneself and function of one's realization as one turned within, somehow one has gained realization that one didn't have when one was totally at the mercy of the experiences of the environment. And it will, of course, eventually, affect one's projection upon the environment. So you can almost capture that rebirthing just like one is able to grasp the crocuses only at the time when they break through the snow, or the flowers in the cactus when they start opening up. Just that moment when you can... That is where you can have some impact upon them, upon this birthing process. Not for long, but at that moment, as you capture what is happening. Yes, there is something new coming through me, you know. And at first one doesn't know what it is but just feels something new is coming through and I am a different... I am becoming a different person. Well, if I would just... I need to give it some support, this new person, and you should be protected just like a small plant needs to be protected, but it also needs some kind of support and encouragement. And you can... the best way to give support is by projecting it into a form. So, for example, at this moment when you are reborn, you think, "A peaceful quality is coming through in me at this moment and this process of rebirthing is taking place at this stage in my life." And so imagine that you are walking around a very peaceful lake in the moonlight. Then a very powerful...something very powerful is coming through me at the present. I never thought I had it in me. There is a divine power coming through. So to reinforce it, you could think of your climbing a mountain and you are developing a lot of mastery in order to meet the challenge. So, in other words, now you are projecting something that is happening to you that is an attunement into a form, and that form needn't be the scene of nature, the panorama of nature or the scenario, but it could be, indeed, or it should be, indeed, the kind of personality that you assume when you are walking next to a lake or when you are negotiating the high rocks or treating a person who is suffering. So there is both the scene or circumstances and then there is yourself. That you are discovering an aspect of yourself, awakening an aspect of yourself by projecting it into a scene or scenario. So all of these things can be done as a preparation for the dhikr, but when you have done them, then when you are doing the dhikr, as you say the "a" after "il la," then you remind yourself of that creative process that you have been working with. Now, your head is moving upwards, so at first you are in the circle and now you broke the circle by dropping your head and turning your head downwards to your solar plexus, and now the head rebounds upwards and that is an opportunity to think of each of the planes as you are rising. So you are not just lifting your head, but you are discovering levels of your being. So while contemplating on the solar plexus, you did identify yourself with your magnetic field, or it might be the other way around, identifying yourself with the magnetic field and then thinking of the vacuum in the center of that field will help you to turn within. But now there is a fresh dispensation that emerges from within and that is empowered as your head moves upwards. Now you notice that you say the word "alla," but there are two "a"s, but you don't pronounce the first "a;" you pronounce the second "a" but still (inaudible). And the reason for that is because... reasons of semantics in the Arabic, but the deeper reason is because you are still turned within and so you subsume that "a," you don't say it, the first "a" of "alla". Now there are two "a's" here, as I said The second "a" is said, is expressed. The "a" of "alla." This is where it gets so subtle that I don't know if you will be able to follow me at all here, but first of all you recognize a shift, of course, from identifying yourself with your etheric body, with "illa" to identifying yourself with your aura. But it is not just your physical aura, but all the different levels of light, beyond what we understand by physical light. So somehow the first "a" of al la is manifesting as your aura, and the second "a," is manifesting the second "a" as your aura. So it is reaching out, from inside out, and this is the time when you identify it with the countenance of your aura, and you can see the countenance of your aura taking shape. It does not only transpire through that which appears. It does transform that which appears. Now, I hope you can follow me here. It is a little bit difficult now, because so far we have described creativity as something that emerges from within, totally impromptu. That means not determined, not subject to conditioning, not quite true, not quite true. And environment acted as a catalyst so it is true it emerged from within but it was called upon by that challenge from outside. But that new birthing involves all levels and, consequently, your awareness of your celestial being is going to effect the way that you are reborn. It's a further dimension. And that is what you are experiencing when you are saying "alla;" you are concentrating on the heart center but... How do I want to say this? You know, there is an "h" at the end and that, somehow, has the effect of prolonging the second "a" of "allah" so that you reach from your heart center into what the Tibetans call the wheel of fire which is situated somewhere between your heart center and your throat center. And that, you know, is absolutely essential to the activity of the immune system. It is in some way connected, if you can follow me, with Lahut, which is, let's say, the level of archetypes, the archetypal levels. All our wasifas are based upon (these). Those are the archetypes of which the qualities in our humanness are the exemplars. So you are reaching beyond that specific nature of yours at the celestial level into its ground which is impersonal, the seed bed of your personality which is the divine nature. It's almost like the archetypes are exemplified by the exemplars, like rosehood is exemplified by roses, but somehow as roses are mutated, then rosehood tends to evolve, so it is not static, but you see the relationship. So the relationship between the formative process of your rebirthing and the archetypal level of your being, which we call our divine inheritance. So you are connecting up the two (inaudible) dimensions of the second "ah" of "allah." The relationship between your celestial being and its seed bed which is impersonal, universal. And, if it were not for that, our creativity would be fantasy. We would be on our own there. We wouldn't be taking into consideration the universal process that involves all levels of reality. I hope you can follow me, what I am saying as I realize it is difficult. So somehow.. and that is very, very difficult. It is to realize that somehow, at some level of one's being one is impersonal and that is why Ibn'arabi says "Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God." And that is the meaning of (Cairo) (kahira.) The ancient of days in Kabbala, a level beyond existence, that is what Buddha calls it, a level beyond existence, and yogis call it (sabijo) which means the level of seeds, the seminal level. And that is what we are referring to in our wasifas. We never reach it, but that is what we are referring to, that level, as impersonal but becomes customized in our person. Seeds, the splendor behind the universe, is so overwhelming, and to think that we carry it potentially in ourselves, of course is overwhelming. Now, if you really do this, it will certainly help you to overcome your bad self image. And that is what psychologists are trying to do and here we have THE way to do it. There is no other way. We can't do (it) without spirituality. "The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego," in other words of Murshid. (Here we) understand that. If you think that you live on all levels, or on one (level, the) ego is very strong and the other... so that is where democracy comes in to save you from dictatorship and then, at a higher stage, well then, there is no problem there anymore. You living at that level also. It is a matter of your discovering it. Now, as you know, there is an "h" at the end of the word "allah" and that 'h" is a total break from the "a"s and the "l"s, the "l"s and the"a"s and so on. Those two "l"s are like the wings of your soul. "L" always represents a shift from one state to another. A motion. In the Arabic, it is an arc of a circle so it represents cycles, moving from one state to another. And the "r" always represents a level, a state. You are moving from one state to another. You see, the "l"s move from one "r" to another, from one state to another, and then all of a sudden you find yourself hoisted, catapulted, let's say, beyond all the cycles and the "r," the states. Buddha calls it it beyond existence, but not only beyond existence but beyond existence and nonexistence. So that is what we mean by transcendence. So it is beyond the qualities, beyond the archetypes. Yoga is called (nearbeja.) (Near) means nonseed, beyond the seed. (Sa) is with the seed. (Near) is without the seed, beyond the seed. Beyond multiplicity. Just unity. The apex of the being of God which embraces the whole, nevertheless, unity that manifests as multiplicity in unity, but that at the summit, it is just unity. (Ahad), one says and called (ahadyat), the ( ) It is the secret name of God in Judaism that even the high priest wasn't allowed to pronounced. The "h" of (Yahweh). ( way of choosing Yahweh). It is the second "h." Well, the first "h" is ha and the second "h" is the hu. I mean the first "h" is the "h" of "ha" and the second is the "h" of "hu". And so that is samadhi. It is (inaudible) of samadhi, in the dhikr. But it is for a very brief moment, except that if you are doing the dhikr without saying it aloud, on your breath, then do it "la ilaha." as you exhale and then in a circle and then "illa" as you inhale and then continue to inhale as the head rises, and then you hold your breath when you would be thinking of "hu" or you would be saying the "hu", if you were said Well, you would be saying the "h" of "hu". So you are touching upon eternity. No motion, like the pendulum where the pendulum is suspended. No motion. So at that moment the motion of your body is suspended in "allah," the "h" of allah, but it is not.... Sorry for making things so difficult. There is a difference between the suspense of the pendulum at one end of its swing or the other. And the state corresponding to the point where the pendulum is suspended on the string, or whatever. that point represents eternity and the points of suspense at the edge of the swing represent the instant of time. You mustn't confuse the two. So at the "h," you are experiencing eternity. Experiencing is not the right word, of course. You are, let's say, touching upon, that's why I use the words touching upon eternity. The eternity of your being in contrast with the transiency of your being. The eternity of your being. And this is something that you find in Sufism and not in Islam, although... well, it's a long story, of course. You find the Islamic dhikr "La ilaha illa 'llah" and the Sufi dhikr "La ilaha illa 'llah hu. One adds a "u" to the 'h" because one is awakening in life. And so with the "hu" the head comes down and this time you concentrate on your heart center instead of your solar plexus. The "u" of ''hu" really does speak of the celestial level so that that's where you descend from the pinnacle. You experience your descent and find back your celestial being which you've touched upon as you rose, but this time, somehow transfigured by the whole experience. Your celestial being is now changed by having recontacted the pinnacle of your being. Now, it's true that to awaken in life, it is not good enough to rediscover one's celestial being, one has to become hu-man, and that's the reason why the word "human" is "hu" plus "man." And you notice the two letters, the "m" and the "n." The "m" representing the male and the "n" the feminine, and then the "a." There is a state in between. So human is the angel man, or the angel being, human being. When I use the word "man," I don't mean just man; I mean woman, of course. Now, some Sufis, dervishes, instead of saying "hu", say "hu ah". "Hu ah" That reminds me of hallelujah. So one is descending from the angelic condition to the human condition. You remember the ah in the heart. So if you have done the whole cycle, you have gone through the sequence of all the different states, you find (it) more in the dhikr. So it takes a lot of doing to get into the dhikr. I would say start in slow stages. Start in a circle and then descend and experience what is ( ) and explore what you feel, how you feel and always have in your mind all these different states that I have described and that you will, when you are staying with "la," you are beginning to attune yourself to the higher levels. And so all that we said about, you know, our descent of deja vu, those beautiful things in life that remind you of your (transangelic) condition... Those are the things that will help you lift your consciousness into the higher spheres. But that is where you encounter splendor and beauty. And it is a glorification which hoists our consciousness up through the spheres. That is the reason why one must not divorce meditation from its religious background and reduce it to stress reduction. I agree. It is a dollar making proposition. MAR 16, 1995 Tape 08 March 16, 1995 Tucson, Arizona, Tape #8 Well now as we,... each day in the course of the retreat one gets more and more into the attunement, and I found it takes at least three days to get into it, so we only have one day of retreat. By that time we will be preparing to get out of the retreat, but it takes a little time because it is a matter of attunement, and it is a matter of reversing the machine as it were. So much involved in our daily lives. So, the practices are a kind of support system that helps maintain your attunement, and in the course of that, then certain flashes of realization can suddenly surface, erupt in your being. Then you find yourself suddenly transformed by enormous meaningfulness of what is coming through.Well now as we,... each day in the course of the retreat one gets more and more into the attunement, and I found it takes at least three days to get into it, so we only have one day of retreat. By that time we will be preparing to get out of the retreat, but it takes a little time because it is a matter of attunement, and it is a matter of reversing the machine as it were. So much involved in our daily lives. So, the practices are a kind of support system that helps maintain your attunement, and in the course of that, then certain flashes of realization can suddenly surface, erupt in your being. Then you find yourself suddenly transformed by enormous meaningfulness of what is coming through. So let us just do the practice now together. La illaha illa llah Hu. La illaha illa llah Hu. Alright, let us just pause now while saying it aloud. So When I m saying La illaha that is in the circle, exhaling and then illa inhaling with the head coming down, llah after illa , then llah , the two l s in illa then another two l s in llah . Doesn t pronounce the first A in llah . That s when you continue to inhale, your head comes up, and then Hu you hold your breath and you already anticipate the H of hu at the end of llah , and now you hold your breath, and that s when one is experiencing looking at things from the divine point of view, vantage point, like a sort of overview, and then Hu , the U, represents a descent into manifestation. So to do it this (inaudible) now I m going to suggest a more advanced way of doing it and that is.... I ve already said of course illa one divides one s inhaling in two halves illa and then La illa la so the head comes down, the head comes up again both during the inhaling, and there is a slight pause between the two. And then hu one is holding one s breath. And I would say that while you, well, when you start exhaling you go into the circle, then I would still let the Hu linger so that you are experiencing your incarnation or divine (inaudible) God incarnating as you, the experience of God in manifestation. And then, it is...... So that is the first half; you are exhaling, and the second half exhaling then you are going back in the circle again and reaching out into the vastness. OK let's try and make a, just a, trial run now. So you remember the motion of the head. The motion of the head is important because it corresponds to your attunement.La illaha illa llah Hu. La illaha illa llah Hu. Alright, to allow you can say it with me now see (inaudible) past of course. La illaha illa llah Hu. La illaha illa llah Hu. Now just stop for a moment. (pause) So, it would be good if you would get much more into the emotional attunement. (pause) And first of all the La illaha , there s the La , the expansion reaching out and then, illaha including in that all encompassing bounty of the universe all the levels up to H which is the divine presence beyond ecologies. So (inaudible) thoughts which I find are very helpful to awaken these emotions will themselves trigger off realization. So I said before looking to the starry sky and actually sometimes you are looking at stars that, some of the stars you are looking at do not exist any more, they ve been scattered, the photons are hitting your retina. Now this is like a little parenthesis, when the dear friend and teacher of Jelaluddin Rumi, Shams Tabriz was killed by the disciples of Jelaluddin Rumi because he spent too much time with his teacher. 'f course, (inaudible) Jelaluddin Rumi was devastated to such an extent that he couldn t so help his pupils anyway. And he was seeking for his friend, .......... amongst the stars. And you must understand that if you have been walking in the desert you ll find that you travel best by night because it s too hot in the day; and also because you navigate by the stars. And so the constellations become very familiar and somehow in the silence and immensity of the desert; you with your thoughts you reach out into the stars. And if you ve been working a lot with light then it makes sense to you that a being can exist just having a body of light. And consequently one is seeking for one s friends, ones departed friends in the world of light. This is only if you yourself identify with your aura, can you get in a state of resonance with beings who, whose body let s say is a body of light. And all of a sudden all those beings you thought had past away and were,..... and you couldn t reach, you can discover them again as long as you don t think of them the way they were; because they re different now, they ve changed. So you have to have changed too in order to be able to establish rapport with them. And these are the beings you love. Which establishes a very strong relationship of resonance. And so one is not just contemplating the starry sky; but you discover there the divine beloved. Love starts by the wonderment, as I said, admiration, finding in a person the qualities that are so meaningful to one. And so this enlists a strong emotion, and as this emotion gets wider then it becomes more and more cosmic so it is not (inaudible) simply targets a person, but more and more beings and eventually of course that s what one means by the being of God. So there are intermediate steps, for example you think of the Masters whom you admire, prophets, saints of the past and just realize they are still there, that they ve changed but (pause) your (pause) the intensity of your (pause) the emotion that is aroused at the thought of thinking of them is going to establish a kind of bridge, and then angels is what one means by beings whose bodies as Buddha said belong to the world of radiance, and when he says that it s..... I don t think he means quite what we understand by light it s another level of light. (pause) But you can imagine Buddha sitting there under the tree reaching into worlds of light and subtle light and pure effulgence and beyond still and so on. So that s the La illaha Now you reverse this whole process as your head descends as a break from the circle, illa and starts by discovering that which you are looking for in the starry sky in yourself. Now there are some tangible thoughts here, for example, there is an osmosis between beings like when we think of a person loved that person is very present within us. So let s say there is an osmosis between the planke of people so that you can find people in yourself, because there has been some crossover of the qualities of that person in your psyche, a kind of overlap. There comes a time when that overlap becomes very important because you can find all beings in yourself. And this is how you can reach the outside world from within. So when you hit illa and don t think you are encapsulating yourself in your own psyche. I think there is a word of Martin Buber, your own, ... I think he used the word biographical unity . And somehow,.... the best illustration of this would be,.... for example,....you re swimming at the surface of a lake then you swim under the lake. When you swim at the surface you saw a lotus flower, lilies, waterlilies and when you swim under the lake then,... under the surface then you see that it s,... it s really,....it s not,... you can t think of the flowers as discreet entities because you see that they are all an expression of the network of roots behind it so, you imagine you can follow that network upwards and reach into the flower at the surface. So that you can do when you are turning within. (pause) And you can think of any being including: masters and saints and prophets and angels by reaching them from inside and then moving from inside towards outside. (pause) And now you realize that you are being limited by the assumption that you can reach a person at,.... the... existential level, that people live at other levels,....and,....to,......If there is an osmosis between people at,...it must to be complete, it s got to include all the levels of that being. And so that is where (pause) your quest for that being is going to lift your consciousness through the spheres. Therefore it is,.... in order to reach upwards one has to first turn within. Now I think we need to,.... O.K., well, let s just do this and I ll continue when the continue,.....so we don t have to remember too much at the same time. So let s do this '.K. now and remember the things I just said. La illaha illa llah Hu. La illaha ills llah Hu. Alright, let s just break, break off here again. As I said it is intuition regarding something more sublime than midrange experience that lifts us in the spheres. That intuition acts as a call, it s a sure call. (pause) There is no doubt about it, it a, ..... attunement, even our attunement, not only our consciousness but our attunement in some way a,.... constricted by a addiction to what one could call the support system. It s an addiction. At first it was like fulfilling a need to nostalgia, to build a beautiful world, a beautiful people as I said, but, the trouble is that support system takes over (inaudible) one s head. And it is in the realm of emotion, we don t quite realize it but that s the meaning of addiction. There are subtle forms of addiction, so it doesn t have to be the gross one like addiction to drugs or addiction to alcohol or addiction to cigarettes or whatever, but, more subtle addictions like (pause) you name it, (chuckles) including TV of course. So they rob one of one s independence. That s what addiction is; it robs one of one s independence, and therefore of one s free will. And hence the importance of these two sentences of Pir Murshid that I consider to be keys to lifting myself in the higher spheres. The one is that there are moments when a longing as one evolves , he says, there are moments when a longing for the unattainable erupts in us. And of course what he means is that he doesn t want to give some description of what that is because it s always, it s like the horizon, it always lies beyond what one never could ever imagine so that s why he says unattainable, it s always further. So it lures one beyond a sphere. And then he says, in order to do this one needs to work through the ties with the earth plane. He doesn t say sever them. There are two interpretations of that text in fact, I want to ask Sharif about that, one is loosen the ties and the other is work through the ties. So I d like to know what the correct words are, they re very close of course. So I hope that you, as I m saying this you are thinking about your nostalgia for something which is always beyond any kind of description, and if we call it sublime, well, were ascribing some kind of quality to it, but still, call it the thirst for the absolute all kinds of words that try to describe this. But, the important thing is the emotion of,... of a,....oh!,...one dosen t call it love, but it is love, but one calls it glorification. To feel that as though it comes so intense that one feels suffocated in the world, so stifled. And it s not a longing to get out of it, it s a longing for a dimension which is there but difficult to grasp when one is involved in all the situations were involved in our lives. And this longing is somehow based upon a memory, a memory of de revue , as they say in french or I would say deja vique (sp?) of having lived that, of having something familiar like looking into the eyes of a baby, and when the beautiful light in the eyes of a baby reminds you of something that you just know. So that kind of experience though, that means that it is, it does break through in a existential world. All then those, the music of course but, especially church music but,.... or a sudden, a feeling of sacredness. It s an emotion and we can t define it or we can t say it s, you know, it s the sacred of this or that. 'f course we people in their limited minds think this object is sacred, or this temple is sacred, or this person is sacred but that s limiting the emotion to the support system which is the object of the person, or the temple; but it s something beyond the support system. And the counterpart is also true and that is; awakening this sublime what ever it is, which is in one s self. So it looks as though one is seeking for it in other than one s self, reaching upwards, whereas in fact it,... one awakens it in one s self, this correspondence between the two..... and consequently the head comes up. It s true the body kind of participates in the attunement, lifting the head (pause) (inaudible) lifting my head. It s the way in which the body participates in the experience. And there is at the same time a sense of loosening the ties. That means they re still there but loosening them. That would be like,... I think we need to work with this you see, and that s why I call it working through the ties, for example, being very clear as to what those ties are. And of course the only way to loosen them is if,... the, .....the,... the nostalgia, you see, for the sublime is so great that it overweighs,... the ties. (Pause) One s pulled of course two directions, a kind of tug there and then it just depends on how important it is for you, you know, how important your connections with earthly conditions is. And Buddha left his palace. I m not saying that one needs to leave those, that support system as I call it, but consider it as tools to achieve what you need to achieve, rather than something you get addicted to and depend upon. And this is where indifference and detachment serve as the wings which helps the soul to fly, which causes the soul to fly. So this is what happens, this is your concentration when saying La . And then there is the, there is already the anticipation of discovering your true being, and if you ve even had a poor taste of it then it s overwhelming. That changes your whole vantage point (sp?), your whole concept of life, your whole everything, your whole sense of meaningfulness. And you suddenly discover, haahh (sigh) that is me, and somehow there s been some distortion of my being. A moment,...this morning I had,... were carrying a mask, while that s still thinking in terms of duality, it s more like there is a distortion or even degradation of being within our being (which) does not take away the excellence of our being. I know that sounds totally paradoxical!, but as you know the,..that the voice of Caruso can be recovered, retrieved from it s distortion, and you see that the excellence of the voice is present within it s distortion. And so your real being is present within, I hope, no offense, it s distortion in you. It s a question of highlighting it just like in a hologram, (pause) and then you establish a connection with the celestial spheres by discovering your real being and (inaudible) those events like, those experiences like, looking through the eyes of a baby or listening to music and so on. Those are triggers which, catalysts which trigger a sense of deja vu. What Buddha says is that memory of ourselves actually and of the universe prior to our birth was interrupted at the moment of our birth. I think it was interrupted at the moment of our conception. So the largest area of our memory has been blotted out and we remember the events since, generally since our birth. In certain cases, under hypnosis people remember the state after conception (end of side 1) is retrieved but (pause) it s due to the fact that memory is in some way connected with our sense of our individuality, that s the way we are programmed. And that s why the memory of anything which is not connected to our sense of individuality is blotted out. But if we lose our sense of individuality then, of course, that memory comes back. And not only Buddha said it, but he proved it. Cause he said there was a time when there was a time when there was no smoke on the planet earth, that means that there were no people, there was no fire, and how could he have known that ? In those days people didn t know there was a time when there was no people on the planet earth. He said there was a time when the planet earth didn t exist. It s only quite recently that scientists corroborate that view. Within those days it seemed impossible to have ever imagined such a thing. There was a time when the universe didn t exist. It s only in the last decade scientists are saying that. There was a time when other universes existed and then collapsed. Well those are the really avant garde theories in science. Buddha said it, six centuries before Christ. Though he proved what he said, the memory of the past is buried in our unconscious, can be retrieved, if we overcome our identity; not with our body, not with our personality, with our individuality as an entity. Sufis would call it God-conciousness. (pause) So we don t know to what degree we can do that, but in as much as we are able to let go of all those concepts that are attached to our notion of ourselves: like bodiness, and mindness, and personal emotion and so on; but the memory of the angelic state, the celestial state will come through again,... as memory. But the paradox is that we are still in that state, but we don t know it. Because at this point there is no past and no future there is only eternal present. But it s easier to think that I remember having, you know, I remember the celestial spheres when I listen the Hosanna or the Bebinder (sp?) Mass, well, that really triggers off my memory of the celestial, the cosmic celebration in the heavens. Well these are the thoughts that are going to lift you up in your retreat. And I can guarantee that you won t be bugged by random thoughts if you allow your very strong emotion to,.. to orient your thinking. So random thoughts will be circulating in the twilight of your consciousness, you don t pay attention to them and they won t bug you too much. They have every right to be there. It s like the process pf digestion that takes place without you having to be aware of it. Now it is true that this leads to a state where consciousness peters out. And it sounds like metaphysics if I were to say that this is replaced by it s ground which is intelligence. But, these are words of Murshid, the difference is that consciousness needs to have a content so you are always in a state of dichotomy subject/ object. Whereas the object is already subsumed in intelligence. That is you know things not by experience, but you just know them. It s inbuilt in your inherent intelligence. Though consciousness peters out, there is a threshold state which seems like a blackout. And then there is this a awakening. If you have the courage to pass through that threshold. It s rather frightening because it seems as though one is dying,... And it s a state of extreme loneliness. It s like dying in loneliness,... and then suddenly awakening, as a transfigured person. I suppose rather like what happens to a butterfly emerging from it s cocoon. (pause) So these are the thoughts that are going to save you from your random thoughts in your retreat. I hope you remember them. (pause) Not just thoughts, emotions are much more important than thoughts. God bless you all (? whispered, somewhat inaudible) MAR 17, 1995 Tape 09 There's a Sufi practice called Muhasibi which we can translate by the word self-examination. The trouble is that if one tries to assess problems in oneself from one's personal vantage point one only has a very limited cross- section of the whole gamut of values that are at stake, so it would be, I suppose, something in the realm of psychotherapy if one were to simply try to be clear about one's problems and one's idiosyncrasies and so on and try to improve in the realm of spirituality; we are bringing a whole further dimension into play. So our practices we've been doing so far are intended to help us to not confine ourselves to our personal vantage point and consequently develop a much more encompassing view on our problems and ourselves. Our idiosyncrasies, I've said this several times now, instead of using high faluted themes for our meditation, our themes on meditation--even in a retreat--are our problems, whereas in the past we were hoping to turn away from our problems in order to go on retreat and experience other dimensions. Now, that would be like--what do you want to say?--like putting one's head under the sand. So now we're having a more complete view of things. Ideal and idealist and moralistic at the same time. So I remind you, before we go into this, that--let's say the consciousness of the universe is focalized as our consciousness and we are looking at things from the personal vantage point, that we are distorting our assessment of problems by projecting our psyche upon them, and we never really experience them as they really are. And we've found that one of the ways of overcoming that fallacy was to extend our consciousness from its very focal center by trying to get in consciousness of other people and more and more other people and then you have a kind of composite view and of course an infinite regress. Of course the ultimate would be what is called Cosmic consciousness: that is as I said, the universe looking at itself through you instead of you looking at the universe, and a complimentary view to the way that we ordinarily assume. As long as we keep this in mind, at least as a first step, then our--well, when we try to recollect problem situations in our life then at least we'll have a more composite view than if we are simply introspecting. Introspection you could define like this: Normally one assumes that one is a subject experiencing other than oneself in the universe and one is applying the same as one turns within so one assumes that one is the subject and one's psyche is the object, ones thoughts, one's emotions, and so on. And so one is applying the same kind of format in turning within as one does in one's only interface with the universe. And that is a fallacy for one thing because, as I said, of the distortion of the personal vantage point but also because that's not what we really mean by turning within. I think that we need illustrations to illustrate what we are saying and the best illustration for that is to be found in the implicate state of Dr. David Bohme. As we turn within we, lets say we realize our thinking, which is dynamic, has broken up into thoughts which are static and multiple and consequently somehow our mind is constructing a representation based on this fragmentation of the process of thinking that takes place at the explicate state--that is, at the surface-- whereas when we dive deeper we see everything in its context instead of their discrete realities or discrete fragments of reality. So now we are trying to see how turning within is going to affect our way of looking at our page problems and ourselves. Now the key to this if you remember quite well was not only to invert our space so that everything is interspersed with everything else, but to invert our sense of being the subject; and that is where the notion of God comes in. It is God who is the knowing subject and our subjectivity is, the way it is fragmented and customized, somehow one enlists this deeper consciousness which is nebulous at first and therefore it's called the collective unconscious and which emerges. In other words, you're always referring to a deeper ground of consciousness than your personal vantage point and you're wary of the assessment of your personal vantage point. Now then, we have learned that there is a third dimension of consciousness which is called transcendent. That gives us an overview so that one is always grasping the issues enacted in problems rather than just considering their problems in their face value. In other words, one is always trying to grasp the software behind the hardware. Of course, one realizes that those issues are cosmic and we are experiencing them in the personal dimension of our being. For example: The issue in this problem is truth; the issue in this problem is compassion; the issue in this problem is mastery; the issue in this problem is joy; the issue in this problem is peace, and so on. So somehow we encounter here the very crux of what we call spirituality-- the notion of God. Buddhism beckons upon us now to be wary of our projections of what we imagine God to be; and, as Pir-'-Murshid said, when most people talk about God they don't realize that what they are talking about is their concept of God or their projection of what they imagine God to be rather than God. That is the trouble with conceptualization. But of course it's true that--as Pir-'-Murshid says--conceptualizing is the first step but its got to be followed by experience. Now, if you'll just follow me for a moment, we carry--let us call it the genes of the universe--not just, of the whole universe. Not just the same genes for the whole body--of the whole universe. Not only in our bodies but in our psyche and, as a matter of fact, at all levels of our being including the celestial level and so on. Perhaps you remember the apprentice sorcerer. The broom kept on splitting into more and more brooms; it was the same broom repeating itself. Well, that's it. You cannot fraction the totality without the fact that each fraction carries within it potentially the totality. If you accept that, and it is a shattering thought, then you will realize that you carry within yourself potentially all that bounty that one ascribes to God. And since we are programmed in such a way as to want to experience as another what is virtually present within us, we project this bounty which remains virtual unless we projected it into our representation of God. By dint of creative imagination and the way it is subterfuged because in some ways, of course, it spares us from actuating this potential in ourselves, but that is just a view. There are several views here. The fact is that the virtue of creative imagination is to project into a form something that originally does not have a form. The DNA of our body, for example, assumes a form, but it is a code. So that's the way of life. That's what life is about. So naturally we are programmed to actualize the software of the universe in a concrete way. So we ascribe to God everything that we know of ourselves--discover of ourselves--but we blow it up to infinity and that's because we are born with an innate capacity of imagining infinity. For example, (?Bakaria?) says: Infinity consists in the ability to always imagine a larger number than one could possibly imagine and that's why Pir-o-Murshid says nostalgia is awakened to attain the unattainable. Somehow this instinct of infinity lures us beyond the constricted notion of ourselves and this is where spirituality has a redeeming effect upon us. But all that I've said so far is only half of the total picture because the totality of the universe in its bounty, which we call God, at all levels, not just physical, how can I say? I mean, we have to account for the opposite, not only the action of ourselves upon God by projecting the latency within us into a picture, but we have to also account for the counter- -the opposite. It's a dichotomy. And that is the action of the universe upon us discovering itself in us, and when I say the universe I mean God, it comes to the same area--point; one doesn't only mean the physical universe. So you see the importance of the notion of God as being the antipodal pole to our personal self without which our personal self would be meaningless. Just like Number One could not be conceivable if it were not for our notion of infinity. Mathematics would be impossible without the notion of infinity. OK, I say that because we are living at a time when Buddhism seems to present a mode of spirituality without the notion of God. I've looked into this very deeply and it's quite more complex than we think. There's a kind of caution about psychological projections and anthropomorphized projections that are deluding or that could be deluding but it is not really totally true that Buddhism is atheistic. 'K, now what I want us to do therefore is to keep these three dimensions in mind when we are looking at our problems and what I suggest is that we--so what we're doing is we're taking advantage of our high attunement in the retreat to look at our problems instead of what they call the spiritual bypass: not looking at them. But we do not want our looking at them to draw us back into our personal vantage point. If in the course of this retreat you have gained further dimensions of your being then you don't want to be pulled right back to square one. So this is something that is going to be rather page time consuming and I hope that you would be doing it when you are on your own. What we want to do here is to clearly indicate the methodology. What I suggest is, if you could review the events in your life in--well, ideally of course, it would be in chronological order, starting from the first memory that you have as a baby, if you can recall some of those very early memories, and then as a child and as an adolescent and so on. As I say, it's going to take a long time. You'll have to do it on your own. What you will remember at first is the more salient, perhaps the more dramatic events. Those are the ones that have left their mark in our memory, at least the more obvious mark. Now, what I want us to do is, while we are doing this, is to try to remember how you felt. That is, one's realization has grown hopefully in the course of one's life so that one does not quite understand why things happen as they do and they awaken in us reactions to situations, reactions which are going to have some bearing in the whole of your life. For example, I remember the First World War. When those German zeppelins came over we had to rush into the shelter. Now that for a baby is not a very reassuring impression about being safe on planet earth. So these impressions call upon some kind of reaction in us that is sometimes inappropriate but until we know better how to deal with them then they are a little bit awkward so there could be fear or there could be aggression. It's the flee or fight quandary. Either flee or flight. A young eagle fights if you take it out of the nest and so, that's Boas, you see. Then, maybe it's cool. Maybe you may have suffered from being unjustly treated and so one gets wounded very quickly for being derided, humiliated, and those wounds are festering in one unless one is able to heal them ( *?? some healing). And then one soon learns that unless one protects one's territory other children or other grownups, of course, will encroach upon one's territory so there is that very basic animal instinct to protect one's territory and unless you have a strong ego people will walk over you. So one's defenses are built up by the sheer fact of being aggressed and one has difficulty in reconciling this with one's ideal of love, and compassion and beauty; or either one questions these ideals and then one becomes rather gross and uncouth or one has the courage to stand by these ideals and suffer for them to the extent that, of course in the extreme, it is what one calls martyrdom. One becomes a martyr and that enlists pity which is self destructive. It's just exactly what we want to avoid. So these are the kind of struggles that the ego in this tackling what I would call the ultimate purpose of our lives which is the shift from the notion of the person to the notion of the totality because if we just get ourselves to concentrate on our person as what we call a discrete entity we are missing out on the bounty of the whole and the chances are that that animal, ego will manifest itself in aggression and cruelty and grossness and vulgarity and uncouth as I say, and brutal. 'n the other hand if one downplays one's ego and the word that is used sometimes is crushing the ego--I don't agree with that word, that concept--the consequence is that one does not have the personal support system to encompass the vastness of reality so it becomes fiction, a kind of artificial spirituality that you find in a lot of esoteric schools, gratuitous assumptions that are not based upon reality, and so a loss of the sense of the personal self. So that is where we meet a great paradox. It is the holistic paradigm of our time that helps us to understand this, that, as I say, each fraction carries within it potentially the totality so that we are both a fraction and also the potentially the totality. But we must remember that is a static way of looking at things. If we look at it dynamically, then we realize that the totality gains in its richness and its resourcefulness by what happens to each individual in spite of itself. This is, of course, this is metaphysics, I know, but we are grappling with this notion of ourselves when we are meditating and so sometimes it's necessary to see this more clearly. So now as you see how you have developed in the course of your childhood and adulthood and now of course you will find that indeed you see how the ego could easily lead into pure selfishness, greed, the kind of thing that we see exploiting other people for one's own benefit and so on. If one is at all sensitive one sees that very well. That's why Christ said, "...they are in the world but not of the world." That is the way of the world according to the old tradition: greed; just battling the kind of competition between egos to go and get it; the kind of thing that a finer person gets damaged in that fight and doesn't have the power to contend with the egos of people unless, and this is the rub but this is the real key is, unless one finds another dimension that gives one what is called spiritual power--its power. It's not a cop out. it's power but it's a different kind of power, and the power of Christ before Pileate. Pileate had the military power of Rome that was very considerable in his hands and Christ had spiritual power. Or then, king (Ahab) when facing Elijah. He used to run away when Elijah came to see him. He couldn't face the divine power. That's a power that-- you see, I'm using the ego in a pejorative sense and maybe--the mind tends to divide things in categories so one thinks God in one hand and then the personal ego on the other. In fact, there are levels of the ego. The ego is really the sense of identify. And so it shifts from the very limited personal sense of ego into identifying with God as al Halaj did, (An Al Haaq) and then in between those two, all kinds of levels. .....He will always pick on any weak point in one and consequently perhaps the clue in Muhasibi is asking yourself a very pertinent question: Why am I doing what I am doing. Does it tally with the ideals that I purport to follow in my life? And if it does not, then there is some dishonesty there somewhere. One is purporting something that doesn't ring true. Now a further factor comes in: Compassion. And it does not mean being accommodating. That is sacrificing one's ideal to accommodate another person. I think the answer is that one's ideal is not one's to give, one's to give up because somebody doesn't like it. So it is in that chivalry, that chivalrous struggle for one's ideal that qualities in one's being become adamant, become ( *invasible), are actuated instead of--occasionally one can give vent to a quality in oneself but it doesn't seem to last unless one is continually applying this and then the quality becomes adamant. That is one of the stages in the alchemical process. So here we have the dichotomy between let's say our defense system and our ideal.You see that our defense system can go back to the wall. Then one falls back upon primitive instincts and that is the crucial test. Primitive in instincts like, for example, ruthless greed of course and resentment and of course hatred, brutality, cruelty and so on; back to the wall one is being aggressed and one doesn't know how to defend oneself. Then there is this message of Christ, turn the other cheek but it's not being passive. It's--how can you then fight as a knight without a sword by the sheer divine power of your being? A sword of light. And in that kind of battle, lets say at the purely factual level one is at a disadvantage. At the cosmic level one is victorious. For example, the crucifixion of Christ was a coronation. Now, so let's go into this more deeply. If you look in yourself, page if you recall the events in your life I'm sure that you will discover that you are carrying wounds in your psyche (** ?infused ** ) them in one's solar plexus, a feeling of having been a victim of injustice and abused and humiliated and so on. And it is those wounds that make one have resentment and act in an unloving way towards people and so what we need--we talk about healing those wounds--I would say it is only by cleaving to one's highest ideal that one can resorb these wounds because these wounds are connected with our ego sense of--when I say the ego sense I say the sense of our individuality, and if we validate the cosmic, let's say the divinity of our being, those wounds tend to get resorbed. You know that tumors in the body get resorbed--can get resorbed. So that's a very good model for the work that we need to be doing. Instead of fighting one's ego and crushing it which is rather counterproductive, resorbing the shadow in one's being. But the only way to do it is by gaining a very strong sense of the divinity of one's being and that is the meaning of 'lla Illa ha Illa 'lla hu because if it's all one being then our being is the Divine Being so you see that it is our sense of sacredness which is the ultimate rescue. I'd like you in the course of this retreat to feel this sacredness. It's the kind of thing that one seeks for in a church or synagogue or in a mosque or in a temple and one is, whoever it is, creating that support system that is the church or whatever, is creating favorable circumstances in which our sense of the sacred can be awakened. When we are on retreat we don't have that access to the temple or whatever. We could have a retreat in more favorable circumstances but nature itself is a wonderful temple. The nomads in the desert learned not to depend upon the temple or the tabernacle and consequently to find this sense of sacredness in themselves by giving vent to their need to glorify. God bless you. MAR 17, 1995 Tape 10 Well, we are on retreat. That's probably not the right word. To retire, never retire. I think of it as a rehearsal for life, or a treat, rather than a retreat. In Sufi terminology, chelavat, which means solitude, finding oneself. I think what it means is making an inventory of one's life like closing shop and sort of making accounts and starting to get everything straightened up so that one is able to get back to life with more clarity and mayhaps with more energy and self-assurance. That's why I've said that it is our problems and the development(?).. of our being that is the theme of our meditation except that instead of looking at them from the usual point of view, which is limited and illusory and deluding, we learn how to modulate our consciousness in order to discover aspects of our problems that we had not seen and also aspects of our being that we had not seen, with the consequence that we will unfurl those potentialities in our being and we will deal with our problems more effectively. It's the kind of thing that we can't, we don't usually avail ourselves of in our daily lives because we're too busy and mostly because we're so involved in things we can't see the woods for the trees. Now a retreat is in that sense, it is being able to operate with some kind of perspective, some kind of distance, and see things at a... but as I say, one thing we have to be careful of is getting ourselves encapsulated in our focal center of consciousness. Now we, in doing this work, it's useful to have a kind of grid, a grid, a kind of basic pattern that will almost like a mandala, that will give us a sense of how these values work together, how they operate a different dimension of consciousness and so I consider the zikr as a grid. And now we're going to study an aspect, one could say, of this grid that was developed by yogis, and in yoga, you generally find that one is practicing with energy, one is transforming energy, one is enhancing the flow of energy, one is discovering the flow of energy. One is working with it, coordinating it, so you know the principle of yoga is to make conscious that which is unconscious. And there's a basic assumption that there are no autonomous functions of the body that cannot fall within the control of the will. That's yoga. If we pursue that further, then, as we've been doing in scientific research, now we realize that it is not the will that monitors unconscious forces, but visualization. And so we see the role of imagination which has been dealt with in rather a pejorative sense, well, I mean, neglected very much in the past and hence the importance of the teaching of Ibn Arabi which emphasizes the role of creative imagination in meditation. So as I said, it's our imagination which projects the bounty of the universe in a manner that is understandable to us. By projecting it, we limit it, of course, so it's just like the radio waves in a radio are limited, so that we can hear them, so we can make sense of them. otherwise, they would be a total blur. So that's what we're doing. Our picture of God is a concrete, very limited one. In fact, it is almost like, well , let's say it's like the projection of an image by a bad hologram, where the image is really rather badly distorted. It is an image, but it's distorted, but still it serves. It serves as a pole which draws us beyond ourselves and lures us forward and if we think of it as infinite, in terms of infinity, then the further we advance, the further that horizon recedes so it keeps on luring us forward and perhaps, ultimately, in infinite regress. One gets a real notion of what one means by God, but that is far beyond any kind of physical form or qualifications that we ascribe to God. That's the purpose of the zikr; that it's beyond qualities. We're talking about the Divine Presence beyond qualities; so we're reaching hahut instead of lahut in Sufi terminology. OK, so then say, in yoga, one is working with energy and in the more advanced yoga, then .(inaudible)..... area, in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the energy acts as a lift which transports, let's say, translates consciousness from one level to another, alters the focus of consciousness and eventually one attains, one reaches beyond the existential realm, and that is samadhi, asamprajnasamadhi. Now as I said, the original form of these practices is working with energy, currents of energy. Now what we want to emphasize now in our Sufi practices is the kind of realization that matches each form of energy so that as the Tibetans say, the mind rides the wind, so that one does not just simply work with energy, but one is discovering modes of thinking and each mode could represent a kind of awakening, and maybe what we understand by awakening would be the integration of all these modes. So let us start with basic practice, and then we'll build on it. So most of you know this practice. So you place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger of your right hand on the, well, don't press it on your right nostril, you just lay it on your right nostril and then place the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand and have the thumb of your left hand in the proximity of your left nostril, and now always start any breathing practices with exhaling. And just make a trial run. Exhale, hold your breath, exhale again. Now the next time you exhale, of course, is much deeper and prolonged, getting rid of all the polluted gases. Now as you inhale, press the right nostril and breathe in through the left, hold your breath, exhale through the right nostril. Inhale the right nostril, hold your breath, exhale through the left nostril. Keep on exhaling. Inhale both nostrils, hold your breath, exhale through both nostrils, and relax. Now if you're very sensitive, you will feel that it has done something to you of course. You will feel currents of energy, so that one is not simply just drawing air into one's lungs and absorbing oxygen and rejecting all kinds of polluted gases, but while the body is doing this, at least that part of the body that we assume is the body, one's electromagnetic field, is drawing energy from the electromagnetic field of the environment and by concentrating on left and right and so on, one is operating some kind of impact upon this function of the electromagnetic field so that in fact one is enhancing the flow of energy. Now listen a little more carefully now. Yoga practice upon which this is based, well, was based upon some rather primitive medical experiments so that the early Hindus were, had some knowledge of the autonomic and central nervous system and realized that there were two currents of nervous relays, lateral, left and right of the spinal cord and then one inside the spinal cord, and that the lateral ones governed autonomous functions of the body which we don't have to be aware of to function, so they escape generally our will. And then the central trunk of nerves inside the spinal cord which governs the conscious volitional sensory perceptual functions. And what they found was that since their purpose was mastery, therefore to ensure the control of the will, the human will, over the, say, the programming of the universe in our autonomic functions, what they found was that in fact there are afferent and efferent nerves, that is, nerves reeling the lateral nerves with the central nerves and so if you enhance that interface between those two systems, if you can enhance the flow of energy from the lateral trunks to the central one, then you enhance the takeover of the conscious will to the functions that take place without our control. And the fact is that sometimes it is, you know the unconscious does things much better than we could do, like riding bicycle, whatever, there's some automation that takes place which frees us to monitor the thing at a higher level. But on the other hand, like one can keep on making mistakes, and so if you are learning to play the piano, you know that your hands will start working automatically, but if you keep on making the same mistakes, then you have to consciously think of the motion of each finger, and then the unconscious will take up the suggestion and that 's what we're doing in general in meditation. We're thrusting the light of our awareness upon psychological activities that take place without our awareness and then somehow, one trains the unconscious to take over the message. For example, repeating a wazifa is a way of training the unconscious to pick up a certain attunement or a quality that becomes a part of one's being. What is not clear as far as I can see in yoga, but I think it is to be found in Vedanta, is that it's not so simple to lump everything together in what we call the will, the human will. There are levels of will ranging from what we think is human will to what we think is the Divine Will, but it's all just levels of the same will. And when I spoke about spiritual power, that is the kind of will that corresponds to identifying ourselves with the Divine Being, the altanalhakh of Al Hallaj. So now in this practice, as you inhale through the left nostril, you could just draw attention to the fact that your magnetic field has all kinds of currents in it, so there's a current rising along the left trunk of the spinal cord as we inhale through the left nostril, then think of that, and concentrate on it, and by the fact of visualization, by the power of visualization, you're going to enhance the upward flow of that energy moving from let's say what is low voltage energy to high voltage low wattage energy at the top of the head. And then when you exhale through the right nostril, imagine that there's a current that descends from say, your pituitary gland, if you like, descending, descends alongside the right channel or trunk of the spinal cord. When you inhale through the right nostril, then the other way around of course; the energy flows upwards through the right channel and down the left one. O.K? So let's do this now. Then we'll be moving further. Now if you breathe through both nostrils, just think that there are two parallel currents rising in the lateral trunks of the spinal cord and as you exhale, and they conjoin together in the, say, pituitary gland, and then when you exhale, they flow downwards in the central channel. But now supposing that you continue to breathe through both nostrils, so then we do the opposite now. As we exhale, think that there are two currents flowing downwards through both lateral channels and they are conjoined at the bottom of the spine and rise in the central channel. That is kundalini. They call it pralaya, where two rivers meet, and then, like two poles, positive and negative poles of a magnet and contact of two poles of a current, then you've got some energy released. So now you have experienced, I hope, the breakthrough of energy at the bottom of the spine and the breakthrough of energy at the top of the head. Now the same thing applies to each of the chakras. That is again according to yoga, the energy in the lateral trunks move into the central channel, or at least impact the energy in the central channel, through I think it is the efferent nerves, so you have to establish some connection then between these lateral channels and the central one. We've already seen two points. But now how do you establish a connection between the different..(inaudible).... at a point of the junction between the different chakras? Well, this is done by, you find this elaborated by the Tibetans. In a pattern which resembles very much the caduceus, the energy at the bottom of the spine then bifurcates and well, put it this way, imagine that you have two spiral staircases and they crisscross at different points. So supposing that you are drawing energy through your left nostril, the energy rising from the bottom of the spine is going to move upwards clockwise. Do it and see. And the reason why it moves clockwise is because if you imagine that your electromagnetic field, or light field, maybe that's a more correct word, is like a vortex, the center of a vortex is a vacuum and consequently, there are centripetal forces that are drawing those currents of energy towards the center. And that is how you enhance the activity of the central nervous system over the autonomous nervous system. All right, so if you breathe in through the right nostril, and you can see, you can experience the way that the energy now swirls anticlockwise, that is if you look at your body from the top. Now if you exhale through the right nostril, then the energy at the top of the vortex, at the top of your head, is now going to swirl clockwise, downwards clockwise, and if you exhale through the left nostril, then the energy at the top of the head is going to swirl down anticlockwise. Now if you imagine those two staircases, spiral staircases, crisscross, and you are to climb the first one, that is , moving from the bottom of the spine swirling upwards clockwise, of course, you would be moving clockwise, right? But now when you are exhaling through the right nostril, you are descending clockwise, but not on the same staircase as you came up on. But when you inhale through the right nostril, then you are going upwards on the same staircase that you just came down. And when you're exhaling from the left nostril, you are moving down on the same staircase that you came up in the first place. Now you can visualize that. Now the important thing is what happens when both currents crisscross, that is when you're breathing through both nostrils. Now imagine that they crisscross in the front of the second chakra, in the back of the solar plexus, in the front of the heart center, at the back of the throat center, in the front of the third eye, and then meet in the pituitary gland. So there you, if you're sensitive, you can feel the difference between the chakras; there's an alternation between chakras that are like an outgoing portal or an ingoing inlet, so for example, the heart chakra and the second chakra obviously are outgoing, whereas the solar plexus is ingoing, is an inlet, and so is the throat center. The third eye is outgoing, then of course you get that neutral center in the pituitary gland. So if you concentrate on this practice very intensely, as you (inaudible)... it culminates of course in breathing through both nostrils, you will experience two things. One is the way the energy of the lateral channels converges upon the central one as you inhale, and as you exhale, the way that the energy in the central one bifurcates in the lateral ones. So you could say that the first is the way that multiplicity leads to unity and the other is the way that unity breaks up into multiplicity. Achdad bad dat in Sufism. And the beauty here is that this connection between the lateral trunks and the central trunk happens at all levels, and let us say that the will that is at the bottom of the spine or second chakra, it's much more personal, and as you move upwards you become more and more cosmic, and that's what we mean by the Divine Will. And the type of energy becomes more sublimated as you move upwards. So on the principle of the distilling in the alchemical process, the second stage in the alchemical process, distilling. So let's just do this practice, see how you feel. So if you elaborate this practice further, it gives you, there are several dimensions of realization connected with it. It will give you a sense of how you are ingesting the environment and how it gets incorporated into your being, but in order to get incorporated into your being, it needs to be distilled. And the way that, as you exhale, the way that let's say, the enzymes of your psyche transmute the impressions of the world in order to be able to appropriate them. So it's a kind of grid, as I say, that gives you, in which you can make, understand a lot of things considering your life. Now let us make the next step now. Incidentally, I forgot to say that when you are holding your breath, it is advisable to turn your eyeballs upwards and curl your tongue, press your tongue against the palate, only during that period when you are holding your breath. Then you relax your eyes and tongue as you exhale. I hope you also feel that it has a wonderful balancing power, balancing, calibrating left and right, up and down, out and inside and so on. The energy of our whole system, not only our magnetic field, gets totally disrupted by the chaotic kind of life we're living, so it's very useful in the morning to get this all together. It's like tuning your musical instrument before using, before playing melodies on it. But this was just the first step. Now we want to ride the wind with our thoughts. We want to place thoughts on this, upon these currents and see how even just that simply, how can I say, arranging thoughts in categories, like on the pattern of a mandala, is also helpful, ordinating thoughts, let's say, on a pattern. So now as you breathe in left, now this is where you think of the salient events in your life. Somehow breathing in from, through the left nostril favors our recollection of the past. It seems to be moving from the very distant past towards the present in us, that present. As I say, one would normally simply recollect those events, and I'm trying to highlight how you felt with regard to these events, but naturally, I think we would normally, we assess these events in terms of our normal middle-range sense of identity. And we must be very careful that, I think we already have to anticipate the advanced stages while we are doing that. otherwise, we will be bogged in to a kind of repetition of past events that are long passe, that are not there anymore, and we can wallow in the pain of unresolved problems if we allow ourselves to do this, and therefore, it's got to be done with a lot of caution. And that's why I would say that, that's where as I said this morning, the polarity between the ideal and the reality needs to be affirmed. I'll give you an example. For example, I said this morning. I remember as a baby, although I couldn't have been more than two years old, when the war ended, I remember, it's not so much people rushing into the shelters as the kind of fear in the souls of people, but what I didn't say is that in contrast there was Pir-o-Murshid seating peacefully. He would never go to a shelter, and he would say, "It's all right. Don't be afraid. It's okay!" So there's always the opposite to the shadow and if we just concentrate on the shadow, we're missing out on the reality behind it. Now we're using these words and I realize in the realm of spirituality just how easy it is to use words and assumptions and how people take it for granted and so on. So I examine each assumption. So we're using a word which is an illustration, shadow, it's a word used by psychotherapists, but Ibn Arabi used it already. It's a very remarkable simile because the shadow is so much a part of ourselves that it has no reality without us and apart from the legendary story that Mohammed didn't have a shadow, we all have shadows and they change position all the time according to the position of the sun and maybe the expression of our face, also if we could ever look more deeply into the details of a shadow. But as Ibn Arabi says, the shadow is really part of your being; don't think that it's other. But that's an illustration of course. Let's try to see what we really mean by the shadow. So in my view, all of those things that we idolize like compassion. for the woman munching chocolates on the beach, because the shadow of our peacefulness is laziness, indolence, and that's the fear of that shadow stands in the way of our developing that quality. It's the same with mastery. We see ruthless people who are masterly and we don't like it. We don't want to be a Hitler, we've had enough Hitlers, so out of modesty, we don't quite become as masterly as we are called upon to become in the Sufi Order somehow because we don't like to become ruthless. And so on. So I have been of course emphasizing the ideal rather than the shadow because you easily get bogged into the shadow if you forget what it is the shadow of. In fact, if you want to know what your qualities are, just ask yourself what your defects are and then you'll know what your qualities are. If you're indolent, it means that you're peaceful and that peacefulness is very important for you. And if you're frivolous, it means that joy is very important for you, and if you're ruthless, then it means that mastery is very important for you and so on. So you see if you're breathing, if you think that you're breathing from the left breathing in, then you're thinking of the arrow of time which is one parameter of the grid. But in fact, there's another parameter which is the vertical axis. Consequently, and therefore it would be good for you, this is not just recollecting, as Buddha said, memory is interrupted the moment of our birth, maybe of our death also, fortunately or unfortunately, but there's memory of the different levels of our being too, you see. For example, our angelic memory. Our level, our memory at the level of lahut, all kinds of levels of memory. So if we just remember that one parameter, we're missing out on the total picture, and consequently, we're deluding ourselves. As I said, psychologists are always asking you how you feel; "I want to know how you feel about it," and when you say "you," one assumes one's normal identity, but that's not honoring all the levels of one's being. How does your angelic counterpart feel? It's not just how your psyche feels! You have to take that into consideration and that's what spirituality has to say in the realm of psychotherapy; I'm sure there are psychotherapists here. There seem to be more psychotherapists in the Sufi Order than non-psychotherapists! We are all suffering from psycholo-gitis! Armchair psychologists. So this is another dimension. For example, if you think that fear is a negative emotion, it's built in our defense system as a warning of coming dangers. If we didn't have that protection, we would be exposed to, we wouldn't take precaution against danger, so don't think of fear as negative. But it is the shadow of something very positive, which is being cautious. And being wounded is very real, it's somehow one's sense of decency has been shocked, outraged, and so outrage is, let's say, rage is the shadow of outrage. So instead of thinking of rage as being negative, it's the way that we customize outrage in our personal dimension. But it is you see we are talking about resorbing the shadow, or absorbing the shadow, as the body can absorb a tumor, as I said, and the way of doing it is, of course, you can't do it by fighting it, you can only do it by enhancing or highlighting the opposite to the shadow, the reality, that's what I mean by the issue of our problems. Instead of just thinking of your problems, think what is the issue. The issue is that by this problem, we learn to be truthful, or we learn to be masterly, or we learn to be compassionate, and so on. Those are the issues. And so while you're recollecting the events of your life, instead of following the parameter of the horizontal line, think of an asamptote (?) I think one calls it, a curve,that is relating the horizontal axis and the vertical axis at the same time. And see there's something in our education which is totally inadequate and it has become so inveterate in us that it's difficult to think otherwise. We've been programmed in our thinking by our schooling. We've been programmed into thinking in terms of causality, in terms of time moving from the past moving into the future in what one calls the arrow of time. Physicists have long discovered how inadequate the place in causality is and are discovering many other causal chains, plus the undetermined, of course. So we're going to examine these chains, but we're doing it gradually, step by step. So let's say there's a causal chain that Ibn Arabi talks about that's ascending from above below. It's as though you could call it a vertical axis of causality instead of a horizontal one. That is the way that the principles, let's say, the archetypes, become actualized in exemplars. It starts from above, as it were. And the way to do it is like this. Let's do it. Imagine that you have landed on planet earth, (landed is perhaps a fiction of the imagination, but still it's helpful) that you have borrowed a body, that you're really a denizen from some other dimension of reality, and you could think that the physical plane is just a cross-section of reality, a sheet of paper, for example, would be like a cross-section of a volume. So landing is not quite a correct word. But let's say that somehow you've somehow squeezed your notion of identity into that surface and borrowed the fabric of the planet through your parents in order to experience conditions on that little paper there which is a cross-section of a hologram. And you forgot what it was all about. You got so caught in the perspective of that well, metaphorically, two-dimensional reality, in fact, to say this better, I didn't want to be too pedantic, but maybe it's better to say things more clearly. One could conceive of insects that could only extrapolate between two dimensions of space and so their world would be like a sheet of paper. It could be curved. They wouldn't know that it's curved. And reality is always, is wherever reality intercepts that piece of paper, they experience it, but they experience only the point where it intercepts, so they have no idea about the reality behind it. And imagine that we are three-dimensional, we can conceive of three dimensions, but reality is multi-dimensional and all that we know of is that very narrow three-dimensional world that we assume to be reality. And now what spirituality is about is to reach out beyond that narrow purview and that gives a sense of awakening from a perspective. A perspective is a bind, acts as a bind, for example under the effect of drugs. People are, that's the reason for that word freaking out when one is caught in a perspective. You can't get out of that perspective. A foreign agent forces your consciousness into a perspective. And we in our ordinary consciousness are also forced into a perspective. And if we want to free ourselves from it, that is awakening. So awakening is freeing ourselves from the constraint of a perspective that has been taken for granted. That's why spirituality is challenging all the assumptions that you have always made. So maybe that will give you a sense of what we mean by different levels of reality. So causality as in the sense of descent from one cause to another, not in the process of becoming, but descent tanazulat is the word used in Sufism, it's, of course, that is what Buddha saw of course, in his retreat patikasampada, that is the causal chain for Buddha is not the place in causality in physics, not at all. It's a whole different causal chain that he follows up backwards, you know. So think of yourself as having descended. Descended is again not the right word--having shifted your perspective from a kind of well, to make it more clear, say from being privy to the software of the universe, to shifting your consciousness into the hardware and losing sight of the software. That would be the descent. Avidya, the opposite of vidya, the opposite of knowledge, non-knowledge. And then spirituality as the recovery of a sense of the software and now we understand the hardware better. So it's just that metaphorical thought that somehow the focus of my consciousness has shifted, can shift, has shifted into bringing the physical world into perspective and now what I could do, try to do, is to include further perspectives into that perspective. For example, that's what the eyes do, if you extrapolate between two pictures, then you get a composite picture, a three-dimensional picture. That's how we get a sense of three-dimensionality. So it's by extrapolating two perspectives that seem different. So meditation is at first, one is alternating between one perspective and another, and the objective of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan is one could say, stereoscopic consciousness, to be able to extrapolate between all these perspectives at the same time. But then we have to know these perspectives, and then we can extrapolate between them. All right, if you can really have a sense that "I'm a tourist on planet earth. I belong to other dimensions of reality," then your, when you look at your problems, they will look very different. If you are bogged into your personal vantage point, then you suffer, you feel you're the victim of situations and so on, develop self-pity, but if you look at things from an overview, and think, "Well, it's a consequence of my having allowed myself in being involved in certain situations, and so there was a price to pay, well instead of gloating over my problems and my wounds and feeling sorry for myself," somehow as I said before, the victory, the ultimate victory, is not circumstantial. Christ won the victory but from the appearance of the earth, it was a defeat. Everybody let him down, his closest disciples abandoned him. It was a fiasco, but averred itself to be a victory. So there's a way, those are thoughts which I hope will help us absorb those tumors in our psyche because simply by opening them up, we won't be absorbing them. We will just perhaps wallow in the pain. And if we don't take any notice of them, they will fester, so we need to do something. But that something that we need to do is, as I say, see that they are the shadow of a reality that makes sense of them, and then they are, they find their place in the total picture, and in a sense, one can say they are resorbed, resorbed maybe is not the right word. They are integrated. All right. So we've been considering these two dimensions, the past, and then, let's say, the causal chain. And there's no doubt that there's such a thing as such a cause and such an effect, of course, but then, there are other vectors also. So we're considering that and then the descent. Now there are more vectors. So now let's do this practice again now. Inhale through the left nostril. I'm thinking, as I say, now, of the beauty of the practice that we've just done, if you remember, was that as we were inhaling from the left nostril, we were not just moving from left to our person, we were moving upwards at the same time in a spiral. It's the only way to move upwards and inwards at the same time, is in a spiral. And then you hold your breath. Now you exhale through the right nostril. All right, now, what happens when you hold your breath? Somehow, that advance, that inexorable advance of the past is broken, is interrupted. And the best way to think of it is a pendulum. The swing of the pendulum has reached its edge and somehow the velocity of the pendulum has slowed down, and when the pendulum has reached that edge, one could say that time stands still for an instant, that is for an instant. That means that it does not have any duration. And then it goes in the other direction. So when you're doing this practice, you'll notice that you inhale left, hold your breath, so the pendulum has swung in one direction, and then you do the opposite, you inhale through the right nostril and you hold your breath, and the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction. As I say, we're building a grid, you see? So what happens then when you hold your breath, you are creating conditions that are favorable to let's say, the turning of a new leaf in your life, to opening a new chapter, to incurring a new birthing. In fact, we are recurrently being reborn, and the only way to be recurrently reborn is to mark a stop in the causal chain so that something may emerge in us which is not causated by the past. Something new. And if it wasn't for this new, there would be nothing gained by life; it would always be a continuation of the past. We would have to schlepp our old being throughout our life, and a lot of people do that. We are offered the possibility of being a new person, continually new. But it means that we have to form some kind of detachment with regard to our ex-being. And we have to really be conscious of it, you know, speak to people close to us and say, "You know, I'm a different person," and they say, "That's crazy...."(?) "Yes, yes, really, I'm a different person, believe it!" You've got to prove it of course. But something happened. I said you can capture this rebirthing, just like I say the crocuses when they break through the snow (that doesn't happen very much in Arizona). Capture them. Just at that very moment you have no idea what is happening in the process of incubation that is taking place in the unconscious, but in a certain moment, then it breaks through. And that is the moment when you just, it's a kind of a sensitivity you feel, "Something is coming now. Something is just beginning to show its head. It needs protection, it needs all my love, my care. otherwise, it will be stillborn. It will be stillborn unless I nurture it. So that is a certain quality that is coming through. That is the reason for the wazifa. The representation of truth(?) that makes you aware of, that a certain quality is coming through at this moment and so pay attention to it because by concentrating on it, you reinforce it and protect it and help it grow. otherwise, it will be stillborn. We are missing lots of opportunities in life because we don't take heed of what is coming through, because we don't even believe that something new is coming through. We are still attached to our old self. That's where detachment comes in. That's the challenge of our spirituality, in Sufism, to be able to bring detachment into involvement and action and accomplishment. Somehow those two things, it's very paradoxical to be able to reconcile these two. Now there's a commitment to the new birthing that is taking place, to the quality that is emerging. It is in the realm of chivalry; it is a pledge. It is a pledge that makes a break in the continuity of your life and opens up new possibilities. So a pledge is a definite determination; it affirms your free will, of course. One, it's generally in terms of "I won't do this anymore, I will do this", something like that. "I will do this, I won't do that". Some very clear pledge. And I would say that it's the pledge that makes you into a knight in the tradition of chivalry. which is that of the Sufis, it is called Futuhat, which is chivalry. And that has the power of absorbing your shadow. Because it is action which determines the way that qualities unfurl and defects are absorbed. It's action. There's the determination but that determination is with reference to action: I will do this; it's always with regard to action. And now we see the connection between our activity and our personality. I'll tell you why. I'm sure that if you looked in the past and just remained on that axis, the horizontal axis, then I'm sure that you would think that well, you'd see how certain situations brought about a change in your personality. For example, there was an accident, so you became more cautious. Somebody humiliated you, so the next time, you'll see to it that you're not in a situation where you can be humiliated and so on, so forth. So somehow the situation had an impact on which qualities came through and which qualities remained recessive. What we find more difficult to see is the impact of our personality upon our situation. But you see it better when you look into the past than when you recollect the past in the present. For example, you are looking in the past and you think to yourself, "Well, if I'd been what I am now, this wouldn't have happened." So there you can see the impact of your personality upon the situation. Now that relationship is, you see, we attribute it to fate. We think, "Well, this happened to me. It's unaccountable for. It's God's will. It's fate." It is disowning and discounting the impact of one's personality upon the situations. Something that Jung said when he said, "If you do not deal with your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate." "If you do not deal with your shadow, it will appear to you in the form of your fate." If you do not confront your shadow. So there's some kind of internal cosmic law which we don't understand whereby the situations in our life in some way connected with the unfoldment of our being. The unfoldment of our being is somehow connected with situations in our life. But, however, it's not that simple. You cannot say that the victims of accidents, of people starving to death, of people maimed in Bosnia or wherever, that they are personally, that the reason for their fate is because they called upon this situation by their own personality, you can't say that, globally yes, but for each individual, you can't say that. So you see it's much more complicated than we would like to think, but at least we see it's useful to see if indeed you can actually see how the emergence of qualities in your being is going to affect, or does affect, or will affect your life situation. So just think of it now. Think for example, "If I were to develop such and such a quality, how would alter my situation in life? How would it alter my relationship with people?" Ask yourself that question. Now supposing you were Abraham, your boss wouldn't bully you! So you can see that. "If I were to develop compassion, how would that alter my situation, my relationship with that person?" And then see the shadow of compassion--is permissiveness or being too accommodating. "I see that would be the shadow of it. So how can I be compassionate, but be very strict in my adhesion to my principles? Now how would it change my relationship with this person? This person is being aggressive to me and I think that this person doesn't love me because they're so aggressive, but perhaps it's just because they love me that they're being so aggressive, because they want more compassion from me." So now we have this very interesting, how can I say, polarity between the descent as we called it, the archetypes descending in the exemplars, and then the new birthing taking place from, from inside towards outside, a very strange combination. We have all these different. I hope we can come to some clarity about all these different factors because that will help us to understand our lives and our person. So we've examined three vectors now. So let us. We examined, if you remember, the arrow of time, our memory, and also, looking at the events from an overview so that we saw the issue instead of just the problem in its uni-dimension. So that was a combination of the transcendental dimension and the cosmic. Now we hold our breath and we discover a whole new factor, some, a quality of course which represents one of those eternal qualities but which, just like our DNA, has been withheld by, you know, some of our genes are active, the others receptive, I mean, recessive. So somehow they can be released. So it's as though at some moment you pull off the scotch tape out of one of the keys of the piano and then you are able to play it. All of a sudden, it erupts unexpectedly, and actually, it is now an illustration that will help us understand this. If you look at the waves of the sea, you think that each wave is a continuation of the previous one, but in fact, the whole ocean emerges as each wave. So you are in some way the result of your past, but in addition to that, the whole universe keeps on emerging in you new, in a new way, recurrently, and the best way to invite this operation in your mind is to interrupt the causal vector of time, to interrupt it when you hold your breath. So you stop thinking about the past, and you really think, "Well, something new is coming through and that is going to even alter the past, so let's just concentrate on what's coming new." As I said, it's your determination that enables something new to come through. otherwise you block it. It requires of you some action. And that action is in some way related to the future. So you're cutting the past and enhancing the future. Now there's a thought here which we need to remember. It's very important. It's a thought of --it was actually, I think he was a biologist, but he was also a mathematician, Beuler, who said, "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. " That's something that we need to understand because that helps us not to limit ourselves, our thinking in terms of karma, of causality. I could substantiate this in a lot of ways. It's called retrocausality in science, in physics. For example, the evolution of chemistry on planet earth could not have happened by accident. It could only have happened if the advent of the human had been forseeable. That's retrocausality. It's the opposite of causality. That's Teilhard de Chardin. 'mega was already present and determined the course of Alpha, but present as a possibility and that is a notion which is very important when we are considering the future. It is making dreams come true. It's believing in the possible. How things could be if they would be as they might be. In Sufism it's incan. Buddha in his retreat spoke of reaching the level of all possibility, the level of all possibility. MAR 17, 1995 Tape 11 ...found in the divine dictionary. It is a concept that we invented as humans. We are used to a game of chess in which we can be stymied. But the husband of Joan Grant invented a game of chess which is three-dimensional chess where if you are blocked on one level you can win by reach through on another level. And there is no end to the pawns. So now when your are exhaling right just feel the pull of the future which is inviting you to make projects, because somehow we have the capacity to imagine how things could be, luring us forward. So keep on doing that again, inhale left (yes don't worry we'll have our break at ll:00), inhale left, break from past, pledge, breath right, the future pulling us forward, possibilities, unending possibilities. That is our hope, that will pull us out of our past. Some to our guilt, it doesn't take us off the hook altogether, but the pledge marks some kind of reprieve. Now as you breath in through the right from the right, you realize that you are limiting the future by your planning, and so have to accept that it does not work out, and it may be just as well that it does not work out, but you don't know it. And now as you are breathing, so you hold your breath, you experience this collapse of the past and the future in the present, the instant, where you are, it is very different from what you experience after you held your breath after breathing in through the left. That is where you made a pledge, that is where your personal will came in, but now, somehow, you are questioning even your personal will, though one assumes to be free one has to affirm one's will, and maybe one's will is depriving oneself of ultimate freedom. Well one discovers a higher level of one's will that one generally thinks is the divine will because one doesn't generally identify oneself at that level. But if you would does so, if you thought of the asymptote? now that is including the right axis and the vertical axis, the higher part of the vertical axis, then you'd reach into a higher will that overrides your lower will. An example would like if you want to go to a concert, it happens to me, but you are hungry on the way, but if you go to a restaurant you will miss the concert so you have to give up one will for another. Priority in levels of will. Well now we are getting close to, that is why I don't want to interrupt because I have something in mind that we are moving into. And as you exhale, then a very surprising though hits you, you realize that the future, that pull of the future has not only drawn you away from the past and given you some palliative about your guilt, but has altered the past. The future alters the past, because the reason for our guilt is that we think that we can never change the past. Those stars that we are looking at may not exist anymore, they have changed but now there are a lot of photons scattered all over the place, the past has changed. That person whom we might have harmed, that person is different now, has changed. There is some overlap of the past and the future, there is a break between the past and the future, the instant, and there is the impact of the future upon the past. Now this is what I am trying to get to, but it is the most difficult part of it. If you breath in through both nostrils, and now hold your breath and exhale. Now this is very different, because if you think of the pendulum in the instant of time, you experience the instant of time as you breath in left and stop, right and so on, two points of the pendulum right, and left. But what you experience after breathing in both nostrils is eternity. And instead of thinking of it metaphysically, eternity, whatever that means, think that at one, let us say at the pinnacle of your being you are unchanged. Maybe that is too simplistic. Maybe there are degrees of eternity. It is not that simple. But at least there is one point in our being which seems to endure while the other point is moving and changing is time and space, like the pendulum of course. And by identifying with that eternal part of your being that you access the higher levels, the higher spheres. Our simplistic minds like to think in categories so we think my soul is eternal, my body is transient, or my psyche is transient, those are simplistic ways of thinking. You find that in the Samska school of Yoga, Purusha and Prakriti. No. My body is a continuity in change. Like a river. It is the same river and yet it is never the same water. So it is not just transient. So where is that. Is the point where I can say I'm unchanged, or God is unchanged? And the answer is no. So it is very relative to say that I experience the eternity of my being, in infinite regress. We are limiting God by imposing upon him/her to be unchanged, because we like to think of something that is unchanged. Well, now we come to a rather perplexing notion, that is we come across the notion of what we call fate or destiny, as if things were pre-ordained. And that seems to be in opposition to our free will. Again we are thinking in categories. That is the simplistic, old-fashioned way of thinking. God's will, and my will opposed to one another. There is some interactive process between those two poles of the same reality. Can you imagine that your experience, your knowledge, your decision, has an impact upon the whole. For example, if one wave emerges from the ocean, the whole ocean undergoes a change. So it is not that the whole ocean emerges as a wave, but each wave has an impact upon the whole ocean. So don't think that there is your will as opposed to the divine will that is different, but somehow there is an interaction between those two poles. And maybe the divine will gains something by being customized as our different will wills. Perhaps we take away the word maybe, it is. So these are different ways of looking a spirituality, very different from all that we have learned in our spiritual education. You could put it this way, well the simplistic way would be that God wished to confer upon us his greatest gift which is freedom, free decision. And that was the cause of all the trouble in the world, because God's will can't interfere with the wills that he conceded upon fractions of his/her being. That is one way of looking at it, God crucified for all eternity in order to free us. The other way is that the divine will gains is richness by being multiplied and actualized in the existential condition. Or least there is a further thought which is very challenging, and that is instead of assuming God up there and us down here, as miserable worms, as one of the Christian fathers said, think that God is, well it is just a concept of course, is all potentiality, is virtual reality, becomes a reality in us. I know that is a very challenging though, but you find it amongst the dervishes. Why do you look for God up there, he is there. And I think that Buddha would like this solution, because he is very wary of our projections of what we wish God to be. So I'd like you just to reflect on this very challenging or paradoxical thought. Sometimes I like to think that I'm programmed and sometimes I see I can interfere will situations by my free will, so does my free will alter my programming, that is what I'm positing of course. And what I think of my free will is the divine will customized in me. These are thoughts which require, which we cannot fit in with the parameters of our ordinary middle range thinking, but somehow force our minds beyond its limits, and that is what meditation is about. So we have these very deep reflections in the course of a retreat on the meaningfulness of my life. There is no way of fitting it into the patterns of our life. There is no way of fitting it into the patterns of our thinking so it is a whole different level of thinking that we can indulge in our retreat. It seems that what is happening is that evolution, realization seems to be on the increase amongst those people who represent the prow of the advance of evolution. While seeming more paradoxical, life seems more meaningful as we advance. It just doesn't fit into our ordinary logic. So this is something you can do in your meditation now. To focus it a little bit, if one is sitting in meditation, to start with the impressions of one's experiences in the world keep regurgitating by the psyche, so one is exposed to all kinds of random thoughts. And one thinks I can't meditate there is no way, of course when I sit still here these thoughts are very disturbing and maybe I'm not the meditative type. Then we learned somehow to downplay our perspective of the physical and social environment. And as we turned within our of our creative imagination we project into forms, into landscapes thoughts that are emerging in us that are not reactions to the environment that are purely impromptu, spontaneous. We have done that so far. Now we are opening a whole new perspective, into what is called the higher planes, the kind of thinking that goes with our having shifted our sense of identity into our celestial being. That thinking does not rest either upon the experience of the environment, nor upon our creative thoughts. And so I think the only way to access them is to think that you are functioning beyond the existential realm, that time and space have no meaning anymore. Space only has meaning where there is matter, and time has only meaning where there is consciousness of the existential state, but at this level they have lost their relevance, because you are not considering the existential state. So it is as though you have descended into it, or you are opening your perspective into the existential state, now you close that perspective, you downplay it as I say, and highlight a kind of preknowledge of things, irrespective of whether they are actualized or not in existence, that is what the Sufis call Jabarut, the level of Jabarut. Ibn Arabia distinguishes several levels. The first one is, all that we know of reality is the pugmarks, as I say the Iyat, the signs, the clues in the physical world, in our own person. So let us say we know God by ourselves, by projecting what is in ourselves into what we imagine God to be. We know God through ourselves inasmuch as we can know God. But the next knowledge is that we know ourselves by the knowledge that God has of him/herself through us. That is the level of Malakut, the angelic level. We know god, we know ourselves, in the measure in which God knows him/herself through us. And we know ourselves inasmuch as we are able to reach into the divine perspective whereby God knows himself through us. It is the angelic level of cognizance, Malakut. And then we reach the next level. We know God by the knowledge God has of him/herself, not through us. That is beyond existence. And that is Samadhi. And that knowledge is going to make sense of what we are experiencing in life, which does not make sense if we just remain in our ordinary consciousness. So that is what I meant by what we need to do now. All these different stages, one after another, I hope you remember them, and eventually we get into breathing through both nostrils, into that level which reaches beyond further and further, beyond the existential state, and your consciousness kind of peters out because there is a perception of the world and memories all seems to be so remote and all that remains then is pure intelligence, that knows itself without having to perceive or experience other than itself. OK., that will be the subject of your meditations before lunch, it's five minutes past eleven now, you have another hour. MAR 17, 1995 Tape 12 So this is a very rare opportunity to share in a retreat. So imagine that you are an ascetic, sanyasin, that you are giving yourself a chance to awaken or highlight that aspect of yourself that has very little opportunity of manifesting because we are concerned with our activities in the world. So it's a very special grace to spend a few days in a whole different attunement, and that means absolutely downplaying the commonplace perspective and also the kind of emotions that go with our involvement in life. I've been using the word freedom, but if you remember, it is not necessarily finding freedom from circumstances. It's much more from one's addiction to circumstances and also freedom from opinion and from the personal dimension of emotion, and freedom from our self image, and freedom from our notion ultimately of freedom, well from conscious focus, and then finally freedom from our notion of ourselves as an individual discrete entity as one says. So those are looming as it were at the edge of our awareness. The beauty of this change of tack altogether is that we are able to look at things with a perspective whereas when we are right in the middle of our activities, we can't see the woods for the trees. Let us say that that is the vantage point of the ascetic is looking at things with some perspective because one's detachment has freed one from being caught right in the middle of it all. So I have been inviting you to look at your lives. But that should not pull you back into the ordinary perspective, because then nothing is gained at all. And so it is that sense of the distance of remoteness from the circumstances which will open new vistas, alternate ways of looking at things, that is what we mean by awakening. So this is really the school of awakening leading to illumination. We've been learning the skills, developing the tools to look at things from these different perspectives. The basic meditations we've been doing cosmic, transcendental, so on, turning within. If you have an overview, because that's what we want to do, have an overview, the world is not , you don't cut out the scenario of the world. But if you are able to look at the world with a certain perspective, with an overview, then you see that, the first aspect is that you see things in their context. And we've already learned that in order to do this we need to expand our consciousness. And perhaps you remember that it is, there is an emotion behind it. You can't do it with your will. It's the quest to discover what is transpiring behind that which appears. The quest to find splendor where in one's normal vantage point, one would only see ugliness. Has the effect of drawing you out of the constraint of your personal self. If you can do it while I'm talking, so just feel like nostalgia to, as I've already said, discover yourself in another yourself. So discover yourself in the Universe. So that's what we are doing in our retreat. If you can see that connection between you and the Universe, at first it looks like two different things, like you as the subject and the Universe as the object. And then eventually if you can do the opposite, it's rather a very strong method. That is think that the Universe if looking at itself through you, through your eyes, and also through your nature. As is Sufi terms, God discovering him/her self through each one of us. So it's the opposite vantage point to your personal vantage point. And this will lure your consciousness beyond its boundaries, as Buddha says. So that the compass of your experience becomes vaster and vaster, all encompassing. And eventually that artificial boundary between yourself and the Universe starts petering out. So you see yourself so much a part of the whole thing. You see, if you do the opposite, instead of thinking that you're the consciousness that is you're the spectator that is experiencing. You think it's that other way around. It's the Universe that's looking at you. Then your, you start merging with the Universe that used to be other than yourself, that used to be the object of your experience. And the consequence is that you are moved by the emotion of the Universe. And that emotion has a very powerful transforming effect upon you. You could not bring about that transforming by your will or by your realization. It's by the enormous value that we attach to beauty, to meaningfulness, to what we ascribe to God, to perfection that has the effect of pulling one out of the limitations of one's personal self, or the notion that we make of ourselves. So now you start focusing on your problems then, as I say, you start seeing your problems in their context. Which gives you a totally different view of your problems than looking at them in a closed circuit. So in that context to be more specific. It starts by what they mean to the people you're involved with instead of just what they mean to you. And if you extend that further then there are more and more people involved, then eventually you see that it never stops at any point. And therefore that's where get into the cosmic vantagepoint. Your consciousness is being carried, as Buddha said, beyond the edge of your notion of yourself. And if you remember what Buddha said then was that the memory of the Universe surfaces. So it's that is when you don't think of things statically but rather dynamically. So instead of thinking of your present problems, you see your problems not just in the context of their implications the Universe, but you see them as an ongoing developmental process that you're involved with. You see, in other words, the past of the problem and the future and the present where the past overlaps the future. And then all those thoughts that we came across this morning while doing the breathing practices left and right. How the future, well how the, there are two things. How the potentialities that carry portence for the future redeem you from the constraint of the past, and even from the causality of the past, from the karma. Redeem you to a certain extent, because of the interplay between all these different factors. And it is your decision that performs that redemption. That's again why Buddha said, his last words were,' Work for your own redemption'. Don't expect to be redeemed by a savior.' So your redemption is in your decision, in your pledge. You carry within you to unleash the potentialities in your being by your decision. But they were being blocked by something in you which we call the shadow, and by the decision gradually of course and maybe more subtly than gradually the shadow gets resorbed in the ideal. And it's, as I say, it's just like pulling scotch tape off some of the keys of the piano so that you can play more melodies. So you see we are working through a wazifa, wazaif, what were doing is establishing some kind of relationship between these let's say the archetypal level of the potentials and their actuation in us, our idiosyncrasies. But it's like becoming aware of the code in you being that is the divine inheritance. But what happens when you turn within and you realize the process of unfurling of the potential instead of the archetypal value. 'h it's like, and right, we do carry the code of the whole Universe, but for there to be a difference between the different organs of the body so they can cooperate, diversification, some of the genes need to be turned on in certain organs and turned on in those organs and in other organs other genes turned on. So that is let's say second level in the programing. What determines that unfurling. And so it is really releasing the blockage to the unfurling of a quality which is inherited in us, which is present in our divine inheritance. There's a natural process. We can't develop all these qualities at the same time. There's a natural process. So now with that perspective of the ascetic sitting on the top of a mountain looking at life with an overview, you begin to see the interrelationship between the unfurling of the potentialities of you being and your involvement in situations and with people. You see that rapport. It's an interactive process. Then you can see what is blocking the unfurling. And you see that it is in the realm of one's handling of problems that one deblocks or unblocks the obstacle. And that's where the pledge comes in. So, realizing it is not good enough. This is what the Sufis call discovering by doing, like a sculptor discovers his/her stature by making it. Discovering yourself, awakening the potentialities in your being by doing. So that's why this a wonderful unique opportunity in your retreat to think of how you are handling your problems, and see if any change in your handling of your problems would release potentials in your being that could not develop if you continue handling things the way you are doing. And of course there is no doubt about it that that does require us to be very clear as to how basic instincts in us represent a kind of underpinning that is required. In order to climb the Himalayas you need a base camp, several base camps. There is an underpinning there which is very basic. Basic instincts like self preservation for example, and as I said before territorial, marking territories and power games and defense system. All those things, are very real. And they organize primitive societies. They determine relationships between blocks of people, parties and so on. And then as one evolves one finds ways of overcoming those very primitive instincts. overcoming them, perhaps that's not the right word. Maybe one should say transmuting them or distilling them. So look into yourself and see where for example those instincts are still there. For example if someone hits one, the natural instinct would be to hit back. So those are things that Christ drew one's attention to. Like, that's conditioning you see. And freedom is freedom from conditioning. So freedom from all those very basic. Well freedom well sublimating it. And so you know I remember preaching to overcome resentment. And somebody said to me, PIr Vilayat, I feel so terrible I feel, you cant imagine how terrible I feel having been abused. It's ruined my life. How do you expect me to forgive that person? Now you make me feel even worse because I feel that I cannot forgive that person.' So that's no the way of helping people. I've given that up a long time ago. I want to say that this is an open bracket, parenthesis. We're in this together. And I sound very much like preaching, but I think that the spiritual training is a process that we go through together. There's the high faluted teacher pupil relationship where the teacher accepts to be a role model, and by so doing the pupil forces him/her to be dishonest and not to recognize his/her shadow. That's not helping people, but if you, as much as you're the guide of someone else or someone is looking up to you to help them. If you, let's say that person is beckoning upon you to resorb your shadow so that it will help them to resorb theirs, then you're helping them. But if you didn't have a shadow then you wouldn't be helping them they wouldn't know how to overcome their shadow. They would think that you're just a very special person, and they could never be that way. It doesn't help. So as you're meditating then let's say these are, let's say this is a new model for the spiritual idea of our time. There is a transmission so it's a continuity in change. But you see it takes all the force of our ideal to resorb our shadow. You can't do it with your will. And you can't do it because you are shoulding yourself, because people are shoulding you or think you think you should. No, it's because of the enormous power of our idealism, and if we start doubting the ideal as realistic, it loses power. And that is why our ideal is sustained on faith, by faith. But then the trouble is that what we think is our ideal, what we think is our ideal is our projection of what we imagine our ideal should be, and we're deluding ourselves. A lot of people have done very cruel things in the name of their ideal, in religion particularly. Fundamentalism. That's why Pir-o-Murshid said,'Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth'. I think we could interpret this and say, when you're trying to make your ideal a reality, trying to actualize it, that's when the artificial projections are shattered, and they are replaced by a truer ideal. And this affects our shadow, because as I said,the shadow is resorbed by the power of our ideal. And that's where of course it is God the notion of God that operates the transmutation of our shadow. So just look at this in your life now, and see how, unless one watches it, those primitive instincts take over. One gets annoyed with people. It's very difficult not to resent people who are standing in one's way, or hurting one. So I'm not saying that one should, I'm not shoulding people or myself. It's easier when you're on retreat. And that's why I think of it as a rehearsal for life. Think,' Now when I meet that person again, I'm going to open up and tell that person what are my motivations, and what are my values, and admit to, open up of course that I'm trying to live up to those ideals, but it's a long going process.' And that person will of course benefit by that clarity, and recognize their own problem in one's problem. NCE more, of course it is, I speak about the ideal. You see one has to be very careful about using words that become cliches, spirituality, God, ideal and so on. They become very easily cliches unless they cause one to really experience. That's the beauty of retreat, that you can test out these concepts and try to experience rather than build mental constructs. So, once more it is, well in simplistic language it would be being high as one says in American. Being high. Well, how do you be high? Now, I have a particular bias, and don't follow my bias because it's just a bias, and that is that I am always so overwhelmed by that beautiful side of people that I have difficulty in seeing their shadow. So, it's not being very realistic. But as I say that beautiful side has a power in it, and that's how I get high. People ask me,' How do you get high?'. It's not drugs and it's not wine, but it's just, it becomes almost an habituation suspecting that there's beauty where things look ugly. And that shatters me in my emotions because beauty, well splendor. Splendor is not, beauty is only the way that splendor manifests in form, but splendor itself is of course beyond any expression in the time space. That is because splendor is so meaningful, it's so overwhelming to one's emotion that you see, if you expect to see it you won't unless you are prepared to grasp that which transpires behind that which appears. And then of course .. But it's because you suspect that it's there that you see it. If you didn't have the faith that it's there, you wouldn't see it. That's the role of faith. And instead of thinking of splendor as an archetype, it's something that seems to emerge in life.Instead of thinking it's already there and that life is just actuating it, it seems to emerge like when the truth of a situation , an entangled situation, starts surfacing, it's as though the divine splendor started to make itself known. There's also a kind of suspicion that I learned in Buddhism and of course later on in Sufism, that is that , of course it's to be found in Hinduism too of course. It's do not rely upon the face value of things. Do not rely upon, not only the way the physical world, every physicist knows that the the physical, that matter is not the way that we perceive it. That confirms the view of Maya. But let's always, never take for granted that you assessment of your situation is right, never. That's the bind,that's were we're caught in a bind. And I know it's very challenging because well if you can't have an opinion then how do you decide things. You have to have an opinion. As long as one knows that that opinion is relative, that's all right, and that it could be revised. I am thinking of doctors opinions that I've been able to prove wrong. The reason is because opinion is based upon experience, and it can get better as one develops more experience. But there that other factor which is intuition and which does not press upon experience. And so when you are free of your assessment of your problems, you could just dance with joy. Just imagine that throughout my life I have assumed this and I realize it's wrong, and I based my whole life on a false assumption. What a waste of time. That's the reason for the new wazifa that I'm suggesting to people, that is 'what if' it's an American wazifa. What if things are not the way I think they are. I'm not sure that's something you could repeat, What if? What if? What if? That's freedom. That is freedom from the sclerosis of the present to enlist the potentialities of the future. That's very significant, because I hear, well it was some time ago of course,that concept of live in the here and now. I can't think of anything more boring, more simplistic than the here and now. You know, I mean time and space is a concept of the mind. It's a grid, framework that we impose upon reality. It's the way that the everywhere and always manifests in the here and now. That is much more true. All right so, these are thoughts which should throw light on your picture of the physical world. Now what I'm saying is that in order to awaken you have to downplay a perspective and highlight another one. So when you're meditating now, the representation that you make, not just of the physical world but the situation in which you are, needs to be downplayed so that you can highlight an alternate perspective, because you can't , it's difficult to extrapolate, I agree that one should extrapolate between all these, but it's very difficult. That is the ultimate goal. So if you downplay, and I hope you're doing it while I'm talking. If you downplay the scenario of the physical world, you'll find yourself in a transfigured world. And you know isn't it strange, I remember that. I wonder where that came from, maybe when I was a child. All of a sudden I remember that there's a way of looking at life that's like different. And then , if you cast your attention upon your problems, then somehow you see meaningfulness, and as I say, you see even beauty where at first it seemed so ugly. I don't know how to say this, it's easier to refer to the transfigured world, but how you problems are now is, well let's say, if you look at them in their context, then you don't pinpoint the problem but you grasp the interconnection, you grasp, as I say, it's a kind of an alternate perspective. You are espying that which transpires behind the appearance of the problem. Then very interesting things occur to you, but you cannot sort it out with the logical mind, because somehow you can sense some kind of programing in the problems and at the same time you can see you own determination, your own determinism in it your own free will, the consequences of your free will, and in addition randomness. And that's very difficult to accept that there is randomness, that there's not just the divine will and your will but accident. And I suppose the reason for randomness is so that evolution can make a choice between alternate possibilities. And that's why one must not pretend to be the master of one's destiny, nor must one think that one is the victim of one's destiny because there are other factors there. That is where, when you see that , then you are called upon to surrender, which is not the same thing as to submit. It means to acquiesce, to what is a greater meaningfulness than that which you can fathom, and which does require randomness. Very touching the essential issues of physics, of modern physics. But this is what you're doing now in the retreat, looking at your life. Now if we pursue this further then, like the situation seem to get more and more remote and the issues seem to be highlighted rather than the actual defacto of the appearance. So that would be steps toward Samadhi because they say, well they say, I mean you can experience it. The world falls out of focus. I would say that it's not really, I would say that it's just the facts that fall out of focus of course, but the meaningfulness of them remains in within the purview of your consciousness. But of course it's true that there is a sense of aloneness of alienation of seclusion, those are the experiences of the ascetics. And then , as I said, when this happens be very careful not to lose your consciousness. Alchemists say beware, be careful that the winged does not escape from the retort, and be careful not to lose consciousness. Then it's not meditation. Meditation is being very clear, very alert. So being vague and sort of amorphous, that's not meditation. That's what a lot of people assume is mediation. So the principle is always compensate downplaying a perspective by highlighting another one. Don't just downplay a perspective and then lose yourself in the void. That is the meaning of fana and baqa. So now what were doing is were moving to the next step, which is instead of your consciousness being turned toward experience, your consciousness is turned within and you're picking up that which is emerging from within, and eventually you'll be building a bridge, you'll be reaching out from inside. But to start with you're just very much on the alert to what is emerging from within. That's the second mind of the Tibetans. We call it the subtle mind instead of the gross mind, which is the creative mind. And the only way to encourage this new perspective, totally new perspective, is to absolutely downplay the input of experience from outside. It's a real change of tack. And all creative people know that. Composers know it, pianists, musicians know it. The outside circumstances act as catalysts that awaken a whole new dispensation within one that is not a reaction but is catalyzed by the challenge form outside. And this is where you are privy to your rebirthing as I call it. The new aspects of your being that are being released. And concentrate upon them like you can't know them before they break through the threshold from the unconscious to the conscious but at that time you can grasp it and say, 'Yes I see something new coming through me. That's me, that is me. I thought it was me, that was the sclerosed me that was the consequence of the past, and so on. But now there is a new me that is going to overcome that sclerosis. And need not in any way be impacted by the karma, let's say by the causal inference set into motion by the past. And the beauty is that it is irrespective of your concern about developing qualities that will help you to meet your problems. You forget them. That will limit the qualities that will come through you if you are concerned about what qualities you need to develop in order to meet your challenges in life. That is a limitation. So that's why you forget your problems for the time being so that you can just pick up the way that the evolution of the Universe is operating in you. Eventually you may find that those qualities are just those you need in order to meet your problems, but you must not, that must not be your concern at the time. And now, as I say, your ideal is going to keep on in some way pulling those qualities out of the sate of potentiality of virtuality. Somehow the are you are emotionally uplifted by your ideal, the more these qualities will emerge from within, and will, just like the chick within the egg, will break the obstacle to our unfoldment. As I said before, I said, it's true I said you have to make a pledge in order to remove the obstacle, but it's true that it is your ideal that will bring you to make a pledge. And then eventually replace your ideal to make it more real. That's what Murshid said, 'The purpose of life is like the horizon. The further you advance, the further it recedes'. That's the meaning of the words of Pir-o-Murshid, that there comes a time when your spiritual path, when your nostalgia to attain the unattainable propels you forward. I'm paraphrasing the words. Murshid's description of how we do this is a practical one. I think we need a practical application of how to do this. And he says this,' Imagine that you're walking on the floor and your concentrating on the ceiling, and then you're walking on the ceiling and you're concentrating on the next floor.' Well that's the secret of astral travel. I won't give you the instructions of how to do it, but that's one of the clues. Now, just one further word because we've got beyond the time now. And that is that you have to schlep the underpinning upwards with you but transmute it. That's why you identify with an etheric body or an aura, you transmute the underpinning. It's not just that you are shifting your focus from your body to your aura, but somehow, to be more specific the electrons of your body are being transformed into photons. So it's not quite, as I say, schlepping the underpinning. But then, we'll have to do this at another time, anticipate what we might do tomorrow, but it's very hazardous. It's like Pegasus can't reach Olympus so Bellerophon, the rider has to avail himself of the thrust of the momentum of the upward flight of Pegasus and continue on his own. That's when you give up the underpinning. You slip the underpinning now. And we'll be doing that tomorrow. MAR 18, 1995 Tape 13 This is going to be a combination of Buddhism and Sufism. To start with, get in touch with your emotions. You'll find many different dimensions or attunements: love, admiration, glorification, frustration, wounds, not getting in touch with one's emotions because of having been hurt. Now, imagine that in the same manner that you would be falling in love with a person you fall in love with this larger person that is the universe and which we call God. And you are overwhelmed by first of all the beauty; by the power; by the intelligence; by all the bounty. Maybe at first it is the physical features that evoke something particularly meaningful to you and you are struck by the beauty of the mountains and the sunrise and the sunset and the flowers and birds and beautiful people and beautiful music and it's all like such a wonderful being and so all your pent up emotions are stirred by what this being means to you. And then you get involved with this being, perhaps even at the physical level working with the matter of the planet as a sculptor or carpenter or mechanic or whatever, and then you get involved with the mind of this being and trying dialogue with it and its mind and trying to understand its thinking (his/her thinking--whatever--I might use the word its). And then there is that emotional exchange which is like communion. You feel that indeed this being loves you as you love this being so it becomes a very deep heart involvement. And then there may come some clouds in the relationship. You are beginning to discover flaws in this being and it's so difficult to reconcile it with the beauty that you see. An you may, in your mind, assume that these flaws are due to the fact that this being multiplied his/herself and consequently it was the fragments of the being that alienated themselves from the being itself, but still these fragments are that being; so there is something beyond their understanding but the shock of that discovery had the effect of your not seeking any more or looking for the physical appearance of that being, that you can reach that being in his/her reality beyond the form in which he/she manifests to view. The Sufi's call this the the shift from (Tassawura Murshid) to (Tawajay ?sp). At first one carries the picture of the Guru and then one destroys the idol to get into the real being beyond the appearance and that requires of you to develop some kind of detachment or independence with regard to the outer aspects of this being because that dependence weighs down that emotion, you'll find that you're emotion of love can become golden when it does not subject you to a state of dependence. And now you are beginning to get into the attunement of that being at the soul level rather than even at the heart level and so your love has become sublimated. Now at this level you see the perfection of this being that is present within its distortion and you even see this distortion as the recycling whereby some part of this being, gets disintegrated and recreated anew just like the nails of our fingers, for example, our toes, are not quite as essential to us as our brain cells. And then to your great surprise you realize that your glorification of that being is your response to the love of that being for you and by this you establish a relationship at a sublime level which eschews any kind of breakdown. Now you have had to let go of those things upon which you were dependent and so your love becomes sublime thanks to your detachment and indifference and independence. Somehow your love has liberated you by becoming glorification. And so now you discover an aspect of that being that at first seems to be aloofness or seems to be unreachful, something in that being that you may have wanted for yourself and that being eludes your grasp luring you further and further from your dependence upon that being so that you may share in his/her lofty unassailable peacefulness. You have to find peace in your self to be able to sustain your relationship now in this very high level. So all those aspects of that being that at first were so meaningful seem to be just an underpinning that could have waylaid you from the essence of that being and so the consequence is that you find that in order to commune with this being at the level of peace. Well, of course we are saying commune at that level, but in fact when one says commune, that means, that does not mean experiencing. It means discovering that one is that very peace that one is seeking, and what seems to be the other being and who is really the very essence of oneself. And consequently that aspect of that being that we call the physical world seems to be remote and out of the focus of one's consciousness, and seems to have left it behind.one can't reach it anymore. One knows it's there but somehow, because that's the idol that one has freed oneself from: the scaffolding and the springboard from which one ascended to the higher layers of that being. Now we see that at all levels, at the level of the mind for example, for all that has been gained by your mind, your intellectual exchange with that being, the universe, it's important that the quintessence of all that has been gained there should be retrieved from its support system so that it may be recycled into the programming of this being. So it's as though the head of an enterprise can't go into the nitty gritty of every detail but wants to know the essential features of the performance so in that process a lot of things have to be left by the side and one needs to prioritize the essence--that abstract essence, and the only way to do it is to prioritize it and let go of its underpinning or infrastructure. So you come into a state of where you are really able to think the way this being thinks because your thinking is part of his/her thinking; it is inexplicably incorporated into his/her thinking. So you are beginning to see meaningfulness at the way that judging things from the experiential level didn't yield any sense. So let us embody this in a breathing practice that we have already done. So as you exhale, think that your exhaling is the extension of the exhaling of this being and that the emotional springhead behind it is nostalgia, and it is that nostalgia that makes you want to involve yourself in life with people, with situations, with the physical matter of the planet that you are perfecting. It's that nostalgia, that love for all the wonder of that being and also the potentialities of that being of which you are a part. And then as you inhale, somehow you get bogged in by that involvement and have missed out on the glory of that being by as the Sufi's say, picking up the crumbs at the banquet instead of sitting as a guest. So therefore somehow you withdraw emotionally from your state of dependence and you discover in yourself that very freedom that we have just encountered at the summit of this being: the remoteness, the aloofness, the unassailable nature. You're finding freedom; and as you do this, somehow you realize that your involvement got you jammed in a perspective just like people and drugs for example--jammed in a perspective. We built a kind of a framework in which we circumscribed our vision of that being: time, space, all our assumptions about location, space, and the process of the becoming and the substantiality of matter and the laws and all those ideas that react as crutches for our minds. Now, somehow we realize that we were conditioned. In other words, we lost our freedom. Thus, is that what involvement means or is it possible to find relationship with this being which does not limit our freedom? And then we find that we discover an eternal dimension of our being that is not subject to becoming and therefore not subject to determinism to conditioning. This is Buddhism and at this level one can almost speak about a relationship with the Divine Being because it is an (?sp. at-one-ment/atonement ?sp) at the level beyond becoming; beyond change; beyond diversity. And so it's like stripping one layer after the other. Imagine that you're in a balloon and now you have to drop one more ballast in order to be able to rise and of course that is freedom from those things that were weighting one down; and letting go, that depends on one's priorities. You'll find yourself, it's like climbing the mountain and dumping a lot of equipment that you thought you needed but it hampers your climb. Of course there's an alone-ness and aloofness that you recognize in the ascetic but the consequence is a kind of authenticity, realness; the realness of the rocks and the snow and the crystals of ice; the lightning, thunder and the fresh breeze. The beauty of the flowers has given way to the splendor of the crystals and the effulgence of physical light has given way to the clarity in your own mind; the clarity of your soul. The satisfaction has given way to freedom, aloofness. So what one thought was one's aloneness is one's participation in the divine solitude and beyond existence. Aloneness in the sense that there is no more sense of me and God, me experiencing God in what one calls a relationship but participating in the solitude means that there is a realization of the intrinsic unity behind what appeared as diversity. Now it is possible that you just harken, touch upon a flash of this state of aloofness and as the Upanishad says, it passes before you've realized it, a flash of awakening, because we were hoisted up by a very intense longing for the unattainable but if you are not used to the steps leading to it then whatever comes through is only just a flash. And now, let us try and examine the rungs of the ladder a little better now. So can you be aware of the fact that although you are a fraction of that total being,which carries the potentiality of that total being, you are ingesting that being; you are drawing the food, in your food, the matter of that being, as being absorbed and integrated in your body; the thinking of that being in your, in all the psychological effervescence of our minds and our cultures and the richness and mind of that being is being incorporated into and enriching your own mind; the emotion, the music, you see, are becoming much more vibrant by your tasting of the rapture of that being and we've already seen that somehow we have the equivalent of what we are ingesting already in us but there is a matching that takes place. We find that we can already apply our detachment in selecting those elements that are in keeping with our being, in sync with our being, more digestible food that is closer to the nature of our own body. So it's your love for that being that makes you ready to incorporate more of the richness of that being in your being and it is your detachment which makes for the uniqueness of each one of us, so there's a selectivity that takes place and thereby one is enriching the total being by the diversity. Now one is not only enriching one's being by the interchange but from inside. So let us do a practice. As you inhale instead of thinking "I'm drawing energy from the universe into myself," you are expanding it, think to yourself as you inhale: you are inhaling energy from inside, from the depth reaching into your being from inside, enriching your being from inside. And the reason is because when our consciousness is used to looking outside, you see. And if it encounters a barrier to its being able to reach outside then it's going to turn within and so to do this, place your index fingers on your eyes and you know the practice. Now, it's called yoni mudra in yoga and Shagal in Sufism. Just three breaths and just think of it, that your consciousness normally reaches out but now there is a blockage and replenishing your being, soaking your being as it were, from within. You've turned within now. Can you just think that you are identifying with the life of your life; with the essence of what you identify as your being. It's a matter of identity. For example, imagine that one cuts a tree at its stump and then it grows again. Is it the same tree? Or is it another tree? Well, it is, maybe we see it is the same tree but it looks different now. It's configuration is different. Its branches are different. So consider that those aspects of yourself that you, with which you identify are your personality, for example, that they are like the branches of the tree and you are identifying with them and now you identify yourself with the root of the tree so that however much those branches could be pruned or even excised altogether it will not affect your real being. So there is a permanence in your real being that issues the transiency and perishability of the branches--let's say the branches of the tree. This sense of the solidity of this permanence, the immutability of this permanence, permanent dimension of your being will confer upon your sense of peaceful-ness contrasting with the agitation and insecurity that is attendant upon the branches of the tree that continue changing and are perishable and precarious in many ways. I already quoted the Nutcracker Suite, to have one broom and then it fragments itself into lots and lots of brooms and one didn't realize that it is that one broom, like a lot of bees and it's really beeness instead of bees and so that stump that one would assume is one's own permanence is really the permanence of the universe. Let's say it carries in it the genes of the whole universe. Don't think of it as Martin Buber calls your prebiographic unity. It's the unity of the Total Being that you experience in that permanence, not the unity of your being because it's not the actual physical stump of the tree, it's the ( god (? or gold ? sounds like gold). That is the being of God (long pause). And that stump can grow in your tree and sometimes it's good to prune the tree so it will grow anew and so you can feel all that potentiality emerging, surfacing, and unfurling as a tree, and then the leaves falling and being replaced by the new burgeoning and blossoming and it is the One Being that is blossoming here and there in one's tendency to just see the appearance and miss the grasp of the One Being behind it all. It's a being that one discovers not by knowing it but by loving it. (pause). Or rather one knows it by loving it. So you can you let your self be caught in that, or be, how can I say it, allured by that ecstasy that moves the universe; a kind of intoxication. It's like instead of the word awakening, one could invent the word aliveing. To make alive. The heart is made alive instead of being low key and the consequence that one's whole being begins to thrive and blossom forth and so that is what Pir-o-Murshid calls the awakening of God (long pause). MAR 18, 1995 Tape 14 And now we are coming near the end, let's say the culmination of the retreat and we'd like to be able to have something in our pocket to carry with us when we get back home again and how's it going to affect us - so I'm uh- some thoughts that have arisen as a result from feedback from Azar Baksh about the practice mohasabi. I think we need to develop further clarity about that practice-um- otherwise it would be simply opening up wounds, so maybe I didn't emphasize enough that it needs to be done in relationship with, I mean from the vantage point of, from those vantage points that we have learned, that we have been practicing, so I assume that, in fact I remember saying , "Do not let yourself slip into your personal consciousness." Because then you'll just be aggravating those wounds, you'll just be scratching them and just aggravating them and it's true that one needs to open up the dressing and cleanse the wound and that's sometimes painful but it's eventually, it's of course salutary- as long as you're always-you could practice, I think we're going to do this this morning, each one of those vantage points, use each of those vantage points or call upon each of these vantage points which we've studied upon, when looking at your problems so that you'll be able to see them in a different way to the way you saw them before otherwise not only nothing is gained but it can be damaging. -um, cough-Now I think that we need to be very clear as to the difference between wounds and tumors. And, um I say, well, the tumor would perhaps be a good description of where- there was some defilement in our being, some alienation from the harmony of the universe and-um- got into a sclerosed jam. The tumor is, has found its place in the orderliness of the cells of the body. So in the same way as in ourselves there might be just a flaw there that is not integrated in the whole of our being. And when we think of the past , then if we are sensitive of course, we will have some remorse about things that we did which may have damaged other people and- let's say they may be just defenses, our defense system that was, was alerted by the challenge- so, um-let's say the defense system jammed into a, a tumor which destroys the-which is counter productive to the- uh-to the immune system-gradually breaks down the immune system. That's the case of cancer for instance. And so somehow the, how can I say, the architecture of our being has a flaw in it that threatens to bring the whole thing down, to damage, damages the whole thing, threatens to destroy the whole superstructure. So one could be wonderful and anyway just because of that one flaw, one can collapse. Now we use the word 'ego', and I want to say this very clearly, we must be very careful about our concepts or our conceptualization. There is no such a thing as an ego. When we say 'ego' we mean our notion of ourselves, we're talking about identification. And what we are doing in this retreat is to explore the different layers let's say, of our sense of identity, who we - it's like a hologram, so we can see one layer and then another and so on, but it's all part of the hologram. Our identity includes many different vantage points and if we- and so 'ego' means 'Me'. So it is purely the notion that we have of ourselves. And so a false ego or the Divine ego, well these are different levels of Me. So its not like something that you have to crush, like the false ego , those are those old fashioned views that you find amongst, some of the ancient Sufis, as a matter of fact. No you can, uh- but then of course it's use in the pejorative sense, like the animal ego, but so as I said, these are- instead of having contempt of that foundation upon which we evolve, we have to transform it, that is we have to evolve it and that's why in-em-The Mahahbarata, the monkey developed wings or the dragon develops wings in Alchemy. So instead of excerpting the ego, then how do you deal with- ugh-with a tumor for example in the body, how can I say?- rather drastic methods like cutting it, of course- that's very simple but as we know the reaction can be with a vengeance, it can grow again because it's part of a whole system, so, it's not thinking wholisticly but in an urgent case of course, then there is no alternative. But a much better method is to enlist the body's ability to resorb it. But um - well okay, what- how can we resorb those aspects of ourselves that we ourselves are not happy about? Now for one thing-um- it's true that I didn't say it this time, I did say it in previous occasions, you must not pause at each recollection but see the sequence, and of course in particular how the occurrences at that time in the past and your personality at that time, have moved in the course of time. In other words look at that wound or that tumor by referring it to how you are now. For example, I was hurt by something that somebody said to me, and now when I think of it I've found freedom in myself, so what they said to me,(laughs) I don't attach a lot of value to it. (laughs) It doesn't hurt me anymore. You've cured the wound. so there is no use going back to the wound again, it's cured, because things have changed, in you. I failed in an examination. I would have had a Doctor's degree otherwise, I failed, (inaudible word) well, tough! as one says in English. (laughter) I'm not sure I'm presenting the best example. (laughter) I don't know whether you know the story of the verger who um-he was dismissed because they discovered that he couldn't write or read. So then he started a little shop with selling matches. It grew and grew and became a real big enterprise and his bank account grew and grew. And at the bank there was a new bank man at the desk and he said "You can't sign? Imagine how rich you would have been if you had been able to read and write." And he said, "I would have been a verger." (laughter) So that's an example of how a defeat can aver itself to be a victory. So when- we suffered because of the way we perceived the situation and if we have evolved then we don't perceive it anymore the way we did, or of course, if we still perceive it the way we did then we haven't evolved. And it's true that it is our freedom that enables us to overcome that pain, not by just being cold but by seeing the relative value of what we lost- um-by prioritizing the more important things than the things that we lost-don't seem to be as important but then there are so many different cases of course. The case where one has lost someone one loves and it could be by death or it could be just that that person has left one. Now there's pain,- because, of course, well, because there was attachment and dependence.-Now of course, if that person is still living and one is civilized enough to continue meeting that person- um, then, um, one-, the relationship becomes friendship, and so something is gained. Mutual respect. So that loss can somehow be countered by one's attuning oneself to one's, into one's higher attunement, then one's priority list of values has altered, so one values, not only one values that, the reality of that person, one discovers the reality of that person, because one isn't encumbered by their personality.--If that person has died then of course, it is true that one can by the power of that pain, the intensity of that pain, one tends to reach into that person's consciousness, we've learned to do that. Then one discovers aspects of that person that one hadn't -uh, uh-hadn't accessed before, particularly the beauty of that person that one hadn't seen and um, what we don't know of course is that we are really establishing a relationship in the higher spheres.- But if we ourselves lift our consciousness above the earth plane as we did this morning, for example, then we do find it easier to communicate with those beings whom we think have died or,-have departed. But then they have changed so we have to discover, we have to clinch a new relationship and discover their being as it is now. So you see how those things, the things that we've learned about how to modulate our consciousness are going to effect the way we look upon our pain. Now come back to the tumor. -um, um- That is,- what you call the false ego, really what it is, I think the word 'shadow' is a better one because the shadow really is so absolutely a part of one's being, you can't separate the shadow from the person. So-I said every quality has its shadow, so if there is some kind of flaw that you recognize in yourself, like for example, one does not always tell the truth. um- As I say, that's the shadow of a quality which is, maybe it is compassion. So one wants to spare people. It could be, there are several causes for this. It could also be that one was punished for saying the truth as a child, so that taught one not to say the truth. That's the kind of education we get at schools.- So it is in some way related with having one's spirit beaten out of one, so becoming timorous and losing courage to face the consequences of truth. So there are two things, one is sparing people, the other is somehow do to not having to, to realizing being truthful is going to cost pain and not only pain but even a whole disruption of what one built up on precarious ground and so that goes together with a timorous nature, that is afraid of taking on challenges and taking responsibility and so on. If we see that then we get to the root of it, what is,why has this tumor grown in my psyche?, somehow it's an anomaly, it doesn't fit into my whole being. Something went wrong. And uh, if you spare a person suffering sometimes and that person realizes it or gets to know it, that people, that person can feel offended that you are under estimating their strength to face the truth.one thinks one's helping them and it turns against one.--Resentment, it can become like a poison in one, festering, a festering wound. One has been hurt so it is a wound and that wound may trigger off the growth of a tumor which is already, because a tumor is always , is like a possibility all the time in one's body ,under those circumstances, one has been wounded and one's defense system then counters this, this onslaught on one's being by- uh,well, anger, rage as I call it, resentment. And of course it can go very far it can go into, it can reach all those vendettas amongst the more primitive people and- uh, you know revenge and trying to get one's own back by hurting the other person. That's the kind of thing that makes for wars, so that's exactly what Christ was teaching us not to do. So how do we deal with that because as I say, it's no good just preaching that we've got to forgive. 'h, so it's very good to, if you can--. Now what we want to do is apply those three different vantage points that we have been studying in the course of these days. The first one is reaching into the consciousness of the person who hurt one-- and you'll often find that the hurt came out of the hurt in the person who hurt one, out of despair, a place of pain. It's not very evolved, it's just a, rather a kind of circuity. It's like, you know, like a reaction, a circular reaction, what they call a vicious circle.--And it doesn't necessarily mean that we have hurt them, they can be hurt by other people, and those other people can be hurt by other people and so on. So if you expand your conscious, and that's something we have learned to do, to get into the consciousness of other people and experience what's it's like to be that person, then, I don't say you um- , you condone that action, not at all, of course, but still it helps you to overcome your resentment. Your resentment is how you perceive what someone did to you,- they perceive it differently.--And now if you look at it dynamically instead of statically, so it's something that happened in the past and maybe that resentment is still there and has causated a lot of unwanted reactions because one is always on the lookout for being abused if one was once victimized by someone so it uh, it is very difficult to love if one is always suspecting that person is going to take advantage of one's love. So somehow-one needs to see how that resentment has been working throughout, from the moment of the occurrence of the mishandling of that person.-- And it is true that if one, if one practices the Buddhist detachment then- uh, well,- you see the trouble is that one isn't dealing with it.- Whereas unconditional love is a very powerful thing because one is helping the person to not continue to hurt other people- by the power of one's love. And in curing that other person, one is curing oneself. (woman sobs out loud) Do not go back into the past! That is what we are teaching here, that doesn't help. I have been very explicit, and you'll see that if you're not following what I say then you'll come to grief. I know, we all feel strongly and deeply about this. This is not a palliative. We are dealing with real things, not luring ourselves into a fictional paradise but dealing with real things.--I said it, it makes it, one is not condoning that person, it makes it easier to understand how it happened and what one is challenged in is very difficult, very difficult. It's to love people who are hurting one. It's very difficult- but it's great power, the greatest power there is, to love people who are not only unlovable, who make themselves unlovable, obnoxious.--But then that's what it's all about so you know, maybe what we're asking here is really very difficult, I know life is difficult but then if you, if one doesn't really challenge oneself then one never changes. Now the other thing is and this is,-because there are several dimensions and we have only talked about one dimension and the other dimension is getting into, inside and then you realize the core of your being is immaculate and can never be tarnished by anybody or by oneself. I've already given the example of the voice of Caruso that can be retrieved out of its distortion of the bad recordings of the time, it's paradoxical. So we tend to pass judgement about ourselves, even if we have been the victims of others we, there's some kind of, it's something irrational in the mind somehow that we have been tarnished, somehow that is important to know that nothing in the world can take away your purity and that, I can think of that woman in the South who was being beaten, lynched and she said, "You can do what you like with my body but you can't touch my soul." -- The Muslims say of Christ, "They never got Christ, they got his body that's all." (laughs) So somehow that sense of the divinity of one's being is the best cure for any sense of devaluation of one's self or deprecation of one's self. And it applies to those who have hurt one, too. That even in them, the immaculate state is still present.- I know this sounds like theory but I can think of a lot of cases,- I think of those, they were, it was the father of a very dear mureed, Iman, some of you remember her, who died in an accident, her father told me he had been tortured in two concentration camps, once by the Nazis, the other by the Russians. And in both cases he thought of Christ and he thought of Christ being tortured by the Roman soldiers and he thought, "Would Christ have had resentment for these people? I thought to myself, I got into the consciousness of those people beating me and I thought, what poor people they are, they have such poor self-esteem that they try to blow up their self-esteem by having power over me. What depth of degradation of the human nature. And so from that time you're sorry for the person who is beating you." Yes we must not be afraid of strong emotions and disown them, and then they fester and cause a lot of disturbance, it's all part of the retreat process, so don't let yourself be disturbed by it, because we're all in the same situation. As I say the only saving is being able- (laughs) well, it's through meditation, by being able to look at the same problem from a different angle, I know I can illustrate it you know I, if you look at the physical world through infra red, it doesn't look the same in normal light, and it doesn't look the same in ultra violet light. You know, don't rely on your point of view that is the cause of pain and that is the very essence of Buddhism. You get bogged in,into that, and you can't get out of it, it gets so impelling. Now then there's the third dimension which is what we did this morning. There's somehow, there's so much beauty that it overrides the ugliness, it's like a painting in which there has to be some black , for the painting to be complete somehow. As I said before, it is the force of one's ideal that absorbs the tumor. So, okay, so we said the quality has its shadow. Now , I'll give another example, for example, mastery. The shadow of mastery would be, maybe ruthlessness, that would be the shadow. So if you find there's something in you that gets, becomes ruthless when you're back to the wall, so that is the shadow. So you're, you can watch it having happened in your life, the events in your life, in the course of your life. And now you -realize you have a great need to exercise mastery and you're doing it in an awkward way. And as a consequence you-uh, it put you off fulfilling that need for exercising mastery. So gradually one, if you think of yourself in the process of becoming, of evolving, rather than just thinking of the past as something that is sclerosed then you think, well, gradually I've been learning how to exercise mastery without being ruthless, it's uh, and I see that it is really calling upon a higher will than the personal dimension of my will, sort of the Divine Will. That's why the whole reason for chivalry is that one is the ambassador of uh,- one feels that one is being vested with Divine Power instead of acting in one's own name. That's the reason for the word Representative now, for example, in the Sufi Order.---- Now, there's another aspect of the work that I want to take advantage of these days to refer to it. And I use the word, these are my answers to the feedback I've been getting.-um- I use the word "The Divine Operation". You lend yourself to the Divine Operation, so that seems passive and seems as though one gives up one's free will and enterprise in order to gain, a view that we find in some of the ancient esoteric books. The modern word or concept of it is, the universe has a way of self-organizing itself- and if one interferes with that self-organization one can obstruct it. 'n the other hand one can facilitate it. I think that's something that psychotherapists know,- to enlist the process that is on its way, but not interfere with it at its inception. It's only when it starts getting on its way then one begins to give it a direction.--That is what is called the Divine Operation. There are several dimensions to this. One is that if an order has been disturbed it will tend to get back into the way it was. For example, if you displace the branch in a tree, of a tree, unless you've damaged the branch it will go back to where it was before. If you've destroyed all the rain forests they will grow again, so on,--that is called inertia. And that is what most healing is about, restoring people to the way they were before they were ill. The wazifa for that is Mu'id ,(spells) M u, M i ' i d. Ya Mu'id. We have that ability in us to restore our health from it having been disturbed but, that is an capacity that has been partly ailed, been partly sacrificed for other functions, I don't (end side one) (begin side two) ...the field of the body, as a kind of template in which the flesh, let's say, of the body is configured. If you create an artificial coil, magnetic field, it will enhance repairs of bones that have been broken or so on, perhaps even nerves, but uh, but of course the body can produce its own repair electro-magnetic field, but we have lost that capacity or that capacity is not as developed as it is in primitive animals but we can find it back again of course. So that in the realm of the psyche, it represent a kind of resilience.-um, Remember that, I come back to the words that I quoted before of Dr. David Boehm, he said, "Do not be surprised if a change of meaning, meaningfulness is going to free new circuits in your brain." So like walking on a path and if you keep walking on that path it becomes a real path, so the way that the mind-body, the way that our thinking affects the physical infrastructure of our thinking, the cells of our brain but uh, and a disturbing thought will cause of course, a disturbing circuit in the brain, in the actual circuit, in the actual cells so that mental disturbance is not at the pure psychological level of course, it involves the body, too. But then there's the opposite,and that is , if you don't walk on that path for a long time the grass will grow again. So there is a way of , the body has a , the psyche has a kind of resilience that enables it to recover the damage. So if you think that you have been damaged by a situation, you must know that your body has the ability to right itself. And it is well, possible that it is your facilitating this healing process that will help it to happen. If you do not believe in it then of course it won't happen. That's Ya Mu'id. Now there are other factors in healing, that is to consider illness as an occasion to bring about a change in one- uh, to turn the tables on the illness and- uh, the positive instead of negative.-- That is , well, I'm thinking of a case of a mental patient who, her name was Laura, who said, "The doctors are trying to bring me back to the way I was before. No way! (laughter) They have no idea of where I'm at. They think I should be back to where they are thinking." She said, "I can't come back from the door that I left, I can only come back through another door." So- that is not just inertia, recovering the statue quo, but moving forward and consider the crisis as a threshold that you had to pass through in order to break into new horizons. And so that's the meaning of Muhyi. (spells) M u h y i. And the word that we use is regeneration. So the power of the body, for example, the psyche, to regenerate itself, to sprout new buds; for example, you've pruned a plant and now it's going to sprout new buds. Perhaps more than before. So you have damaged the plant, that is to say, by pruning it, but somehow it unleashed forces in the plant which will counter the damage by improving its condition. -'kay. So what I'm saying is , the ideal has the power to help one overcome the, well the shadow, overcome well, I use the word resorb. Now still there are other methods, perhaps you know them. That is, if you feed the shadow, that is the tumor, it will, it will grow. So one of the methods used in cancer as a matter of fact, has been to strangulate the tumor so that it can't be fed by the blood vessels.--So for example, one has a bad habit and one isn't happy about it, but it seems to be compelling and so on. There are a lot of criminals who suffer from this compellingness and it's stronger than their will. It's really like a kind of pathological condition. And so if one deprives oneself of the situations that feed that kind of shadow in one's person then it will whither. But that will only happen if one enhances, as I said, the idea that, in other words, if you are very intensely turned on by the high attunement of , say for example, religion, it will debar you from sullying yourself in the nether-worlds of deprivation. And as soon as you take away that heavenly disposition that is conferred by religion then you see what happens, people start becoming decadent, as is now happening in our time. So that is a further way of um, well um, I said strangulating the tumor, but as I say, be careful because people can set their whole being upon an aspect of themselves that they themselves deprecate, but it becomes compelling and so the only way to do it is to create circumstances that are favorable to enhancing their ideal. And very often it is because one is disappointed. One has a thought that one's ideal was wishful thinking and one doesn't see it in the world so needs to have some kind of proof, some kind of support for one's ideal.--So much of our defilement is due to disenchantment. So we could say that we need to, every now and again, undergo a refresher course of re-enchantment.(laughter) So that's what we are doing now.(laughs) re-enchanting ourselves. Now, God bless you. (end recording) MAR 18, 1995 Tape 15 Yes, a.. one of the methods used in a esoteric school in, I would say, all authentic esoteric schools, is the use of the mantram. For one thing it serves as a purpose in affecting ones thinking, which is linear and repetitions are circular. And so it interrupts the inference one thought or thought association, one thought triggering off another thought. And we get caught up in that pattern. And so in that sense, of course, it has the same effect as the Dzikr: with the circular motion, the Dzikr the repetition. The sounds themselves have a particular affect upon one and maybe there's an advantage in using words that are not in one's familiar language so that one is more aware of the effect of the sound than if one is using familiar words. This is the reason for using exotic words like Hindu or Arabic or whatever. The other thing is that one is associating a thought, and it's not just an ordinary thought, but it's a archetypal thought with a sound. That's how we learn languages. And so that's called conditioned reflex, like the Pavlov reflex known as associating a sound with a archetypal thought. Maybe it is more than that. It's more like an attunement. And perhaps you know that the way to build a conditioned reflex is by repetition. Now that's the reason for the repetition. And the unconscious takes messages by force of repetition. That's the circular instead of linear. The only trouble with that is, what Christ called, vain repetitions. The danger of automation. It has an advantage and a disadvantage. I remember sitting in cafes in (Bagdad) with all these men. It was very typical. They had their rosary in their right hand (telling) the beads; they had the cigarette in the left hand; and they were drinking one cup of coffee after the other. So it's a kind of habituation. And, of course, one looses all the value of it. So that's the reason that it surely happened at the time of Christ and he saw that as how counterproductive that it is. But it is true that, I've said that already, like if you're wanting to, you learn to play the piano. Well then it's true that the unconscious takes over. But you always have to bring things back into conscious again. Repeat the same scale or melody consciously, slowly, consciously to get it just right. Then bring it back into the unconscious again. So that's the reason why I advocate interrupting the repetitions at some point, which depends upon the person and practice, and then one has to pay heed on a lot of things. The meaning of it and so on and so forth. Well, we'll have to go into this. Before we do it, I think it's very important to know, let's say the emphasis on the wazifa in Sufism as in comparison with the mantram of the yogis for example. Maybe it is more, (pause) maybe it's not quite as different as I suggest. But, well, memory comes back to me. only my... when I... my youthful guru hunting in the Himalayas. When I was up there in (Badgery Nots?) and out looking for the ideal guru, you know, that having lost once my guru - was my father - was looking for the ideal guru and, of course, never found anyone like Murshid. But it was wonderful, sitting, finding, there amongst...there was a group of (Sadhus) all sitting there with a, in a circle, an enormous rosary covering the whole group, you see, so they're all speaking "Ram, Ram, Ram and this rosary was going around and round and round and they were laughing and they were so full of joy. And I thought to myself osh, I don't see that joy among people watching TV. (laughter) There's another kind of joy, but not that one. But of course that, it was due to the fact that they were repeating the name of God and just so... now God, you know, manifesting... to them and that legendary figure of the archetype, Rama as the archetype. So, of course, the wazifa of the Sufis are the name of God. That is the archetypal expression of the one and only being. A, well, I suppose the difference is this: that the emphasis in Sufism is on the covenant of allegiance. Because you know the origin of Sufism is really the (foo 2 hot) which is chivalry. The chivalry of the ... what you find ... that originated in the (es pi bod) of the (Masteans). The original chivalry, which then had it's ramifications in Europe after the crusades. So at the end, toward the end of the crusades, the troubadours used to bring back the tales of the legends the (pureses) of the knights. And somehow there at a certain moment, there was a real, how can we... tryst between the Christian and Muslem knights and they formed what is called a confraternity. They met, in fact, the word 'Fatah' was the, was a password: 'open the door' and so it's all that chivalry which is establishing, by means of a pledge, functions relationship between the (sozreign) and the sovereign. A pledge to serve, actually the government of the world. So, if you like it or not, that is called hierarchy (chuckle). I'm being very questioned these days in the study groups. If you do without that, then you've done, you've done away with that trituration). Boy that can be like, be like something new...like (Christa Maratse?) sometime my lean toward...but you've lost the (genetrition). So, there's a pledge but the pledge is of course with God. The sovereign is only functional in as much as he or she is serving that place where the buck stops. Which is God, of course. So if the sovereign acts in his/her own name then he is not really the sovereign anymore. He has forfeited his function because he may be the sovereign of the (sozreign), but he is the (sozreign) of God. That establishes the hierarchy. So in Islam it is (teres) origin in Islam, of course, (Mithark and the Mithark) that is the covenant before...well in the Koran when we were still in the loins of Adam, in other words as sheer potentialities. And we made a pledge and it was that pledge to affirm the Divine sovereignty that a established our relative autonomy. And that's an important word, that aut...relative autonomy. Autonomy as delegates, as vice regions and that means that a our free will...there's a free range with in the (purview) of our will but within the over riding (continuement). Let's say of the will of the sovereign, with which we established covenant, and then that is carried further upwards. So there is containment and at the same time taking responsibility, which is of course a secret of leadership. Now, in its esoteric meaning, the pledge is, that you find in Sufism, the pledge is to actualize. I'm saying something that would be contested by the orthodoxy of...of Sufism, as a matter of fact. The party line of Sufism. But I'm a heretic. But then by definition, Sufis are heretics. Is a, it is to actualize the Divine. Let us say, the Divine I use, most of you would use the word, the Divine Inheritance - potentially in our being (pause). Maybe the orthodox Sufis would emphasize the delegation rather than thinking that we carry that inheritance with us. But that was really splitting hairs. I mean there's a mental juggling and a there (pause), but it comes very strongly through the words of (Abwers XXXXXX), who was an esthetic in northern Iran, who said "...God wanted his creatures to see him and therefore asked me to present myself and I said to God, adorn me with Thy Bounty and unify me in Thy oneness, so that when people..and, oh yes, and shatter my "I" by Thy "I ness", so that when people come to see Thee, I may not be there, Thou alone should be there." See, so that really says what Sufism is about. So the pledge then is to make our reality, those are the words of Hazrat Inayat Khan, is to actualize this a inheritance, this legacy. Now, of course, you know a..I'm not teaching dogma. And I may even be very wary of dogma. So when, if dogma will awaken experience...then it is meaningful to me. But just accepting dogma on its face value, well that's not my way. I'm accused of it, but then you can never win (laughter). So, a, what I mean is, like what does it mean, you know, the Divine Inheritance. Well I'm saying something which - a - requires yet to be proven, of course, that - a -we carry within ourselves the genes of the Universe. There are indications of that. It's a rather graduated statement that I'm making, but - a - occasionally I have a physicist come to me and say "you know, Pir Vilayat, you said that and ... well it contradicted what we know, but then now there are new discoveries now and indeed there are genes in the body, in the DNA of the body that do not account for the functions of the body and so on and so forth. Anyway so let's say we do carry that Cosmic inheritance - but not just at the scale - but at all levels and that's even more difficult to understand, at all levels. But its potential, the word used by the Sufis is (incarn), which means 'as a possibility'. And that word is very meaningful to me. I've used it several times. I've referred to it several times because - a - in one's meditation, one reaches a point where one understands what Buddha was saying when he refers to the world of possibilities. And he calls it beyond existence (pause) although it's really (subsumed) in the existential state. But it's like the software behind the hardware. Well, it's more -yes, if you think of the software as being infinite, but even being infinite, it can still increase...so our concepts of infinity are very limited. We (pause) we limit our concept of God by thinking he/she needs to be unchanged. So you could say that repeating wazifa is making a possibility actually happen. So it is making dreams come true, as they say (pause). And it does require more than concentration, it requires faith. Now there's the whole thing about the meaning of faith and the meaning of belief and what we mean by these two words. And - a - I have given out definitions of these words but it's not always acceptable. For me belief is based upon evidence, authority. Like it's in the Bible or in the Koran or the - a -you know or the, you know, belief in the wisdom of someone who says it and so your faith - it rests upon the opinion of that person. And, for me, faith would be like an inner conviction that does not rest upon any kind of either authority or proof whatsoever. So, in fact, in face of the proof of the opposite. But then that's my own definition of these words and maybe it might be the other way around. That faith is based upon the text of the scriptures and belief is one's own conviction. Maybe you should just use the word conviction instead of belief, because it lends itself to - a - error. But, as I say, it's not because the Sufis say it or I say it or the prophets of religion say it and so on and so forth. It's because you actually are convinced that behind all that we're experiencing there is such an incredible bounty of beingfullness, such richness there that - a - and - a - that you believe that you really carry that in yourself. That is maybe that is the critical point in Christ's teaching. And - a - it came to a real breakthrough in the life of Saint Francis. As you know, perhaps you know that story. He was the son of a merchant in a very rich merchant .. in cloth. And he was serving in his father's shop and then he left and started building a, rebuilding a church. And using any money that he had from his father to help the poor. And his father called him before the court, he was arraigned before the court, and his father said "...he owes me everything he has, even the clothes he wears...". So they took away his clothes. And he said "...you're not my father." Just imagine what that means. The Majarishi said that about his mother. He said to his mother, "...you're not my mother". These are very cruel things to say. But it is a recognition of another fatherhood which Christ spoke about. And that is the meaning of inheritance. One inherits the features of one's father or one's mother. so that is, the conviction comes by sense, how can I say, (espying) those genes in one's being - a - experience. You can't say God is my fa...I'm the son of God, unless you experience it. That's what Christ was saying, "be perfect as your Father...". He didn't say I'm the only son. Followers said that, but he didn't. So there is no point in repeating a wazifa unless you have some sense of carrying that quality in your being already. Don't think you can develop a quality that isn't there. It's just awakening a quality. (pause) But it's also true to say that you, there are levels of that quality. And ranging from your idiosyncrasies to the archetypal level of the quality and so it's by establishing a connection, establishing a connection that you're able to perfect yourself. Establishing a connection between those idiosyncrasies that you have, I mean that have already unfurled in your personality and the archetype of which they, your idiosyncrasies are the exemplars. You see the difference between an archetype and an exemplar: like rosehood and roses. That would be an example, or roundness and round objects. So it takes something in a way of thinking to be able to encompass more and more what we mean by the archetype. otherwise, it's just one more word. Then I say it's because we have inherited in our nature the ability to reach beyond whatever we have reached so far. There is always a further place in space or an earlier time in history or future, further time in the future, and so on. There is always a more perfect quality than the most wonderful quality than we could imagine. So somehow we, that's written right into our thinking. And it's true that, that kind of thinking is - a - the thinking that (typifies) the level of Lahut. Now I hadn't been using these words because what's the point in words, but - a - somehow, sometimes it's good to be able to label - to see things a little more clearly. So maybe just to take a few minutes to just try and outline through out this retreat. It's like the grid behind all that we've been doing. (Nahzut) - a - in records, I have to say that there are many different systems amongst the Sufis. So maybe some would place the sequence differently. So - a -but - a - so fundamentally I've come to the conclusion that (Nahzut) well it's not very clear whether we're talking about matter, the material level, whatever we mean by matter, or our bodyness - or even our human-ness. These are sometimes terms that are confused in our mind. But these levels go by pairs. That is turns one - a - so one signifies the sense of identity and the other the mode of thinking. So the mode of thinking, when you identify with your body, is called (Hayya). There are different interpretations of that word. That's why one has to be careful when...but in my system, let's say, it is - first of all, of course, let's say our speculative thinking. That is what the Tibetans call the gross mind. A way of interpreting what we experience at the physical level. It's called the gross mind. So that's called (Hayya). Now then, we identify with (Arwara) that's the plural of (roo ha), which means spirit, well (nuramah), well there's all kinds of translations of that word. In Europena terminology (ruaha) of course in Jewish language the Hebrew, one identifies with one's etheric body or sometimes it's said life field or ether body, astral body, maybe. A that feels like, a little bit like - a - smoke, like gossamer. And as I'm talking about experience and then it has some countenance, but it doesn't have a profile, you see. So that's why I've been encouraging people to identify with there eth...or there magnetic field because that frees them from the idea of me and the world other than me. It's basic limitation in our way of thinking and so as you do than then you begin to grasp like a deeper reality behind that which transpires through that which appears. And you might even find yourself in a transfigured world, as we said yesterday. And it seems to be a deeper reality than your physical body. And, as I say, even the template - a - in which the body is the cells are configured in a pattern, something like what has been photographed in Kirilian photography. I don't say that that's what it is but it gives you some clue as to what I mean by that. Cold, it's not quite, I mean it's ... they call it a cold emission of electrons. So it's more complete than what I can say just right here. And so when you identify with that volatile kind of aspect with your being, then your thinking is different. And now your thinking is not a reaction to your experience, but you are projecting out of inside yourself a more concrete expression of what is inside yourself - by the power of imagination into a form or into forms. Imagery, imagination, imagery is the origin of that word is (maya) and the magi and magic. So it is imagination, it's magic (laughter). The whole world is built upon the magic of imagination. A computer is/was imagined once upon a time and now it's being made. So the Tibetans call that the subtle mind and the word is (Mythal), which is very meaningful because, I don't believe that there's some (etimilogical) reference to the word mythology, but think of the word metaphor. The way that ideas configure themselves into forms to get known. Now if you know something about Vedanta, (Advita Vedanta), (Amaduk Upanishad) and then later (Shanta Rasharia), then (Gutu Patu). They recognize four levels of consciousness. The first one, consciousness, is experiencing other than itself or what is experiencing it assumes it's other than itself. And the second level is what one is experiencing is the way that one projects, let's say the potentialities of oneself into forms. So that corresponds with sleep, with dreams. And then there's another level at which that which one experiences is not projected into forms. (Ibn Arbi) speaks about that level where you have to give up the imaginary faculty of the mind. Hummm? So when you are using the imaginary faculty of the mind you are still (...) level called (Mythal). And that is the reason why I suggest that when you're doing, when you are trying to establish some report with a quality, at the level of (Lahut), which is, I'm trying to get to. If your functioning at the level of (Mythal), that is if you have now stopped trying to interpret the experience of the world and are medi...turning within meditating as you meditate and so at that point if you're earmarking a particular quality, then you should imagine that quality projected as a form. For example, I've given some descriptions of that, for example peace, you imagine walking along a peaceful lake, for example. That was an indication. A lot of the wazifas, somehow accompanied by a mental - an imagery - a representation in terms of imagery, for example: (Wahabo). Sitting along the - a - stream of water and so on. But you could invent your own. An image that seems to typify that particular quality that you are working with and then the extraordinary thing, but one doesn't know it at first, is that the countenance of one's (Arwar) body - that is one's etheric body -somehow gets configured in the form that one is projecting. For example, if you are walking along a lake, perhaps I didn't say that clear enough. If you are walking along a lake and in the sun, in the moonlight, Clair-de-lune - then - a - there's not just the outer scenery that does reflect something of your being, but the kind of personality that you discover as your doing that. It's an aspect of yourself that has now become a little more configured, a little more formed in some gestalt, some kind of form. Although its an etheric form, it's a countenance rather than - it doesn't have a profile. So, in other words, you're really sculpturing, if I may say so, or fashioning your etheric body by your attunement on this particular wazifa. (Sifa), this particular quality and then your working with another quality forms compassion and then you think of someone who has just been wounded and your trying to help that person (aswitch) their pain. So then another configuration comes in. So you could say maybe the etheric body is more malleable and consequently, let's say that if you keep on reiterating these attunements then the that particular configuration becomes indelible, becomes adamant. It cannot be changed, or at least more resilient. And that's why one could say that the etheric being is many faceted. Even think of the words of the Koran (XXXXX) all faces are the face of God - a -different facets of the one face. So at this level of (Mythal) you think dynamically instead of statically. You think of yourself as a process of unfurlment rather than thinking "..this is me", you see. And the consequence is that it carries with in the importance of hope. Where as if you think "..this is me", well right away you are shutting the doors of hope. This is me, take it or leave it, that's a very limiting thought. So as you think dynamically instead of statically. Now the next level is called (Malakut), which is the angelic level, celestial level. And it takes all that, some of the things we've been doing to just be able to capture that kind of attunement of the angel. It's not just the myth that one reads in books and so on, but something that is meaningful. You say this person is angelic. That child is angelic. You see light in the eyes of that child, you see. Somehow the angelic spheres in the cathedral, represented by the architects in the cathedral or church or temple. So it corresponds with something real. Let's say that we're like, well this would be a very simplistic way of (this side of tape ends and the next side picks up a different tone of voice...) Although not necessarily in space. Well this is where that word ideal is a - gains some kind of meaningfulness. One's uplifted by it and it's not a plane one can reach by ones will but by ones emotional attunement, by one's glorification as a matter of fact. And there's an extra ordinary saying of the prophet Mohammed and which he says, it's a (Hadith), says - a - "..by glorif˜'concept of ours, we think, ahh, you got it that's eternity there.. A, in our simplistic language we could say that we think that our soul is eternal and our body is transient. It's a very simplistic way of thinking. As I say, our bodies are continually in change and so is our nature. At all levels until we get to a very high level and even then we can never really say we've got it. However, yes, I'll say this - well - first of all I want to, this is - am I boring you? (laughter). Well, of course, I'm supposed to be giving instructions in meditation and not this is metaphysics. But it's something that comes through in my meditation and then I read texts and then, I'm osh, and then I think about there meaningfulness and a, you know, I'm a due to, well we have some kind of plan which is on the never, never program -a - for a conference between the Dalai Lama and myself on the comparison between Buddhism and Sufism. And I must say I have developed cold feet (laughter). The reason being that a, I always have such respect for the person with whom I've dialogue a lot with teachers in the past but what happens is that I always adopt the attitude of being the disciple who is learning, because I'm the eternal student and what happens is, and then I can't bring through my views and so I let the party down and so, I'm as I say, I've burnt my finger several times now. And a admittedly the Dalai Lama is an awesome figure, but has a wonderful, loving, compassionate attitude and last time I met him in India, he said "..when is that conference?" So I said, "well, I'm preparing myself and I, a, (laughter). So a, so I wrote a, you know, to prepare, wrote a paper on it and then tore it up and wrote another one and so on. I mean I didn't tear it up because it was on my computer (laughter). And a, my computer has a backup memory so even if I deleted it, it would still be there somehow. But a anyway, a I got to a very crucial point there that is so meaningful to me and a really that really establishes well is there a difference and it seems there is a difference, but a, maybe because of my lack of knowledge or the lack of knowledge of Buddhist as to what Buddha taught (chuckle) because there can't be two truths. But there are statements, that, and of course, you must know that most of the works on that are ascribed to Buddha was written three centuries after Buddha - since Buddhas passing. (pause) But a, so I suppose that the way that it was interpreted was that there's that level of the unchanging. And then the level of becoming. And if your able to bring an end to that process of becoming then that eternal state is attained and, as Buddha says, I have overcome conditioning which is the state which you find in the process of becoming. But I don't see the bridge between those two in Buddhism; but I see it in Sufism. There are a few indications amongst some of the modern exponents of Buddhism. They don't quite satisfy me, but still I'm looking, judging... But a, the thing that I'm saying a, that is outrageous is that a, our let us say that the variations that we make on the theme, enrich the theme. It's not exactly so in music, but a, yah, it could be so also in music. It's not what (Hayden) did or Bach did or Brahms did but, yah, it's conceivable. So instead of saying back to, you know, square one; back to headquarters again, you say - but if there is any purpose in existence - it is what is achieved by the fact that the archetypes are actualized in their exemplars. And then there's interfacing, interactiveness, interfacing between these, something's gained. otherwise, why existence at all? So just to do away with it? That's not the answer. And that's why this - that - that the software of the universe should be enriched by the hardware and re-cycled, re -yes, refurbished. That is the most surprizing thought and that makes sense of our lives. And that can be found in the words of a Jalladin Rumi, which has, have shattered me..when he said "..tonight the (unteamed) stars give birth to the life eternal". He sees the relationship there between the process of becoming and the eternal principle. I'll say that again, "..tonight the (umpteenth) stars give birth to the life eternal". You'd think the opposite, wouldn't you? So think that your realization affects the realization of the whole universe. So you're not alone meditating. (pause) And that's why Pir-o-Murshid, when he was asked "what's the meaning of the message? A because, if you go to an esoteric school what you expect, you hope to get out of the school is awakening, personal awakening, but a Pir-o-Murshid said it is the awakening of humanity, a global awakening, to the Divinity - he said to the Divinity in, of Man. I say to the Divinity in the human being, which is the Divine Inheritance, the awakening of the Divine Inheritance. And that is the reason for the accent on the wazaif in the Sufi Order. (pause) Because by so doing one is awakening one's Divine Inheritance, which is the God within. MAR 18, 1995 Tape 16 There's so much beauty (pause) this evening (pause) this classical music. A, well now we want to a, work with ourselves in this a, retreat. A, the question is what do we mean by ourselves, of course. Who I am? I want to know who I am. (chuckle) Of course, that's the most paradoxical of all questions, because one is multi-layered and one's being doesn't stop at any point. So it's very difficult to say who I am. But anyway, we can earmark a, certain a, let's say layers of our being. And a, we have a, now seen that a.. to work with our personality we need to have a, the ability to, as Pir-o-Murshid said, hoist ourselves at will into the higher spheres. And then we can establish a link. Only if we try to work at the Nazrut level then we can't bring it back a, it's almost dangerous, I would say. If you try to be powerful and you become obnoxious and a, and so on; and try to be compassionate and you become gooey (laughter) and so it just doesn't work that way. So that is a very extraordinary remark of Pir-o-Murshid, the ability to hoist yourself in the heavenly spheres at a moments notice (chuckle) and that would be very useful in your office (laughter) and just all of a sudden, just take a sabbatical for one minute. And it is true that if one gets used to it one can do it. I used to make a point of a, meditating 5 minutes at 55 minutes past the hour and so it's very useful. It builds up and in the course of a day you get an hours worth of meditation (laughter). So it's just reminding oneself and that is the meaning of the word Dzikr, it means remembrance, reminding oneself of that pinnacle of one's being. It doesn't have to be the pinnacle, the high levels of one's being. I would like to go to the Malakut level and then beyond to the Lahut level, of course, I left out the Hayut because that's what we do in the Dzikr. Well one would like to know, what are the features of the Malakut level so one could more easily a, tune oneself to that level. I've said before, there are things that trigger off the memory, beautiful things. I think it's honoring the child in one. (chuckle) A, we learn a lot from our children and in fact a, I hope there is no offense if I say that a, I look at wonderful young people and I see them deteriorating as they get older. So a, that was one of the reasons for my organizing a youth camp to - to warn people not to deteriorate as they get older, but to get more beautiful. And of course, it happens. But I think the secret is to honor the child in one and that means innocence, which is the opposite of guile. And it is true that it does make one defenseless. 'Tis your choice. Either your tough and then you have some defenses or then you become like a child and then your without defenses. But that is the only portal to heaven, to become like a child, as Christ said. What is to become, to discover the child in you, is still there. When I say at the core of your being there is something immaculate, that's what I mean. It's still there. It just needs to be awakened or highlighted. And a, those who have been studying a creative genius or.. say that indeed a, that's one of the features of creative beings. A, something almost naive. A, even in Beethoven. It was so strong that a, it was like he was so fragile. He wrote to his son and he said, "...you see I didn't want to admit my deafness and therefore I've isolated myself and I haven't been able to look after you as I would have liked to do.." A, somehow this - to serve our sense of alienation from the world. And so Brahms, also. So a, the memory of the child is still in us. And as you remember a, we need to recover when we need to recover the memory of our early childhood a, people a, a lot of people a.. were earmarking tragic moments, moments when they were victimized but a, what I meant is to recover that jovial kind of confidence in the beauty of life. The spontaneity of the child, which gets spoiled by disappointment and also are the kicks that they get at school. They loose their self-confidence. So now a, let's just go through some of the qualities that are really basic amongst the wazaif of the Sufis. First of all the ability to alternate between turning within and reaching out: Batin and Zahir. A, very often a, people who come to spiritual groups are people who a, have some difficulty in communicating with the world and a, are a, tend to be turned within. And they hope to find some kind of protection in our midst. And a, to be a whole person. One has to do the opposite also and be able to confront the world with all it's hardness and hardships. A, so they, one needs to be able to balance these two abilities, which we found in our meditation. Reaching out in the cosmic dimension and then turning within in a, as we turn within. The word Batin a, is often thought to be typifying the legendary feminine. A, and therefore the veiled one. I know that has all kinds of connotations and I heard from Sharif (Graham?) the other day, that a, Prophet Mohammed never ordered women to be veiled. It was a kind of anecdote a, his a, well I wont tell you the whole story, but it was a, there was never an injunction. It was, somehow there was a situation where (inaudible) his wife felt she would have been more protected is she had been veiled. But it is true that a, that which is sacred in use we feel that we can't just a, broadcast it from the roof tops. That is what the Sufis call the (Sirr), the secret of the should. And a, of course in America everything's got to be up front. So no secrets a, so which is a, the gage of truthfulness, of course. It makes one very truthful. So a, but I think it's necessary to a, associate the word secret with the word sacred. It has the same etymology. And a, that which is sacred, that is something that one cannot expose to the derision of the world a, to a, sacrilege. It, word is the same: sacred/sacrilege. The derision of or connection of or the befouling of sacredness. And that is a, gives then the sense of a, the spiritual status of one's being, which bids us a, respect for all beings, kinship of all beings. And it is just that lack of respect that was typical of Nazism. Because people aren't just tortured physically but in their self-esteem. And there is something that people do to each other, even in a marriage situation, you know, to dominate. In fact, one's only protection against domination is, what one calls the ego of a person, is by one's awareness of one's divinity. Because the person who is trying to dominate you can't get you there. They're trying to draw you on their battlefield, but you are much stronger than them. And your a, and that's what Christ did. He stood there, "..you said it". You know, he didn't say "I am the son of God". "..You claim to be..", "..you said it.." And Pilot didn't know quite how to, how to, follow this being who was just conscious of the Divinity of his being. You know, it's a great lesson, the word (oo loo he at) it's called (oo loo he at), the Divinity of your being. Well that's the aspect of God in the existential state. So that's the reason for safeguarding something sacred from the grossness of the world. And a, I often think of something and I think that it's important for you if you feel like you are being put down by people with strong egos and a, you don't know how to deal with them. A well, there's a practice, that a, is a, you have a picture together with a wazifa and that is a, I often represent it to myself, Christ a, there's a picture somewhere you can have. Christ is hold... his heart is a, is like a lamp, a glass lamp and he's somehow protecting that lamp against a storm. So it's like safe guarding something sacred a, with all your care. (Hmmm) A sense of carrying something sacred in your being. And that is probably the reason for holy communion. Now let's say the effectiveness of holy communion is that a, and you can see it when people have had, gone up to take the host and then they come back and you feel it, something is happened to them because they have imbibed. They are conscious of that they are carrying within them something sacred. (Hmmm) That nothing can defile. (Hmmm) Batin is also, as I have already said right in the beginning of this retreat, it's like a not being able to express oneself in the ordinary language of.. because that language a can never say what one is saying, but also because to translate what one feels or thinks in that language one has to think in a way that is not up to the value of what one is trying to say. That a d..doesn't deserve a, it's not up to the - the meaning of what one is trying to say, so that one is veiled. And a I think it is true to say that a, what one implies behind what one explains is of that nature. So if you know Dr. David Boehm's teaching and I really recommend it very strongly, because it makes all the difference in your understanding of what I'm teaching. He was a friend of mine and a wonderful a in fact, he spoke about me and I spoke about him and a as a matter of fact, after our conversation he came, he adopted a new theory. (chuckle) I pride myself on that. (laughter) A so he a, as a physicist, he's taking - he became a philosopher. Of course, at first he was a physicist and then more and more philosopher and his a dichotomy of the explicative state, it's not the explicate state of matter, it's the explicative way of looking at matter and the implicate. It has it's counterpart in our psyche; the implicate and the explicate or the covert and the overt. And so Batin represents the implicate. So when you're saying something, you are implying a lot of things that you take for granted - people imply too - and if they don't imply then they can't understand what you're talking about. Now that's that world that subjacent level to what appears at the surface. (Hmmm) But then there's a famous saying of (Hari Digna Pata?) a who said '..glory to the one who veils himself, who conceals himself by the, the same veil that reveals him and reveals himself by the same veil that conceals him." So that's very interesting because of course, the veil of the Muslim woman - depends on which veil of course - but it may espouse the contour of her face and therefore reveal her beauty. So a there's always that - that's very sub.. - that's Sufism. A, it's full of paradoxes like that. So it also give you a sense of protection against intrusion in your psyche a, your a, re.. . If you're very conscious of the sacredness of what you are carrying within you, then you are already forewarned against people who are 'hacking' your soul. (lots of laughter, he's really tickled the choice of words and then gains control) That word, of course leads us to much a, many a, at least some further thoughts (inaudible) with it which a, makes sense of all the dimen.. some of the dimensionality of that word, Batin. It is of course a the sense of isolation or isolating oneself that you find amongst the ascetics a, and of course in a retreat. And a, that is a, protecting oneself against the impact of the world in order to be able to a, well to be able to a, commune with that which is subjacent to the world to that which appears at the surface. That which transpires between, behind that which appears. So a, I've already said that of course, the Hindus will, to reach Samadi they will actually really build a block, a wall between the world and themselves so that and, that Samadi a, state. They are absolutely oblivious to the physical world to such an extent that when Rama Krishna was tested by a doctor, he was in Samadi, doctor placed a pencil on his retina and there was no reflex. So that doctor never come across anything, well he thought he was dead. A, well - but since he came to, it a, it a, shook all the laws of medicine. (chuckle) Well he came to, he was okay. And so that would be a, like a, extreme isolation. Of course, the quest for freedom, as opposed to involvement, we're - will enhance that sense of withdrawing, isolating oneself. And it can reach a point when a, St. John of the Cross said, "a, I, I close my eyes to everything that is not God and of course, everything is God". So that's a, and that is the reason why al Hallaj said a, "..the first step of the mystic on the path towards (tahid) which means unification, is to abandon (tazrid) or (tafrid), which means isolation. Isolating yourself and then it's God who chooses to invite you to participate in the solitude of his unity. The word (infa rod) in Arabic (infrarod) and (infarod) and those are very important statements because a, I think that marks the difference between the austere acetic who rejects life and the Sufi who is not supposed to be an acetic and validates life. (Hmmm) So these are important thoughts because a fact is a, yeah a, there's a word of Murshid who says a, Pir-o-Murshid who says a, "A person who can't stand the jarring influences of life may think that he is a superior person but in fact, it's these forces are stronger than him." And so one often leaves the world because of disenchantment or one finds it - not too - uncouth and a, Ibn Arabi says a, "going on retreat because one wants to get away from the world is not a good pretext. (he laughs) So I say this particularly to people who find it difficult to a, relate to the social environment and become more and more isolated and that can lead towards schizophrenia or paranoia or all kinds of mental disturbances. And a, there's a danger a, if one does introspection, that is one turns within and one does Muhasabi - self-examination, there's a danger that one is just getting encapsulated in one's psyche and judging one's psyche from one's personal vantage point and that would be a clear case of isolating oneself in one's psyche, which can lead to a lot of mental disturbances. So the way to Batin really indicates that what we're doing is we're turning within and that is to draw oneself deeper than one's mind so that not only the physical world but the psyche seems to be like external to you instead of wallowing in the psyche. you can say that the psyche is drawing you, your consciousness itself a, but.. Now Zahir is a, very important word. A, the actual all translation of this a, in Greek was (epiphanos), which mean the epiphany and it represents, as you know the, it is illustrated by the event of when the three wise men, kings, came to visit a the child, Christ. The epiphany, that is the light a, of the Universe, a,was now radiating. They came to witness the light a, coming forth a so, a it is really linked with a, first of all, a those practices that we do with the aura, radiating light, becoming radiant and illumination in general because a, illumination is not just awakening but a, we're using the word light and therefore if you remember the first practices that we did a one needs to a radiate consciously not a only one's physical level but at all levels of light in order to a, reach that break through which the Tibetans call the clear, the light of bliss where one identifies with one's intelligence as luminous. And perhaps you know that the secret of illumination is to be found in this Koranic verse "..a light upon a light.." because it's talking about the light of intelligence that enhances the light of the aura, light upon a light. And that's not just theory, just think of it a, for example, think of a child a whose a, the mother says "..can you see that pixie in the a, tree?" and the child says "no, I can't see.." and the mother says "..look again..", "..no, I can't see it..", "okay, now look again, now really look well..", "Yes!" . So there's that moment the light in the eyes of that child when that child has seen that pixie. That's what I mean when I say the light of intelligence illuminates your aura. So if a, I were to watch you meditating and you were in a Samadi state and you were not radiant, I would say that you're not in Samadi. That's the proof, that's - that one is radiant. And the thing about the epiphany is that if one is radiant one is enhancing the light of other beings too. The beings one encounters, it's a communion of light. So that's the opposite of isolation. A communion with light. Now a little funny story because a, there was this young girl at the camp and a, she just didn't fit into the camp and felt very lonely. She came to me and said, PIr Vilayat, can you help me? I find it so difficult to communicate in the world. A, so I'm so lonely." So I said, "well, why don't you talk to people?" She said, "A no, I don't know what to say." So I said, "Just listen to conversations and you'll see that most conversations are not particularly brilliant." (laughter) So, I'm sure you can do just as well as most people. Of course, the end of the story was, she got married and was happy ever after. (laughter) Now in the metaphysics of the Sufis, the whole world is (tajerliat), which means the manifestation of the non-manifest. And light is perhaps, let's say, typifies what one means by manifesting, making known something that was not known before. And so when you say the wazifa, Ya Zahir, then it means that you need to realize that you are the (locus) that is the temple in which this manifestation takes place. That's the meaning of the, the, my reference to (Mani Baswari?) this morning. That the people want to see God and you're supposed to be the one to whom they see it and so you are supposed to manifest the not yet manifest in your being. And so even if you think it's selfish to want to be better, at least you can serve your purpose by unfurling the potentialities in your being because by thus doing you are manifesting the Divine Bounty, the Divine Splendor. So it gives a sense of (resgetae?) of one's life. What's my purpose, in life? I, well it would be very difficult to describe it but at least you could say my purpose in life is to manifest the treasure inherited in me, by me. Inherited in my, from God. One has to do something about it. There's a saying of (Gerta) (..german quote..). It is that which you have inherited from your ancestors, you have to conquer in order to possess it. So that's the purpose of your life. You don't have to look farther, but there's a statement there that you have within you. So the way to work with the wazifa is to have the faith and as I say, the conviction, that these qualities are in you potentially, instead of saying, "I need to develop them". And that is a, it's a, kind of conviction because a, I can think of a person to say I just don't have it in me to have the strength or I don't have enough love in me and I don't know how to work with that aspect of my being and soon that sense of inadequacy is the obstacle to accepting one's Divine Inheritance. Then a, there's even some danger in priding oneself in one's modesty. It's what one calls false humility. And Murshid says something here which is and I would say is really a slogan he talks about the aristocracy of the soul and the democracy of the ego. So the combination of those two. So the, otherwise of course, one would have a bloated ego. So that's a very - well, it's the reconciliation of the irreconcilables (..Latin quote..) conjunction of the opposites (..another Latin quote..). So let us say the conjunction of Lahut and Nazrut. So that a, it's one aspect of Sufism is a, I referred to it the other day is a, knowing by doing instead of needing first to know before one does. Like a sculpture discovering his/her statue by making it. So that is a, in order to discover the qualities, the Divine qualities in your being in the a, magnitude, one has to actuate them in one's life. So you can't just.. it's not good enough just to try to develop a quality a, in a, in your meditation room, that is the reason why, what I suggest is that while you're doing the wazifa a, you make a pledge that you're going to carry this out in your life and that by doing so you'll discover that quality and you can't discover it intellectually, mentally. So, for example, you're working with Hukk, truthfulness. So then you decide that a, the only way in which I can be truthful is to say it to that person and I'm afraid of saying it to that person. It's going to be terrible, it's going to be a really terrible uproar and my whole life might - if I say to my boss - I may loose my job and so.. so.. your whole world might collapse, but then you can build a new world on your truth. And otherwise your (tendahoax?) because it can collapse anyway. And so you see the role of the pledge here? The qualities in a, how can I say, the potential state, the virtual state in your being. Then if you remember in the instant of time...one has the opportunity of making a pledge. A pledge is made at an instant of time a total break of the past from the future is what a pledge does and all of a sudden those potentialities are now released from their being blocked in a recessive state by the pledge which makes them, which activates them in life. So the pledge has to be very clear like "what I'm going to do now..., I'm going to do this, for example, a very good pledge. If..it won't do you any harm I can assure you as I pledge myself that I won't smoke anymore, cigarettes. (laughter) Well, it's hard, I know. I've done .. myself. But then a, and medically of course, we know that there is some kind of dependence and habituation and so on and so it's a, more complicated than I say a, but a, I don't know whether one realizes that one is parading a, self-confidence based upon that cigarette is a kind of crutch that upon that cigarette is a kind of crutch that upon which one's self confidence is based and if you take that away one .. afraid one won't have that support. So it's dependence, is of course like a crutch. So there's a mental aspect and a physical one. There are methods, if you really want to do it and there are good methods these days. So it's just a question of whether you really want to or not, but a, it's just accepting that one can't do it, that's a terrible thought. I don't have the strength to stop it. That's a, a thought that is doesn't validate you as a being. (sigh) A, you.. one feels that very much if you perhaps you have some impression of the being of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. He was very masterly. A like a king a, and at the same time very gentle and a full of love and compassion, kindness, but very masterly and a, very masterly. And this kind of mastery a, is a, something that develops, that one can work with a, the old fashion method was depriving oneself of thing that one wants, frustrating oneself. All kinds of things like fasting or sleeping on a bed of nails or (laugh) all kinds of things that are a, well those are the old fashioned methods. A Murshid, Pir-o-Murshid, gives us a whole new concept of mastery. A, you see basically and this is very fundamental in Buddhism of course, is a, that a, the cause of suffering is desire and a, mastery would be like frustrating one's desire, not feeding with a, I said a, the tumor. Stifling it you see. It's a rather drastic method and a, the trouble is that then the a, situation that created the tumor are still there and will erupt again. (Hmmm) And so it's not a good method. (Hmmm) And one.. that's why a, Pir-o-Murshid a, suggests a, a method that is, of course, in line with Sufism and that is a, consider that your desires are originally a, the Ishq-Allah, the Divine Nostalgia, but that a, may have become distorted by your a, personal vantage point or your notion of yourself or whatever that would mean, defilement and so a distortion of what was a, the original a impulse and so if you could... So what you've done really is you've alienated your desire from the Divine nostalgia. Now if you could establish, re-establish that connection you well, what is it behind my desire that a makes sense to me, that might make me think - well, that is the Divine Impulse in you. It's re-establishing the connection between the battery and the charger. So Pir-o-Murshid illustrates it by a (Ayat), the (Yats) person is a, availing him/herself of the power of the winds, so that's the Divine Impulse, but giving it a direction instead of just letting the wind blow one way, listless and so that's where the a will-power comes in, mastery comes in a, in riding the tide but a giving it direction. (Hmmm) That means that one needs to be conscious of that impulse that a, call it the Divine Impulse and a sort of adjusting one's desire so that a it a, it's fulfills that a, Divine Impulse. So there is a, there's a secret behind this, of course and that is a, what do we mean by the will, by a will? And a, so we make this again this old-fashioned idea of the Divine Will and the human will is two different things. There are two different levels of will. One end we call Divine, the other end we call it human, but it's a, so there's a way of enlisting a, more impersonal will than your personal will. And that's the reason for the royal word "us", "we" decide. So a, old fashioned that a, used in aristocracy, we instead of I. Our sense of a representing a, impersonal a, desire. And this also of course, it fits in with this concept of the human being the vice-regent of God. And the sovereignty, if you remember, that link that covenant of the, actually it's called (field tee) between the sovereign and the sovereign. So if you reiterate your pledge of service and that is a, I would say every time that you repeat a wazifa a, you are reiterating your pledge, your covenant by making a pledge, and therefore re-establishing a connection with the Lordship. The terms used are (Rab) and (Abt). (Rab) the Lord and (Abt) translates sometimes as the servant, but I would say "the vessel". So that a, by developing these qualities one is enforcing the order of the world, the order of the universe against chaos, entropy, chaos. (Hmmm) So there's not just to develop one's self or even just to manifest the non-manifest, but to serve a purpose in terms of the government of the world. (Hmmm) That's a term used by the Sufis, the government of the world. (Hmmm) Which I use like when we give an initiation, a, "In the name of all those masters, saints and prophets who have formed the hierarchies of the spiritual government of the world. (Hmmm) That government needs vice-regents. That's the meaning of initiation. So one isn't a, private person anymore actually. And of course, it's times that, sometimes one misses being a private person. But it's a question of priority and you give priority to your function and the consequences, it makes you a great being. You're function makes you great. otherwise, you're a puny person. And nobody wants to be a puny person. A, in France one uses the word (?anteep? bushwa?). You don't want to be that so a, you have a chance of being a cosmic person now by re-iterating your pledge, I WILL. And a this a, now I looked at my watch because I have 5 minutes to say a lot of things a, because the meaning of the word "Fatah", Ya Fatah, I a, you see that it a, has the same etymology as (foo 2 hot), which means chivalry. And a, what relation it has with the English word 'fate', I'm not sure. It would be worthwhile investigating if there was one. But a, as I say it means 'open the door' and it is a built on a, kind of picture of the knight who sits or kneels the whole night in the temple, making a pledge of service and as dawn comes, the door opens into his future life or her future life. So it's opening the door as I said that. It was a password in Jerusalem and a, opposite the temple of the rock a, there's versus a kind of building there, a very old building and that's where the knights used, the Christian, the Muslim knights used to meet and the password was 'Fatah', Ya Fatah, and a Christ a, healed a blind child when Christ healed the blind child he said "Ya Fatah", open the door. And of course you see the association with awakening as opening the door. And a it was a, a French song (French?..mona ne pe ho ... owr my laporte..?) open the door (French?..owr my laport..?) open the door for the love of God. That's a, it all has the same origin. And the Percival legends. Percival couldn't a enter the temple of the grail without having reconciled himself with his Muslim half-brother (Ferecees). It was a story of the crusades. Parci means pure and Wali master, Master of Purity. Iranian words and when it comes from a, from the crusades. So that word Fatah is very meaningful when you're doing a wazifa. You don't have to repeat 'Ya Fatah', but just think of it as, the wazifa opens the door, because the wazifa always involves a pledge and that opens a door for you in your life. Now we have to end here. MAR 19, 1995 Tape 17 Yes, good morning. Yes, before we start, I just wanted to announce that a indeed I have been talking to Celia, who was that lady who had that outburst (cri de ceur) yesterday morning. And a some of the psycho-therapists here have been talking to us so we have processed it a and a found out the cause and all of that so.. and a did some healing so a , I wanted you to have you know that because it's part of the group process that we, we're in and I didn't want to interrupt your retreat by involving you in the healing process. Sometimes it's done in a group but if one does that one has to ask the permission of the person concerned and she didn't feel too happy about that so that's, it's being dealt with, so toward it.. might think it was a spiritual bypass then. The silence ends at, I think we said 10:00 o'clock. (chuckle) So we'll do some practices this morning. So now first a, as you exhale a relax. You could a prolong your exhaling and emphasize your exhaling and you could sigh as you exhale. (Ahhh/sigh) You could even indulge in self pity if you like as you exhale. (laughter) Life is so hard and people are so mean and I'm no good anyway and all that. (sigh) And then as you inhale a. No, people are wonderful and I'm fine and life is beautiful (pause) but a give a (exhale). 'kay now a just think that as you exhale you are a ejecting a the, any pollution. Not only in your, first of all in your body and also in your psyche. A, with the, we started breathing through the nose and out through the nose, which is the normal way of breathing. A but you think of the energy descending through your feet and being a, any pollution is evacuated a the principle in alchemy the heavier matter a falls to the bottom of the, whatever it is, the retort or the athen or (pause) and then as you inhale a you're drawing energy from the earth, Telluric energy, just like a tree and it rises a up your spine just like the trunk of the tree and then blossoms forth and so the kind of energy at the top of the head is a contrasts very much with that at bottom of your spine or even the soles of your feet. It is etheric or etherial and sublime and a I would think a high voltage and not much wattage or amperage and a (pause) pure spirit. And now as you inhale a exhale you feel that a very a fine energy, pure spirit a descends a permeates your body as it descends upon you and that is what a mystics experience as the as a quickening of the holy spirit (pause) and a those of you who are familiar with the practices can think of the wazifa, Qaddus. A spirit a the breath of the spirit descending upon you like a, the virgin Mary and casing away the polluted aspects of not only the body but the mind. It's also incidentally, thinking of your lymph glands as a, a bathroom a, a drainage system has been used by Meninger Institute a, to help cancer patients and a with some results of remission of cancer, Meninger Institute in Kansas. A by a mind over body, a representing to yourself very clearly the evacuation a facilitating let us say of a mind over body a evacuation of pollution in the body and also of course, in the mind. Any kind of blockage in the drainage system a needs to be cleared. And that's why you exhale rather strongly. (pause) Now this is emphasized in the second breathing practice a inhaling through the nose a exhaling through the mouth. Because now you're working with a the energy from above instead of below, therefore pure spirit. (long pause) And a you can a now it's not just a matter of evacuating a the polluted elements in your being but a replenishing your being with this vitalizing force and a perhaps a good thought is that a as you, as your lungs fill with oxygen and of course, other gases and as you inhale the oxygen is filtered through into the arteries and so instead of limiting your breathing to a and a to filling your lungs with air namely of course oxygen, think of the fact that all the cells of your body breath as you breath in and permeated by energies not just a for the esoteric schools of course, breathing is not just a phenomena of a taking physical phenomena taking in a gas and exhaling it but a together with this a the rhythm of inhaling/exhaling. There's a intake of a, a exchange of energy from the environment including of course the electro-magnetic field of the environment and more so of course, the life-field all the (..devils..?) including even a.. the, want the light of the aura is a also a permeates the body a infuses the body as one inhales and is radiated as one exhales. you can word at several levels as you are doing this practice. Now as you exhale think of instead of thinking of the energy ascend/descending the energy, you think of it as a centrifugal, that is a extending outward. Just like, for example, a fountain of water a falling in a lake and then spreading out on the lake a.. (pause longer) As you know a water is a associated in the old testament with Elijah. This represents a certain attunement a some kind of communion with the holy spirit and of course later St. John the Baptist baptizing with water. Water has a very special quality that is being discovered now. there's a kind of merry-go-round kind of action within the electrons and a the capacity of a storing memory (pause) and a its role in homeopathic medicine. (pause) So it's a since the, the awareness of the holiness of your being your spiritual status has a cleansing effect. A, two things of course, a cleansing effect and a, a vivifying effect a (..Latin quote..Spirit tu sanctus..viva fa condum..), re-vivifying and that's the meaning of Hayy. So the wazifa will be Ya Qaddus, Ya Hayy. (pause) And a also of course, Muy'hi, which is a regenerating because the revivification triggers off an a regeneration process and I hope you just feel that in the morning and in the early morning feel the you need to deal with your subtle bodies just like you have a shower and brush your teeth and so on and so on. you need to a maybe have access to a source of energy. The same thing applies to the all our bodies, including the celestial body. Now of course the work with the celestial body is a is enhanced a in the next breathing practice which is breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose a your lips are closed. As closed as you can of course. It's as though you're drinking the air, the cool air in the morning. A lovely cool feeling in your lips a and of course it's a different mode of breathing because a the, the impact of the a hits your throat and of course has an action on the thyroid gland. (pause) Just feel the difference with how your feel when you inhale through the nose and when you inhale through the mouth. Now, I don't know whether you a you feel this a it is as though a there's a kind of flush of heat as one inhales. If one a inhales a perhaps more oxygen than usual because that's a, a what happens if a you, your slowing your breath down and concentrating intensely on breathing and a especially if you have evacuated a lot of polluted gases when you exhale because you know a normally a one only uses one-fifth of the capacity of one's lungs. If you're using the full capacity then of course you have a (a sufate?) of oxygen and a I feel it as a kind of hot flush and I think what it means is that the cells of the body are radiating infrared radiance more than before, in other words the process of combustion of the body has been a enhanced. Now there's a an esoteric a principle that you find in the tradition and it's called the conversion of fire into light. It's really the way that a one can a somehow transmute, if that's the right word, infrared radiance into a ultimately into ultra-violet. So the way to do it is to concentrate on the let's say the fire of your being. As a matter of fact a flame rising from the bottom of the spine and you can feel it rising as though the spine were a chimney and the fire is a moving upwards a and a the flame a you see the hue a are aware of the different colors of the flame and then when you have terminated the a the inhaling through the mouth. Now you exhale through the nose, it's the only way and a consciously a radiate light and a maybe what will happen is that infrared, that a radiation has been transmuted and the flame has become a the frequencies have become faster and faster and eventually it is radiated as bio-luminescence and so.. (pause) Now this is a, a faculty that a certain animals have: deep sea fish, bats in caves, fireflies. The ability to produce visible light by a combustion of their body. So a our body is continually in a state of combustion, but a, that a, that a radiance a should a now be a transmuted into a visible light or let's say light in the middle range. Now frequencies that of course is a faculty that those animals have and which we are not using and therefore it is redundant in us but a we can enhance that faculty and we can recover it, retrieve it. Now maybe the light that you radiate is not visible, a to the ordinary eye, but a there are laboratories experiments made by Dr. Morta Yama (?) in Tokyo with photo electric cells that demonstrate that meditators who concentrated very intensely on light are able to radiate sufficient photons to set the whole mechanism into gear and all of a sudden the light turned on and so on. So you could by your visualization you could imagine that you're radiating a lot of light and that will enhance the radiance of your a power and visualization. And what the Tibetans do is imagining a fire, a furnace at the bottom of the spine, at the second chakra and sometimes even the solar plexus called (2 moo) and then a what they do of course is to a they have competitions as to who can dry a wet sheet on their back in the middle of the snow. But a that a you'd still remain be working at the level of the infrared radiance, but what I'm suggesting is a you transmute that radiance, get into the higher frequencies. So you can imagine, for example golden light radiating from your heart and blue light around your eyes and then the light of the colorless light like the diamond that with the flickering of all kind of colors like a diamond will, I don't know if you've noticed it, all of a sudden it looks as though there's a flash of blue or flash of red or flash of yellow or violet. (long pause) Can you feel that warm flush as you inhale and then very cold feeling as you exhale? That is the criterion about the difference between fire, what one calls fire and what one calls light. Really the same thing but it's just difference of frequency. Well, this is called phosphorescence rather than florescence. Florescence is absorbing light from the environment and then transmitting light. It's not the same thing as reflecting light, that's a mirror, because the body is processed by it. And phosphorescence, the combustion of the body. Maybe one would say, I hope I'm correct in saying that the electrons transformed into photons so that eventually our bodies will become pure light. (pause) Now there are wazifas here. You could think of Ya Nur, Ya Minnawar. Minnawar means 'the lamp' and Nur 'the light' and so there's the flame. And if you think of the, that lamp that I described Jesus carrying this lamp, there's a flame, then there's a light. It's a very powerful practice and a you do on retreat is a walking meditation in which you think that you are carrying a light like this in your heart and protecting it. And where ever you go bring this light. And then you feel it around your arms and all around you. You feel like light. Now the next practice is inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the mouth. Now the lips are closed. And what I do here is not to emphasize the inhaling as much as I did in the previous practice, but emphasize more the exhaling through the mouth which gives a sense of coolness rather than the flash of light, rather the flush of heat. (pause to do practice) Now this is where I suggest that you when you inhale that you consciously imagine that you're drawing energy from within instead of converging it from outside. In general of course it's a much more advanced practice than the others. It's associated with air, one could call it a baptism with air. And here the thing about the volatile state of matter which we call it's been called air but really the volatile state of matter is such that it scatters unless it is contained by some kind of atmospheric pressure and so of course at the level of our psyche it represents of course our need for freedom and the sense of constraint upon our freedom. But if it were not for this constraint then we would peter out all together so the air would scatter the atmosphere, the planet would scatter through out space. There wouldn't be any kind of breathable oxygen left around the planet if it weren't for gravity pull exercised by the conformation of the atoms and molecules of matter, but concentration. So we see that in life like the effect of concentration and then ratification, the opposite: concentration/rarification and maybe spaces landscaped to us by this difference between ratification and contraction a concentration. So now we have that feeling like not as a body but etheric body all our bodies are like maintained into some kind of cohesion through what would you call it?, kind of psychological gravity pull, if I may use such a word, holding us together. Well, it is our ego. our sense of me that holds that represents that cohesion at the level of the psyche. And of course if we weaken the egoness of your ego the sort of the sense of individuality and identify ourselves with the totality then we feel that our being tends to loose its cohesion and tends to scatter. Certainly at the level of the etheric body and the higher bodies. So you feel that scattering as you exhale and then the convergence as you inhale. (Tera de Chardin) sues the word confluence and I think at the level of psyche one could use the word congruence. The congruence of our thinking, which os course does limit our thinking but a that's what we can handle. Then when our thinking scatters then the rational congruence seems to be in disarray and we may gain a greater sense of meaningfulness. (pause) Now as I say these are advanced thoughts as one meditates. A simpler thought would be that one is like a flower and for the flower to unfurl and to grow the jaded petals at the jagged ends need to fall apart so that the fresh petals in the center may start deploying themselves. So its the though of like (sketchy..?) at the jagged ends but building up from within. That's why when you inhale you think that you are drawing a breath in from within. I remind you that we are breathing through the mouth and out through the mouth. (pause for exercise) Now you could say that a each of these breaths awakens a mode of realization. I think as I say I don't think that you can ever say that a person is a realized being or an awakened being or an illuminated being a we all have flashes of awakening or flashes of realization or flashes of illumination. Sometimes more intense. Sometimes lasting a little longer and leaving a stronger mark upon our being. (pause) So what we're doing is examining the different vectors of a total process. Now they come together in the Dzikr. So I wonder whether you can recognize these a all the things that we have just been going through, the scattering and the convergence. The scattering with the la illaha and convergence il'lallah hu. The energy rising from within instead of convergence from without as you go from the illa to the la, laillaha il Allah. The.. in quickening of the holy spirit one says illa, infusion from above descending upon one and the (the fa lah) the breakdown of all one's constructs because the descent of spirit is very radical. It's often described as lightening or thunder. (Budra) and so it's shattering and then one creates favorable conditions for the rebuilding. If one has broken down then one can build up again. But it's very difficult to build up on something that is not satisfactory. Best to just start from scratch sometimes. And perhaps you noticed that there are two (falahs) Side Ends Then into the void and then of course there's the evacuation at the bottom. There are three really. And then one has to also consider with the recycling that is things don't always happen like the drainage in a bathroom. Well, as a matter of fact that polluted water is recycled attain and that we drink it. (he is tickled by this thought and laughs completely, deeply but quietly and quickly) So that recycling is a different way of thinking. Thinking of ridding oneself of pollution or then thinking that it's, it can be transmuted that's what I meant by the wings of the monkeys at (Rama Yana) and also the (dragon of alchemy). So entertain all these thoughts while you're doing the Dzikr and you'll find that it will become more and more meaningful as you do it. So I what I suggest is we do the Dzikr now and just think of those things that we've just been going through now and find them in the Dzikr. (Do practice) Now you can just do it on your breath that is without saying it aloud. It's much more effective if you you'll remember the words but then you can concentrate much more on the all the forces that you are setting in motion and the thoughts corresponding to these. So exhale in the circle and you would be saying la illaha, that way you feel the both the expansion and the scattering. Consciousness reaching out. Then as the head comes down, inhale when you would be saying illa. So it's the opposite, the centripetal force now instead of the centrifugal, the void and descent of pure spirit all these things at same time. It is a rather strange to inhale as the head comes down and then it rebounds up whenever you're saying illa Allah and so you continue to inhale. There's a slight break between one half and the other half of the inhaling. So that you can really experience the depth of the vacuum in the center of your, that vortex of your life field, which is well corresponds to the center of the gravity of the body in the solar plexus. That's where you feel pain because everything converges into that a whirlpool. And a this is where a that sense of absorption gives you a feeling of a detachment from the environment. So that the tensions are due to pain, emotional pain. Those tensions are resorbed into the peace. And that's why I think it's good to think of Buddha sitting under that tree in the middle of a storm and a that perfectly peaceful wayhe sat, because he sat in the center of the hurricane and the center is perfectly peaceful. It is a vacuum. And enjoy the well this is where surrender comes in instead of submission as I said yesterday, surrender to death, to annihilation because one would never change unless one were continually falling apart and continually being reborn. Now one is falling apart outside and inside. With a illa and then now the rebirth Allah but as I say now think that it is like the whole ocean as it emerges as each wave. So don't think now I am reborn but that the whole universe is reborn as me. Or God is reborn as me. (pause) Or currently reborn. (pause) But me not as an entity, not as a discreet entity with boundary but always take into account the whole ocean because there's no such thing as a wave. There is no boundary between the wave and the ocean. And then a you just draw your attention from the solar plexus to the heart center and that is where you, you have, let's say loosened the ties with the physical world. Or at least you've down played the, the vantage point that enables you to relate to the physical dimension of existence. And you're now there's a word of Ibn Arabi because it says "you're invited to participate in the (Alah Al Malah) not Allah (2 L's) but just one, that is the high counsel of angels. (chuckle) So it's a otherwise you're in just trying to discover your own angelic counterpart but it's like discovering one's participation in the whole level of the whole celestial level. That's why there's an expansion in the second 'a' of Allah. That's expansion but instead of thinking of expanding your aura, it's more like communion. Well you discover the angelic beings in your being. A communion yes, it's not otherness you see. Don't think of the angel as other. It's more like affinity or resonance, sympathetic resonance. I don't know how to say it but a, very deep participation. It's very different from relating to people at the physical level. Now there's so a you a there's a kind of knowledge that goes with it which is as I say not has nothing to do with the know how that you gain on at the existential level. It's as though it was revealed to you ( ) at that when you are functioning at that level then this kind of knowledge is known to you, but then it's very difficult to relate it to the knowledge of the earth. It's a knowledge that a scientist referred to (Paul Spizer) he said, 'prior to causality' and of course that's what Buddha is talking about, beyond existence. (pause) As though, well in a gross sense one could say it's as though you have flown so high that you had gone beyond the universe, the physical universe. But that's, as I say, a very approximate way of thinking. Let's say that a there are different vantage points in the hologram in looking at the hologram you've got to a vantage point where you grasp something that cannot be limited to physical existence. (pause) You see you understand what I mean instead of thinking I have descended through the spheres geographically and landed on the planet earth or thinking heaven must be somewhere else somewhere in space. Those are very simplistic thoughts. It's just a different perspective, that's all. Plus, they are not limited by time and space and the sense of material being, material body and or even etheric body and no sense of gravity. And even light, has a what we understand by physical light it's not that. I don't know how to call it. We don't have the words a.. luminosity. I think that is what is meant by (chitania) in Sanskrit or the clear light of Bliss, of the Tibetans. (pause) There are then a the kind of thinking, at this level, is a the Hindus call (azmita) which is a the way the universe thinks prior to existence. And then you get into a further level which was very briefly described by al Hallaj when he said "God in his Aloneness" wanted to .. was contemplating the potential qualities in his being and in order to know them, he had to make them the object of his cognizance before that there was no dichotomy: subject/object and so he projected them into what we call existence. And so what we think ourselves as human beings are the projections of these qualities that are incorporated right down into matter. (pause) So al Hallaj says "it was out of a feeling of love emerging from the solitude (Ishq) and then (Vadet) the solitude and therefore the humans, the creature was the object of his love and the human reciprocates this love by glorifying God. So one never says one loves God in Sufism, one says one glorifies God. And therefore God is (Mabood) which means the object of one's glorification, not (Maboob) which man would be the object of one's love. difference of status. So now we reciprocate this action by our act of glorification and it is that which will hoist you first of all into the Malakut level, the celestial level and then give you access into what the Sufis call (oonce) which means the Divine strategy, the Divine Programming, the level of Lahut, the Treasury, as we said. (pause) Then we are invited to see things from the Divine point of view, so we can see how these qualities are enacted in life. This is a kind of a overview. And if you proceed further then you will reach into the 'H' of Allah which represents the unity beyond multiplicity and therefore it is beyond multiplicity of qualities. It's a shattering realization that a one hardly need say it of course but if all is one being then one is that being (An Al Hukk). I'm that Being. There are (su do wadi) gave to his disciples, the more advanced disciples, and advanced Dzikr, (la illaha illa Ana), which means there is no being except me. But a, if there's any (reliquiet) of personal identity then it would be a lie to say it. Well that's a mystery. The great mystery. So you touch upon the "H' of Allah at the end of the upward thrust, but then you have the "Hu" and that is when you can see this unity in multiplicity in life and so the whole a you can see the meaning of Pir-o-Murshid words when he said a, "in man is to be found the fulfillment of the Divine Purpose". That's "Hu". (pause) That's when you hold your breath and then what I've been doing now is a I continue thinking of the "Hu" as I'm exhaling because that gives one a sense of awakening in life, the fulfillment of the Divine Purpose. And then continue in the circle as, so I divide my exhaling again in two halves just like the inhaling and that's why the HUe one is not, one should not have one's head turned upwards with the HUe. One's head is turned upwards the "h" of Allah and then the concentration is shifted from the top of the head to the heart center because that is where one is awakening in life. In fact, if you like you could just simply think of the "h" at the end of your inhaling and then continue it as a "hu" as you start exhaling and then continue exhaling with 'la illaha' (pause) Now there's a second Dzikr, which is just la illaha. I'll just mention it, I mean just 'llahla hu' (chuckle). Just work it out. We're a quarter hour late, so I don't know whether you want to start at a quarter past nine? No, no we want to start at 9:00, 9:00 o'clock. MAR 19, 1995 Tape 18 So, of course I think we need to be clear as to how to repeat a wazifa, and the effect of the sound and the way the sound carries the meaning. So to start with I think it is good to realize that one can place ones voice in the heart center or the throat center or even the third eye or even above the head. Singers learn how to do that. Teachers in voice production know how to. And it really consists in concentrating on a center and thinking that those different parts of ones body are like the resonance boxes of a musical instrument, for example 'A' in the heart would be like placed in the resonance box of the cello for example. And the HUE maybe like the 'boe, for example, and then the 'I' maybe like there's a flute called the piccolo, the very small flute with very high notes. Then maybe you have a bassoon in your solar plexus. And the sound about the head is fanned out so it is a consonant instead of a vowel. And that's why it is, it's the 'M' in 'M, that's the sound that is fanned out. Now it is very centered in the 'E' for example, the sound E. So you find that some of the wazifas that produce, some of the sounds are very... each, or most of the accent is on the vowels instead of the consonants. For example the 'Ah' or the 'E'. So let's just try and feel these sounds and see how they, I mean feel the effect of these sounds and try to feel what kind of action they have upon us. Just imagine your heart. Supposing, I mean the cardia plexus. It's a nervous, made of nervous tissue, right? It's a relay of nerves. And you're subjecting this substance, this matter to vibration. Just like if you had a tray of sand, and you'd be subjecting it to the vibration of a piso-electric cell for example, then it would, the surface would form itself, configure itself into waves. Or, and if you played some music and you had some much more subtle, for example an electronic screen and you could 'see' your music, you could see the patterns, the wave patterns corresponding to the music that you're playing. So that we are really doing something to the physical body by repeating a mantra. And furthermore, well what we call sounds are really frequencies of energy that we perceive as sound but basically ... So it is really the language of the universe. That's what Pathagorous meant as the symphony of the spheres. And so if we get ourselves in sinc with that audio-sphere, that sort of , how can I say, that dimension at which is frequencies of energy like a very complex, like a symphony. And then it does something to, for one thing our body of course, but our energy body let's say. We think of energy like gross energy, fine energy, for example we talk about, I talk about high amperage or low amperage, or high voltage, low voltage; but there's also frequency of energy. The way that energy pulses. You'll find that you can almost, of course its true that these pulses are so fast sometimes that you can have no idea about them, like what they can represent; like 10 to the power of 22 for example. But you can feel like, you can feel different kinds of pulsings. You can feel a very high pitched, very fast one, maybe super sonic. And then there are, how can I say, composite vibrations so that you get lower frequency. And you can feel that also, you can feel the lower frequency of pulsing in your energy fields that is called Akashic body sometimes. And now let's see how these frequencies of energy affect our chakras. That is our centers. First of all working with the heart center. Now of course from a purely physiological point of view it is a plexus of nerves, cardiac plexus. But at the etheric level or energy level and we're talking about energy and so then there's a pulsing of the heart but it's very slow of course in comparison with what we are talking about. I don't know whether you can feel that pulsing. There should be something like a little bit slower then a second. I mean a little bit longer than a second of course. Something like 72. Now a very interesting, I would say preparation for the repetition of the wazifa is to syncronize your breath or your heartbeat. Now you may not feel your heartbeat in your heart. You may feel the pulsing of the blood in your arms or in general in the body, in the trunk particularly. So, whatever you do, don't interfere with that rhythm. Some yogis do but what I suggest is that you adjust your breath. Now for example you would breath in four pulses and then hold your breath eight pulses, then exhale four. Then again inhale four, hold your breath eight, exhale four. And now in the Sufi Order we don't advise people to hold their breath too long because you will be extending your diaphragm and it will exercise pressure on your liver or pancreas. It could cause some damage. So that is the reason why in yoga one strengthens the muscles of the diaphragm to hold it in position and then you can increase the pressure in your lungs. And the same is true of the throat. You could damage the thyroid gland. So if you learn how to contain the breath at the level of the diaphragm and the level of the throat. Now as you exhale, now just, I find it easier of course to, instead of just pronouncing a vowel, to use a consonant--I call it a shoehorn to bring it into the center so we have a very basic wazifa: fazl, fazl. Starting with a 'F' then 'A', and then you have a 'Z' and 'L', so think of the F as, well I call it the shoehorn that brings you into the 'ah', 'Faa', in the heart center. And think that your breath is that stick you apply to the gong. And what happens really is that you see there is already a lot of motion in the gong but you don't see it. Because the molecules are juggling all the time and they have their specific frequencies. Now if you impact it with more energy because with your stick you're giving it, impacting more energy then of course the vibrations of those molecules become more intense and they become audible and you start hearing them. So think that your breath is that stick and your heart is the gong and there is now, if you are a drummer of course then you know especially if you know how to work with gongs, then you know that if you give it a harsh bang you don't get the best sound out of it so it's got to be (voooh), like a sort of impulse and so not too harsh, damp it as you touch the gong. FAazzl, fazzl, You start with a gentler touch and then you increase it, especially if the gong is suspended. The gong will move as you hit it. It will move back a little bit, it will recoil. The same is true playing a piano. If you just hit the keys you'll have a very harsh sound. The great art of playing a piano is know how to just hit the surface of the key and then get deeper into the hammer, the cord, reaching into making the cord start resonating. And the same is playing the violin. I f you hear Issac Pearlman playing a violin you'll see that he touches upon a note and then he vibrates. So, and you know of course the value of a violinist or a cellist is in his/her vibration. Mellstein is a wonderful vibration, so the stick with which you hit that gong already has its frequencies; its nature somehow, its specific nature. So that's your breath. You hit the gong and then you have--so you hit it...the way to play a gong is you start by hitting it at its edge. And then as you keep on repeating if you get closer and closer to the center and then when you get to the center, then you get the best sound. But you have to start at its edge. So the same thing with the wazifa. Start gently and follow the impact with the vibration "Ffaazll" So at first, gentle: fffaaazl. And Z L is like the echo and what I suggest is then that you concentrate on maybe above your head or at the, in the cortical area of the brain. As you think of the Z L the Z L is like an overtone. fffaaazl, ffaazzl, (repeated...). All right let's stop for a moment. Can you feel as though by vibrating your heart opens up, I don't know how to translate that in terms of physics, physiology; what happens whether there is some kind of receptivity of the cells that have been awakened become more sensitive. But at the level of your thought you think that you are opening your heart, as love, unconditional love for all beings. faaazzzlll (several times). Yes, I just want to interrupt. Your vibrating, you're very conscious of the vibration when you're saying Faa, the ah. That makes it much more resonant and it reaches out further and further. We'd imagine eddy in the air actually. Eddies moving further and further like wind on a cornfield. The ZL of course is a very high frequency vibration so its a little more like the very pure voice of a nun singing an Ava Maria, its, if you're singing a Gregorian chant you're not supposed to sing like Paravotti. It's a different style all together. It's a very pure voice. And that's why your love at the heart level becomes sublimated into divine love, the ZL, ffaazzll (again and again). Now you are following my intonation, my pitch, whereas it's my pitch, its not yours so it would be better if you found your own pitch. And don't be afraid if it sounds like a cacophony, it might even be more beautiful then it is now. So just find your pitch, like how would you say it like Ya Fazl (deep) I don't know what its like to be a woman but it must be very different from being a man. Viva le difference. And then there's all kinds of difference pitches so one could bring it a little higher of course, faazzllll, faazzll, faazzll (different pitches). All right let me interrupt you now. Now let's work with the sound HU which is a much higher pitch sound, gently related with the throat chakra, thyroid gland, parathyroid gland. Its more complex than that because it's related to the atlas. Its a point behind the bottom of your head, your neck, the back; there's a recess, and it's a point you can massage if you have a headache. And that is the one point or let's say le point por excellence where one can have, exercise some pressure on the central, on the nerves, on the trunk of the, well, not just the central nervous system but the autonomic system too. So it's more complex than just whatever influence it has on the thyroid and parathyroid glands, and endocrine glands. So in order to produce the sound one has to bring in much more overtones than usual. We're always producing overtones but most of the time they're not that accentuated but and repeating the wazifa you learn how to produce more and more overtones, so let's just start by saying Huuuuu, Huuuu, so you see I keep my mouth, my lips as close as I can and increase pressure through the air so it's more like a trumpet actually than an oboe maybe, and try and see if you can hear the overtone, Huuu, Huuu...I'm not just pronouncing Hu, I'm also pronouncing ouuu at the same time, the French ouuuu. Huuuu, ouuu, (repeated). 'kay. So I'm sure that you've heard overtone choirs, the people singing overtone. It's very much something an art that has been developed a lot now, particularly in the United States and Germany also. And some of the chants from Greece and of course Mongolia, of course. They sing practically all in overtones, the Tibetans also to some extent. If you listen to the mantrams of the very low voices of the monks. And then gradually they get more and more in tune and eventually its like an organ. You hear all the frequencies, all the levels. The thing about the overtones is that they serve as a ladder to hoist over consciousness into the higher spheres because if we are able to notice them we pay attention to them and that requires a level of attention that is favorable to shifting our consciousness from the lower planes into the higher planes. That why 'U is always considered to be the sound that will help one to lift oneself into the higher spheres, somehow associated with the heavenly spheres. So let us say it again. See if, of course there is someone here who is a very good teacher of overtones, it's Hafizallah, right? Why don't you just come out and teach us, he's a specialist you know. I'm just...I'd gladly share the throne with you. (Hafizallah comes up and Pir says:) First of all you see all these lovely faces. I mean I wish you had a chance to sit here. (Hafizallah continues here for awhile). (Pir returns:) May I add something here it just confirms what you just said. The overtones come through is best when you're shifting from one vowel to the next and that is the reason for the word 'm. And so if you'll remember, when I was saying it, I was moving from 'o' to 'uu'. And again alternating, that's one thing. And the other thing is that when you are practicing the overtones, and until you get to the point that you don't have to do it any more, you start by trying to include a kind of GH into your vowels or then like (blowing) and that, it seems to force the air along the palate and the air catches up with the place where the tongue presses against the top teeth. So try it out and see if it works. (Hafizallah speaks again) Pir comes in.) Yes I just want to add something. That silence was very full of energy. And I would have liked to hold it a little longer because you have produced a sound that is reaching out into outer space. And then there is an echo coming back. It's almost like radar, this echo coming back. And everything is echoing at the walls, even the air of course and even the ether of course. And somehow the response that you have is, has been processed by the universe so that it's not the same sound that you sent out. Somehow it's like a reply, it's like a dialogue. And so you understand that prayer is a dialogue. One is saying something and then one is listening. And that is the reason for that word 'Shamai' in Shamai Israel. Listen. So repeating the wazifa is not good enough; just to say the words. I think that it's good to perhaps say the words, sometimes I just say the words 11 times, and then stop and listen and then continue another 11 times and then stop and listen. And up to 33 times. And I think it much more effective then just keep on repeating it without realizing what you're doing. (Hafizallah) (Pir) Yes, now since we have so little time now, we're running out of time. There's still a few things that we need to work with. Of course there's much more. The wazifas relating to realization, Alim and Habir. Both have an 'I', accent on the 'I' . There's a very one-pointed sound. You heard these very high overtones just now. You know we try to answer your question, What does this wazifa mean? And of course that meaning is totally inadequate, can never compare with the deeper meaning that comes through your realization of what it is. But what I'm suggesting to you is to work out somehow what is the difference between Alim and Habir, for you. We know what the traditional meaning is, of course. Alim means a kind of knowledge that can be acquired, a wisdom. Whereas Habir means a kind of very great alertness of ones insight, being very, very aware. So what I would like to suggest to you is, you see preparing oneself before repeating a mantram, the wazifa, for example what I suggest is could you just, for one moment just be very, very alert. All of a sudden shake yourself and become very alert and very aware! Then if you're sitting there on a bench being very aware, people will think that you are an illuminated being. Be very aware. See, you can do it! That's the key to awakening. So now we can say 'Alim' and it will make more sense. Because the 'E' really depicts what we're feeling now. Alimmmm. With the act of thrusting the light of ones consciousness upon situations rather than being passive. I've often said the difference between consciousness, which is passive, and intelligence, which is active. So, then say Ya Noor, Ya Alim; Noor is the light of intelligence is like a beam, a very sharp beam that perhaps even ultraviolet light that breaks through all barriers and reveals the true nature of things. So this is the key to illumination. Just think of it as you are doing it. Ya Noor, Ya Alim (repeat several times). Making the 'E' much more incisive. Ya Noor, Ya Alim...We have the ouuu and then the 'E', Ya Noor, Ya Alim (repeat several times). So now this was, let's say, the more overt way of repeating the wazifa, but of course ultimately one repeats them much more internally. Ya Noor, Ya Alim, almost whispering, Ya Noor, Ya Alim (repeat several times). All right now, let's stop now and just imagine that you're infusing the environmental atmosphere with all this vibration. You are creating a temple of sound. Don't think that temple is simply made of walls. It's a whole zone of intense vibration. I remember opening the door in the 'riental room, my father was sitting there repeating the wazifas. And the place was absolutely full of vibration, power. Incredible power. He was building up this power. And the sound was like a whisper, but very powerful, but internal. So we have to have our break now. This is the last transcript...after the break was the universal worship and the end of the retreat. MAR 25, 1995 Tape 01 Pir Vilayat St. Thomas Seattle, March 25, 1995 Tape #1 I thought we might start this by getting ourselves in tune, attuned by singing the chants of the different world religions. So, let's start with something like a kind of mantra. Aum, repeat. You notice the u it's really ou. Aum,( repeat several times). Try to release a kind of overtone. Aum,(repeat several times). Alright now the chant. Aum nama shiva. repeat. Buddhists chant this. It is more like a kind of mantra than a chant. You know the words. Nam o meda butsu. Yes, now I don't want to impose my pitch, especially on the women. So, it would be good if you each of you sing according to your pitch. And if you try to imitate my pitch, then I'll change mine to make sure that you'll find yourself as lost so that you'll have to find your pitch. And even if you sing out of tune, it is always more beautiful. The result is more beautiful. Nam o meda butsu, repeat. Now the Zoroastrian religion is very interesting because it is in five tone scale. So all you have to do is to hum that sort of basic underpinning and then I will sing the melody. Hums Ahura Mazda. Now Jewish, Ismal Israel. (Song) Gregorian Chant. (Kyrie Elison). Muslim chant. (song) Perhaps a motto under which we are working is, according to my father, Unity is not uniformity. Respect of the differences. I hope that you agree to make this a retreat, more than just a series of lectures. The more I lecture, the less I believe in lecturing. I believe in experience, shared experience. The circumstances are not quite ideal, but fairly close to ideal. Here we just had a retreat in the desert in Tucson, and of course the circumstances were perhaps even closer to ideal because I was able to, we had five days retreat, and were able to go out into nature and meditate instead of just listen to classes. But this is just two days and it is going to be very concentrated. But it just depends on what you want to make of it, but if you really want to take the full benefit of it then I suggest something that is rather challenging that is um, I don't ask you to do that, I'm just saying that this is something you could do. It is very difficult, it is to observe silence. One does it several ways, one would be throughout the two days. It makes it very difficult if you go back to your family. The other one would just be from 9 o'clock or 9:30 to 5:30 whenever we end, that would include the lunch break. The other would be during the sessions. I would hope that you would remain silent, because I had somebody screaming the other day. It was rather disturbing I must say. Put yourself in my position. So that is, I find that it's during that break. We might call it a sanitary break or coffee break or tea, whatever fresh air break whatever it is, that the attunement that one has built up after so much effort, all of a sudden all that is lost. And you have to start doing it up again. So, I must say, I know it is rather awkward, for one thing one is meeting lovely people. It is such an opportunity to meet really radiant beings with whom one has an affinity. It is such a pity not to be able not to speak. So, I realize that, so it is not a rule. It is just that if you feel like, if you discover the ascetic in you, then perhaps you will want to honor that because there is very little opportunity to do that in America today. But um, so one of the signs that you are on silence is that you put you index on your lips. That means don't talk to me. I'm on silence. The beauty of being on silence is that people can't draw into their humdrum sort of conversations, most of which are not particularly brilliant. And the beauty of it is you don't have to... you see one translates one's thinking into thoughts in order to express oneself, and consequently something of the dynamics of one is thinking is spoiled. And so even if one isn't speaking, one is so used to translating one is thinking in terms of formulating it, articulating it. So if you get used to not having to articulate yourself, to prove yourself, to defend yourself, to do all the things that one has to do to maintain one is head above water in this society in which we live. Then you find it extremely revealing to maintain silence. You'll have do it to see what it is like. These are not the ideal circumstances to do it in, but you could make it a try. Now if this is to be a transforming experience, then it will be necessary to go rather deeply into our thoughts and feelings and so on. And of course, since the event when somebody burst out screaming, then I'm a little bit paranoid, I must say, to open up those doors. So fortunately we have quite a few therapists here. In fact in addition to the party line or officially authenticated psychotherapists , there are of course the back room counselors. And I think that is the large majority here. I don't know there may be some very renowned psychotherapists here, but I would like to call upon two of the psychotherapists whom I spoke to yesterday, and who are members of the Sufi Order and who are willing to spring forth if you feel uncomfortable with the practices. And I think it is when one is off guard one tends to be, letS say tends to get out of touch with one is consciousness and gets into a kind of subconscious state that one can't control, how one reacts, and that might act in an adverse way to the people in the environment. And in general I would say, I'm sorry to say that, but I will say that if you are not, I don't know what it means to be normal, in fact I find normal people extremely boring. So, there is some kind of different shades of normality. But let's say that if you have had symptoms of what one calls being psychotic, then please don't come here. Because it will make you feel worse. It might simply trigger off something that is latent in you and for which you'd been cured, and then I get blamed for it. So, in that case, just say ¤AdieuŒ, and walk out, or if you feel that you're getting a bit spaced out, then walk out. They do that in the Zen, course they give you a real bang on the shoulder to remind you to get a center. Then in Sufi dancing the facilitator, the master of ceremonies, taps on the shoulder to say ¤Stop it now, you're getting out of your control of yourselfŒ. In general my method is the age old method of mastery. I'm trying to live up to a name, that's what Vilayat means. But, well I remember that at the end of his life St. Francis, there were a lot of young men wanted to be monks, and there was a meeting, and the monks asked him two things. One is to have more clear guidelines into the organization, happens in all special organizations. But the other one is more serious than that, is to make a standard a little bit less harsh. And that is the kind of reaction that's what I'm feeling now. So I want to remind you that the path that I'm following is the traditional path of mastery, and it may not be the right thing for all people. In fact it is not the best method for all people. I think there needs to be two steps, and one is letting, there's the word surrender which I have difficult with. I always think of it as feminine notion, but please excuse me for using that term. Men do surrender too. But letS say it is got to be compensated by taking over, and I think there are two steps. One is that indeed nature has a way of righting itself when disturbed or self organizing itself, if you don't intervene. But, at a certain point you need to customize what nature is doing for you, and take responsibility. And there are two steps. And so you'll probably feel the two steps in this seminar, I just wanted to draw your attention to it. Can everybody hear me. It you can't just put your hand up or come closer of course there is plenty of room. 'k so Let's start from scratch. We are going to be going through a process together. So to start with, this is very simplistic of course, just be aware of your breath without trying to influence it in any way. Exhaling, inhaling in your own rhythm. The Yoga method teaches one to contract one is abdomen and then one is chest when exhaling, and then expand ones abdomen then one's chest when inhaling. And it can be rather confusing because when one exhales, one has a sense of expanding, for example one's life field, one's aura, but one is contracting one's abdomen and one's chest, and when one is inhaling, one has a sense of maybe turning within, of drawing the Universe, converging the Universe into one is person, and curiously enough, one is body is doing the opposite as it is expanding. You just notice that. Now the reason we are starting with a breathing practice is because we are talking about an exchange of energy between the environment and ourselves. But instead of thinking of these as two different things, think of yourself as a vortex, like a whirlpool. there's no frontier, but there could be an ebb and flow of energy, contracting and radiating, scattering, fanning out. And, by the fact that you are conscious of your breath, it is going to slow down, so you don't have to try and slow it down. So now try and feel like the ebb and flow the of the energy of the whole Universe, so you're just like a wave in the sea, advancing and receding. And there really is no frontier, no boundary, between the wave and the sea. So in the same way there is no boundary between yourself and your underpinning, which is the Universe. And so you can feel the Universe emerging as you, not in you, but as you. And also the way that you tend to merge with the Universe. But I think that one has to be very clear that this is only an impression because in fact, I could illustrate it. If you drop pebbles on the surface of a lake, for example, you see eddies, then you've lost the eddies and you think they've all merger. And in fact according to physics, one can retrieve them by what they call (afortier) analysis. So that much as you might want to lose yourself in the totality, you can't, you don't try. Now, as you are inhaling, could you fell the kind of impelling impact of the Universe upon you? Now we're going to be a little more specific. First of all the physical environment. And let us try and prove it to ourselves, demonstrate it to ourselves. For example you have your eyes closed now, and imagine that your glance is made of two beams of light like the headlamps of a car. And just concentrate your whole being on those two beams of light. Now this is not imagination, it is not hallucination, that fact is that there is a lot of light in the brain and in the cells of the brain and that this light is threaded through the optical nerves and ends up in, well it doesn't end, passes through the retina and the cornea and is thrust right out into the environment. Instead of thinking of your eyes as just organs of perception, your eyes are really thrusting light upon the environment also. Alright, now open your eyes, and you see that the physical world forces itself upon your glance, and you lose your concentration on the light that you thrust upon the environment. Close your eyes again, and you can capture again those two beams of light, and now try when you open your eyes, not allow the environment to make you lose your concentration on the two beams of light. I don't know if you notice that the environment looks like a blur. So this was just simply a practice that I would recommend to advanced meditators, but at this point it is a demonstration of the fact that the physical environment does operate an impact on our consciousness not just upon our glance. Now close your eyes again and think of the circumstances in which you are living, and of course particularly your problems. And try to ascertain whether indeed you feel impacted, you feel that your, there is some pressure upon you by the circumstances. You're rushing or maybe you are rushing. Not only that, but you are in circumstances that require of you to react. Because, if you are in a hurry, you react, you don't have time to consult the resourcefulness in your being. And so that what they call short circuiting the brain for example in a reflex action. 'n does not have to consult ones motivations in life if one is crossing the road and there is a car coming. We are programed in such a way that we can short circuit the overall picture of ourselves in dealing with emergencies. And it looks as if life is presenting us with emergencies continually. So the question is whether, as you inhale you could simply concentrate on the different modes of pressure that are exercising an impact upon you. Then when you hold your breath..could you hold your breath after inhaling, instead of exhaling right away? So instead of reacting right away, hold your breath and try to think of the latent potentialities in your being that you are not calling forth, and which would enable you to meet the challenges of your life much better. And so it could be whatever. You could think of a quality like mastery, you could think of a quality like peacefulness, a quality like joy, a quality like compassion, a quality like truthfulness. Just choose wherever there is a quality that is present in your being, but it's being called for by the challenge of the environment. Consequently it is able to develop now, because it's being called for. Now if you are just trying to develop it, it probably wouldn't develop. Now it is being challenged to come forth. So what we're learning now is to place a buffer between the challenge of the environment and the resourcefulness of our being so that we do not simply react but we consider the environment as a catalyst which calls into action the potentialities of our being that would otherwise remain latent or virtual. But that does not quite mean the same thing as reacting, reacting is short circuiting. It is not calling upon all the potentialities of one is being. It is like, for example, a very good illustration in physics would be, like the process of fluorescence. Objects, for example the leaf of a tree or plant and our bodies also of course, absorb light. The cells of our body able sorb light, and they don't simply reverberate this light as a mirror does. But they process this light and then emit it. It's not the same thing as reflecting, and that's what called flourescense. I could go into more detail as to how the cells do that. So think that your process of assessing the impact of the environment, and it calls upon appropriate qualities in you that , I can't say match the challenge, but letS say that are effective in meeting the challenge. So, let us go into this a little more deeply. What do you mean by processing? Do you realize that your, even your experience of the physical world, but that is also true of your assessment of your problems, has to pass through the lens, I would say the distorting lens of your psychological, your psyche, your psychological say idiosyncrasies. In other worlds one does not really asses things objectively. But there is a subjectivity about it which deludes one into being convinced that the problems are the way one thinks they are. And is it clear to you that the reason for that is that one is asking oneself what that problem means to oneself? Like psychotherapists ask you how you feel about this. But do you realize that one means by oneself, when one says that, like who I am, is only only one slice of one's being? In fact it is not even one slice of one's being. It is the notion that one has of oneself, one is self image, which is not even what one is, it is not even one is personality. So that would mean that our assessment of your problems is not reliable. And it has enormous consequences. It might mean that one is going through one is life schlepping this false assumption of one is problems and acting inappropriately. So the first thing to do is to try and be objective. But it is not that easy. But the whole of Buddhism is exactly that. It is objectivity instead of subjectivity, which, at least in my very insufficient knowledge of psychology, of psychotherapy, seems to be very different from the party line in psychotherapy, which is to build a strong sense of I. I agree with that of course, but just imaging what you mean by your I. When I say that one projects one's psyche, that is when I said, :' What does this problem mean to me?'. One thinks one knows what one means by I, but in fact one does not. Because to know what one's I is one would have to modulate consciousness beyond the middle range, and that is exactly what I'm teaching. So, we've come so far that we need to be cautious about the assessment that we make of our problems, since it is based upon a personal vantage point. And now I hope it is clear, that for example, if you look at Notre Dame from one vantage point, that you haven't seen Notre Dame in Paris. And we are convinced about our assessment of our problems. And that is where the theory of Maya comes in. It acts as a kind of protection to be cautious, in fact the word is doubt., to be doubtful. You could even use the word skeptical about one's opinion. I've referred once already to Buddhism and perhaps one of the precepts of Buddhism is of course itself is freedom. And um, the first, one of the first steps is freedom from opinion. If opinion is based upon one's middle range vantage point, that is the vantage point whereby one assumes that one is the person one normally assumes oneself to be, common place assumption. So how can we So this sounds rather negative, like we can't count on our own opinion. How can you at least help in freeing yourself from the constraints of your personal vantage point? Well it would consist in, perhaps one of the methods would be to try and get into the consciousness of those people who are involved in the problem in which you are involved yourself. People who take an opposite view might even be your adversaries. Very often people whose interests are contrary to your interests, so there is a tug of war between you. Now my contention here is that it is possible to shift your vantage point and imagine what things look like from the vantage point of another person. And that is what I call the cosmic dimension of consciousness. So, now try and indeed get into the consciousness of a person with whom you have a problem. And you see how very differently that person assesses the problem than you do. And yet it's the same problem. And Dr. David Boehm proposed an experiment. I don't know whether he ever did it. And that was to have two cinema cameras and photograph a fish in an aquarium and photograph the fish from both sides of the aquarium. And then if you able to project those films on two screens side by side, you'd be amazed. Because, while they seem different, you can see their commonality. And the reason for that is that we have the ability to extrapolate between vantage points. For example, if we can see three dimensionally, it is because one of our eyes sees one way, the other eye sees the other way. And somehow the brain is able to associate, we call it extrapolate, between these two images. Consequently you have the image of a three dinemsional world. So, at first you try and get into the vantage point of a person who might have taken on the opposite point of view to your own with regard to that particular problem. Both of you are involved. And the second one is that you try to extrapolate between those two views. Now I'm not saying that you need to abandon your own point of view because it doesn't mean the point of view of the other is right either. And even both of your views by cannot possibly by definition be right, but still it is better than one view. This is something you can do at home of course in your meditations. Now you could bring, 'h yes, now there is a further step here. If you can get into the vantage point of another person, then can you imagine how that other person perceives you? And you realize that it is totally different than how you perceive yourself. And that accounts for the way people are behaving towards you or handling that problem, because not only their way of perceiving, of assessing the problem, but their way of assessing you. For example, if they doubt your authenticity and you feel hurt, because you know that you are truthful. That would be an example. There are many other examples of course. Or they ascribe to you motivations that are not your motivations. And then you ask yourself, at first glance I don't think that those are my motivations, but let's look at it more deeply. There is often some truth in the point of view of the other. And that pushes one into what is called muhasabi in Sufism, which is self examination, the examination of one is motivations. OK LetS try and do that then. So ask yourself why you are taking the stand that you are taking in this problem. And why is that person taking the stand that he or she is taking in the problem. And there may be more people than just yourself and that other person who are involved in that problem. And ultimately there is no end to the people who are involved in the problem. So that at infinite regress, you get into the consciousness of the whole Universe, which is what is meant by divine consciousness. OK Let's get back to this motivations. Well, we can touch upon it now, and then we can go a little bit deeper into it a little bit later. So we can just ask ourselves 'What are my motivations, Why a I taking this or that attitude, or assuming this attitude toward this problem?'. And right away you'll be aware that there's no way of having any sense as to what your motivations are unless you ask yourself what your values are. So, for example, I ‹ve chosen this tack in handling this problem because I believe in compassion. For me compassion is so important that I'm prepared to give it priority over anything else, over any of the other values that I esteem. Or then, it could be truth that is your motivation, and you want to stand by the truth. And of course, that can cause suffering in yourself and the people involved in the problem, but your attachment to the truth is so strong that you feel that even if you seem to be lacking in compassion you need to stand by your value. We need to go into this a little deeper, because being accommodating is not necessarily good for a person and is not necessarily a form of compassion. We need to go into that a little more deeply. Or then to be quite truthful with yourself, is your reason for handling the situation as you do that you feel that there is covetousness, and you want to get the goodies. We are all trained in our society to go and get it, and since interests clash, then your interest clashes with that of another person. And the opposite would be abandoning the world as an ascetic, so that doesn't seem to be where things are at. So, but is that. it is very subtle this, of course. That is not your only purpose, but one needs to have some kind of a living standard to be\ able to function. I remember that little boy who wrote, ¤thank you dad for making moneyŒ Now is it just a need? Now is it a want or is it a need? That is, is there greed in it? Or is this fulfilling a need? And how does it tally with your wish to be of service? Can these two motivations be reconciled. For example, if you didn't have anything, you couldn't help people. So these are considerations. There are further ones. Am I acting under resentment? Or acting out resentment, as one says now in psychology? Or even hatred. It's not the same thing but it could reach that point. There could be quite a number of motivations, for example, I just need to understand. A spirit of inquiry, curiosity. Or are you acting out of love? And what are the degrees of it? Is it personal attachment, infatuation, or is it unconditional love? So, all that we've been doing so far is list some of the motivations that account for our behavior. But of course there could be many more that I haven't mentioned. Now letS go a little more deeply into this whole thing, because even though what I'm advocating is not reacting, but calling upon all your resources, and even though I'm saying that our assessment of our problems is not reliable, the fact remains that unless we take heed of those two things, we will find ourselves open to impressions of all kinds that we find difficult to control. And you may ascertain that, you may confirm that if you try to meditate, you'll find a lot of random thoughts that find their way into your psyche seem to surface from the environment. Not surface, that's not the right word. They seem to hit you from the environment or reach into your being your psyche from the environment. The physical and the social environment. And that accounts for the fact that a lot of us feel I'M not the meditative type because I just can't do it. I've tried it and tried it and it just didn't work, so I gave up on itŒ. And the reason was that one didn't use the right method. So, now let us see if we can do this. We have the power of selectivity. In fact this confirms our will power, our free will. otherwise we would be just overwhelmed by the environment. But we are gifted by the ability to make a choice between those impressions we wish to incorporate, ingest in our, ingest and incorporate in our psyche and those impressions that let's say that we can't handle. And if we can't handle them, then they are detrimental to us. So will power would be applied here. I see there application of will power by first of all placing a sentinel at the doors of perception, that's the word of Buddha. That while you're meditating for example. Thoughts that you feel are disturbing, like you read in the papers every day and on TV, or just walking the streets. Impressions that hurt your sensitivity and perhaps arouse outrage in you and frustration because one thinks one can't do anything about it. obviously it is counterproductive to allow these impressions to come and disturb your psyche if you are unable to integrate them in your being such as it is in your psyche such as it is at present. So the word of Buddha is that you place a sentinel at the doors of perception. What that means is that the sentinel allows some people through and some people not through, so there is some selectivity there. It is part of our defense system. And if the sentinels are asleep, then of course one is open to all kinds of impressions and one can be overwhelmed by them an in total disarray. So, if you want, and what is more, your, let's say the impact of the environment will be so impelling that you have difficulty in unfurling the potentialities of your being. There is some balance between the input and letS say the output of your being. So there is some selectivity. Your telephone answering machine selects impressions. And of course your radio, you can turn on one station or turn on another. And even your TV. So we do have that faculty in ourselves. But why is it that we have difficulty with it? The impressions come through all the same, even though we are not happy about them. They become compulsive. Some people more than others, and in the case of somebody who is psychotic of course, there is absolutely no sentinel at all. Well the secret is to have a very strong sense of me. And when I say me I don't mean the just the middle range self image of ourselves. But the totality, the holistic image of our being. If you know something about the immune system, the same thing applies to the psyche. The immune system in the body is based on me and not me. If you transplant an organ, your organism will refute it, will reject it because it is not me. It is too different from me. Now if it is a little bit closer to me then it will be more acceptable. But there is a second immune system which is adaptive. otherwise you'd never be able to eat, to ingest the environment. So we have a second system whereby we are able to adapt ourselves to the input from the environment. And I think that what we do now is to overadapt to the environment and lose ourselves. Or better, I think that we need to be better able to, see there are two processes. One was selectivity of the impressions, as I say it's very difficult because, but the criterion is whether I feel an affinity with this impression or whether it is totally unfamiliar and un, well difficult to incorporate into my being. It's too, I can't deal with it. And in that case it is detrimental to my being. The second step is our ability to transmute the impressions from the environment. So the sentinel at the doors of perception. I would like to add to placing a sentinel at the doors of perception, placing a sentinel or sentinels at the doors of our psyche. And I would even say, think of yourself as having several zones. The peripheral zones, in those zones there is a lot of osmosis with the environment. And you get deeper within yourself, then you find your real self. So that was the first step. There is not just one sentinel. There are several sentinels. And not just at the doors of perception, but at the doors of your psyche. And so if impressions are able to pass through the first line of defense, they will meet further censorship, and so on so forth. But as I say the second step is transmuting the impressions. That's what we do with our food for example. In fact by the time that our food reaches into the cellular state they are totally transformed in order to conform to the code of our body. And the same applies to the psyche. The impressions of the world undergo a process whereby we ordinate them to correspond to let's say the DNA of our psyche, but of course it's much more complicated than that because the fact is that of course the DNA of our psyche carries within it potentially the DNA of the whole Universe. That is very difficult to determine that. I hope you're following me. I hope it is not difficult. And if you remember, there is not just, in that process of digestion, in the body for example, we are secreting enzymes to transform the food. And so instead of being totally open to the impressions of the world, you need to go forth with your own being. In other words, instead of adapting yourself fully to the environment, you also need to adapt the environment to your own sense of purpose. And so that is having a very strong sense of me. But as I say, our usual sense of me is totally inadequate. And therefore what we want to do during these days is to have a holistic sense of who we are than our middle range rather inadequate sense of ourselves. But these are indications about meditation. Instead of sitting there and feeling hopeless to deal with the impact of the impressions, particularly of your problems, you need to work the other way around, and therefore do all the work that we're going to be doing in gaining other dimensions of our self image, actually of ourself, but our self image is the notion that we make of ourself. Self image can of course be completed further and further, perfected further and further. However, I still need to point out that the clue to the protectiveness of the sentinels is in our non attachment to the impression. That is that that we don't quite realize it but there is some matching between the impression of the environment and ourselves. If they did not awaken something in ourselves, they would not have the same impact on our being. And perhaps we don't always recognize that. And therefore we are judgmental about these impressions. But it may very well be that they remind us about things in ourself which we don't like, and which could surface at any time. That's why we don't really know them because they are unconscious, but they could emerge under the right circumstances, as a matching. And so then this opens up a whole question, of course, whole chapter. In short I would say this is where that non emotion in our beings, of course, detachment or indifference, viraga in India. The way of the ascetic, comes to our rescue at this particular juncture. There are two words for this used in the language of the ascetic, one is loosening the ties. And the other is working through the ties with the world. And those are terms which we need to look into. Loosening the ties with the world. That's a kind of slogan. In the words of Christ, they are in the world but not of the world. So there comes some kind maybe some kind of contempt of the world in those words. And of course they are very reminiscent of the whole attitude of the ascetics. I'm sure that there must be some contempt there. And hopefully if there is contempt, then it is negative, and counterproductive so that it needs to be compensated by the ability to see beauty where one hadn't seen it before. For example, the beauty in the photons of a beer can in the garbage heap are as beautiful as the photons of the stars. So this idea of detachment, if it is based on contempt, then I think it is counterproductive. If it is like, I have failed to see splendor because I was impressed by the outer aspect of things. For example, when I saw that rather uncouth criminal in prison, I found it difficult to see the beauty of his soul, but I learned to see the beauty of his soul and that helps him to overcome his hatred. So that's not indifference. That's not contempt. That's not indifference. So perhaps one could say that it is indifference towards addiction to the underpinning and missing out on the ultimate issue. Now I'll try to say that, illustrate that. Because, just think of the case where people have put so much energy in to the building up of base camps to climb the peak of the Himalayas that they don't have enough energy to reach the top. That's what we're doing all the time in our lives. We're building a very strong underpinning and so there is, it is not just because our objective is to have a good strong underpinning, but we tend to get addicted to the underpinning. And so if you say freedom, basically what you are meaning is freedom from addiction. That is what freedom is. Which means dependence. Of course there is the story of Pegasus. Pegasus could not fly in the very high altitude in the proximity of the Olympus so that Bellerophon, the rider, had to carry on further on his own. But of course it was due to the momentum that was cast, impregnated upon him by the upward thrust of Pegasus that he was able to attain the Olympus. Pegasus is the underpinning. And then at a certain moment we are able to avail ourselves of that thrust and yet somehow kick the ladder or the springboard. That's freedom. MAR 25, 1995 Tape 02 SEATTLE SEMINAR - SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1995 - TAPE #2 Yes, please come and take your seats now. See if we can see the difference between our self image and our personality. Like when you want, when you say who you are, one would like to think it is one's real being. For example when one says I would like to know who I am. That means that one does not believe that one's self image is absolutely who one is. So your self image is a notion that you have of yourself. You think "I'm relatively intelligent, but not that intelligent," or "I'm a very kind person, but sometimes I'm not that kind," and "I try to be peaceful but sometimes I get very irritated," and so on. "I think that I'm a very deficient person. I'd like to be better." And "I have some really bad traits about me that I'd like to get rid of but I don't know how." So these are judgments that one makes about one's person. Just like one makes judgments about other people and if opinion is not reliable then your assessment of your own personality, I mean your self image, is not reliable. And so basically freedom from opinion would imply freedom from your self image. And it's a wonderful feeling of relief, because that self image weighs upon restricts one, constricts one. There's a lot of sense of inadequacy, and the thing is that if you are convinced that you are whom you think you are, you are standing in the way of becoming what you could be if you would be what you might be. One is standing in one's own way by the very faith or conviction of what one thinks one is. That's why I thought it was important for you to see the difference between your self image and whom you really are, but of course at this point it's not quite possible to assess who one is. We're working with it. Well, the next step would be, let's say, your self image is the notion that you make of your personality. So could you think of your personality as being like a plant or a flower that unfurls a seed. And all that one knows about it is the plant, that which emerges at the surface, but one does not really know all the potentialities that lie in wait in the seed of one's personality. So at least that's the first step that would help us to question that we are what we think we are. All that we know about ourselves is our judgments, about the idiosyncrasies of our personality and you have seen that somebody else might assess your personality quite differently to how you assess it yourself. That is their image of you it's not their self image but their image of you. So what we want to do and that's very difficult is, well, to turn within so that we are able to identify with the seed instead of the plant. But as I say that is difficult, because most of the time when we think we are turning within what we are doing is simply introspection, which is the passing of judgments upon ourselves. And if you are passing judgment then there is a dichotomy between that aspect of you that is the subject and that aspect of you that is the object. And that is the kind of format that one is using in one's commonplace experience of the world. One assumes that one is the subject and the world is the object and it would be very difficult to convince oneself that that is only a particular way of looking at things: that that is not really so, that it is just the way things appear. But when we turn within and we apply the same format, we are deluding ourselves even more than our assessment of our problems, and more damaging because our whole self esteem is based upon our self image, so it's very serious. So to turn within, one has to abandon the thought that one is the spectator experiencing other than oneself. And so perhaps the only way to do it is to think that the spectator is let's say the consciousness inherent in the whole universe that keeps on emerging in us and that we believe to be our consciousness. Now in Buddhism, I know I've been quoting Buddhism a lot, there is a very beautiful illustration and that is supposing that you felled a tree so that all that remained was the stump and then the stump were to grow a tree. Is it the same tree or is it a different tree? It may look different, and yet similar. So that's a view that you could adopt in your meditation: Identify yourself with what Buddha calls the life of your life, or the being of your being. So that now the superficial part of your being that could be like the tree or the plant, seems to be secondary. It can change, it can be destroyed, it can recur again. And so if you identify with that, then of course you're not identifying with your true being. You're missing out on what your true being is. So once more, one has to apply that notion of freedom, freedom from one's identity with one's, what we call self image, and really one's self image is the notion that one has of one's personality. And of course if any sense of being able to grasp what that seed is or what that root is, because it's just like your eyes, you can't see your eyes. So really speaking, it is a question of shifting your sense of identity from that which is transient to that which is permanent. At least that is the perfunctory approach, the more simplistic approach. I assume that there are parts of my being that are transient and there is a part of my being that is not transient, that is eternal, unchanged. Those are the assumptions that we find in the Sumpka school which is the origin of Hinduism of Yoga, sorry, of Yoga. That's a simplistic assumption. A better view would be like I am a continuity in change, like for example the river is a continuity in change. It's never the same water that passes under the bridge; but you say it's the river. So It's a kind of alliance of permanency with transiency, which is of course paradoxical. And of course that helps us to overcome the thought of death as being final. But then how can you have a sense of what we call permanence? And I suppose the best illustration here would be a pendulum suspended on a nail for example. So the bottom of pendulum obviously is moving in time/space, and [...unclear...] swings towards one end and then the other end of its course and then as you move further upwards it seems that there is less motion and so you could imagine that there would be an infinite regress, a point where the pendulum rotates on the nail that remains unmoved. But that point is never attained, so it's in infinite regress. But somehow as Hafizullah points out to me, the real center is out of time and space. And of course that is true of ourselves. We think of ourselves as being located in space and moving in the arrow of time in the process of becoming, because we are programmed to think so and also it's a very simplistic way of thinking. So we find it difficult to realize that that is only the way things look from a certain vantage point. But if you are, and try if you can do this because it's wonderful if you can do it in mediation, if you think that like the root of your being, of the tree, has its roots enmeshed with the roots of all other trees, like the lotus flowers or the water lilies in the lake, they simply emerge from a network of roots. So if you think that way, then somehow you have a different sense of space. It's not located anywhere, just like radio waves are not located, they are spread out in space. Our sense of space and time is altered and that will lead towards a further realization and that is of the infinity of let us say the code, the infinite bounty of the code of your psyche, let's say the DNA of your psyche if you don't mind my saying it like that. So you've all heard about that of course the DNA and you all know that every cell of the body carries the DNA of the whole body, the genes of the whole body except in the case of a tumor. But in order to differentiate between, say the membrane of the, of the pupil of one's eyes for example, or of one's hair, some of the genes have to be turned on and others remain recessive, that means they have not been called into action, they are still virtual so you could say, then that while you're aware of the bounty of the say the roots of your being, beyond the limitations of time and space, still only very few of those genes are active and most of them are recessive. And that accounts for the difference between you and me and each person, like the different organs in the body. However, one of the aspects of mutation is that genes that were recessive were able to become activated, so that you could say that your being is continually emerging from its virtual state and being actuated in your personality. There is an illustration of it. Supposing that you had a piano and most of the keys were scotch taped. So the melody that you could play is rather limited, and then you could keep on pulling off more and more of the scotch tape and you were able to play more beautiful and more beautiful melodies. So one can awaken virtualities that are slumbering, and somehow, and this is rather paradoxical: there are two methods of doing it, one is one would imagine [UNCLEAR W'RD] to be able to discover these potentialities, but they are virtual, they are unconscious. One can only have some, make sense of what they could be. The other one is knowing by doing. Like a sculptor who is able to discover his/her statue by making it, in the course of making it. So now just think that you have much more mastery in yourself than you think, and you have much more peacefulness, and much more courage and much more joy and much more truthfulness, and much more compassion, much more love, than has been actualized so far in your personality, but the only way in which to know that those, I say you can assume that you have a lot of power and so on in your being, but to actually really know it, I mean that's theoretical, but to really know it, you have to actuate it in your personality. And you can't really activate it in your personality, unless it is called for, so consider your problems as being situations that are challenging you into actualizing potentialities in your being that need unfurling and consequently your personality will become richer and richer. Now that is a theory that you find in Islam called the recurrence of creation. Instead of thinking of because one's self image is static, one says this is the way I am, whereas when you turn within, you discover that, first of all there are no boundaries to who I am, and secondly you discover that it is not static, but it is dynamic, it is ongoing. And I wonder to what extent that word "who I am" is related to the event when Moses encountered the burning bush and the answer was "I am who I am." Which was wrongly translated. It is "I am whom I am becoming." [snicker] That makes a lot of difference, because who I am one has. static idea of one's self image, but in who I am becoming there is hope. You're not bogged in to your self image. So if you, the way to do it in your mediation is to choose, well, to of course it starts, well perhaps I didn't make it clear enough. The method I am using in mediation is to choose your problems as your themes of meditation, instead of artificial fictitious themes. And so consider a problem, and consider a quality amongst different qualities which you feel that this problem is calling for in you. And now while you are meditating you imagine a situation where you are confronting this person, right in the middle of the problem and that now the next time you see that person you are going to apply the compassion that is being called for and that by applying it you will awaken the compassion that is there. So you are imagining the compassion that is being called for by the compassion that is already there but needed to be awakened. So you can only convince yourself that you do have that compassion, that degree of compassion, by imagining how you are going to deal with that person when you meet them next time. So that person may be inimical or aggressive, have a lot of resentment and so on, and we don't know all the reasons for it, we could go into it, but let's say you embrace that person with, either physically or with your thoughts, or your attitude, so they feel secure, they do not feel threatened. And you are not asking them anything, anything of them, they might fear that you are, but no, you're just accepting them with your love. And you didn't think you had it in you. It's a great force of love. Like the power of the love of the therapists who are working with autistic children who refute sympathy or love or caring and need it but they refute it somehow. So at first you didn't think that you had that much compassion. Let me put it this way: your, the more unlovable a person is, the more your compassion is difficult to call forth, and that's how you measure your degree of compassion. And you discover that you had a far greater measure of compassion that you thought, just by trying it. If you don't try it you won't discover your compassion. But if you're just attached to the way that person behaves toward you, you won't be able to exercise compassion. And the reason why you are hampered into your judgment as to the way the person is behaving towards you is because you're looking at things from your vantage point. If you free yourself from your vantage point, then you are able to love. I remember a word of my father to the leaders. He said you are being tested in your love. But that's one quality. The quality of mastery for example. As I said there are two steps so that's not the first step, mastery, maybe it is compassion. Mastery is a second step. How it is associated with freedom is very interesting. That, I would say that perhaps the ultimate mastery is believing in the beauty of yourself when faced with the evidence of your deficiency. This requires mastery. But you see it's a belief because, that's the interesting thing, because so far I haven't talked about belief, because I am saying well you have the bounty of the universe latent within you, but that's a belief. I have illustrated it by, the physical body has the DNA, I think now biologists are coming more and more to the conclusion that it isn't only true that each cell of the body carries the DNA of the, the code of the body, but they are beginning to feel that each cell carries the DNA of the whole universe, potentially, potentially. That is, the virtuality gets deeper and deeper, like deep memory in the computer for example, levels of virtuality, let's say, in the depth. So I do agree that maybe the ultimate issue is faith but it is not the same thing as belief but it just depends upon how you, what definition, how you would define these words. Because faith could also be based upon belief. It could also be based on authority, and on what you're brought up with and so on, conditioning. So that's why I prefer using the word conviction, which could even reach a point of enduring with one's, or staying with one's conviction while facing the proof of the opposite. That's the power of faith. Because the opposite is opinion and that is open to error. Okay, well we'll come back to this. That was turning within and finding infinite potentialities in one's being. Somehow there's some relationship between the inner and the outer, the implicate and the explicate, or the implicit and the explicit. So how do things look if we start reaching out into what I call the cosmic dimension? As you know our eyes can have the faculty of reading the pages of a book or looking at the stars, so the compass, the outreach of our glance is just humongous beyond one's u nderstanding. But the same applies to one's consciousness and the same applies to one's understanding. So getting into the consciousness of the few people who are involved in your problem was the first step, and there are further steps. First of all, getting into the consciousness of more and more people. But it also works in your body consciousness. For example just dwell upon the thought, for example, meditate under the stars, as I often do, and open your eyes and look at the starry sky and just think to yourself: well this body is, I think it was made out of the fabric of the planet, just like that tree, but actually the planet is made of the fabric of the universe and my body started off with the big bang as a pure outburst of radiance. So from that moment you don't think of your body as having frontiers, having a boundary, being bounded by your skin. So somehow you start getting a sense of the immense dimension of your being. Now the next one is applying the same thing to your magnetic field of course and your aura, thinking that, instead of thinking that your body is absorbing the light of the universe, of the the stars and then emitting it into the universe, by what is called bio-luminescence, just identify with your aura and then since your aura doesn't have a boundary, you realize that it is the light of the whole universe that converges, and expands but it's not your aura, but it's the aura of the universe, let's say, the light field of the universe. And now just go one step further and realize that what you thought was your consciousness is the way the consciousness of the universe is focalized into your personal, what you think is your personal consciousness. Okay, now if you are able to carry this to its utter consequences you will realize the import of that word of St. Francis of Assisi: the universe is looking at me, instead of I am looking at the universe. Now the Sufis would say, God is looking at this aspect of Himself that we think is us, in order to discover Him/Herself. So it's a little more complicated. But somehow then we realize that our understanding is really participating in the understanding of the universe and so we don't think of ourselves as trying to understand the universe but it's because our thinking is of the same nature as the thinking of the universe that we have any sense of how the universe works. Okay, so we have this paradigm, not only my psyche is like the DNA or rather there is a DNA of my psyche which functions rather like the DNA of my body, but what I thought was my consciousness is really the consciousness of the universe. Now these are words and I'd like you to experience it: that your consciousness is the consciousness of the universe and this consciousness is looking at you instead of limiting it to what you think is your ego consciousness, or looking at itself through you and as you. That will certainly cure you from being caught up by the impact of the impressions of the world when you are meditating, because you. . . . end of side 1 . . . yourself any more as the knowing subject. So this will give you a sense of the immensity of your personality, perhaps in a different manner to what we experience when we were turning within. And that is because there really is, there is no boundary between your personality and that of other people. There is an osmosis between our personalities. For example, I'm sure there are moments when you can find some of the idiosyncrasies of another person in your own personality. You're talking like that person, you're thinking like that person, you're identifying with that person, particularly if you love that person. There is an osmosis between people. And the more you do that, the more you develop a sense of immensity, that who you are doesn't end anywhere. There is no boundary. And this thought relieves you of the, how can I say, let's say the oppression of one's ego. What ego, you know there is no such a thing as an ego. When you say the word ego means our sense of identity. So I would say then that our perfunctory, middle range sense of identity exercises a constraint upon the recognition of the immensity of one's being. And consequently makes one into a puny being instead of a cosmic being. So I think that your objective is to become more and more cosmic and therefore aware of the cosmic dimension of your being, instead of being closed into your limitation of your personal idiosyncrasies. Now just try and experience it now, the immensity of your being; there is no boundary, even of your personality. (Pause for silence .) Perhaps you are aware of the fact that even though if you, this is the holistic paradigm you know, even if you fragment a crystal, every fragment will not function as a part of the crystal, it will function as the whole crystal, except that it will function less well, or rather except that the smaller the fragment, the less well it will function as the total crystal functioned. And so the more we, our self image is constricted so we think of ourselves as a fragment of the universe, the less we can function as the totality of the universe. That is the reason for reaching out into the, one can say the outreach of our consciousness and rather than merging in the universe, discover the immensity of our own being. And then you will see, how can I say, the matching between this outreach of our being and the immensity of the bounty of the universe. Pir-o-Murshid distinguishes between two aspects here: one is the outreach, reaching out and there is no boundary; the wazifa corresponding to that is Basit. And the other is encompassing . So it's not exactly the outreach, it's how much you are able to embrace. And so the more you are able to embrace, the greater the breadth of your personality is called for you see and so it, in other words the more responsibility, because each of us has a domain in our lives so when you are meditating you can think of your domain. That is those situations where you have some influence, exercise some influence, and those people for whom you have some measure of responsibility. Not totally, but some measure. And so in your meditation you think of those people, their problems, and so the greater being you are, the greater you are able to take responsibility for them, and conversely, the more you take responsibility for them the greater being you become. Okay, now to make this whole picture a little bit, as complete as possible, it can never be totally complete, I'll anticipate on what we're going to, we'll be following it up this afternoon. So if you had some kind of conviction, I hope it's not just because of what I'm saying but you really feel that you carry within yourself enormous potentialities that have not yet been called for, that are still potential, virtual, nascent. And if you can adopt a holistic paradigm, that means that you accept that every fragment of the totality carries within it the bounty of the totality potentially, then somehow you have that conviction, what you might call faith, in what the Sufis call the divine inheritance, the divine legacy of the bounty of the universe within you. Just like your child carries within him/her the inheritance of your genes, mixed with those of your, the father or the mother, the conjoint, but you don't know it because it's in the unconscious, it hasn't become actualized yet, it's virtual as we say. And what I've said so far is that to know it you have to actualize it by responding to the challenge of the environment. However, if you just give vent to the challenge of the environment, you're trying to call upon the resourcefulness in your being that are latent but what are these resourcefulness, because there are levels of, let's say values. The same thing is true of the DNA, the kind of, genes that make for theneurotransmitters are what I would call much more sophisticated than those that call for formation of our nails of our fingers or our toes. There seem to be levels in the DNA, values as we call it, we could call them values considering our motivations. So that is what we mean by transcendence. Now another way of, let's say a way of perhaps highlighting the more sublime levels of the DNA of our psyche is by projecting what is latent within our psyche by the power of our imagining into either some kind of form that seems to embody those values, or then it doesn't have to be a physical form but some kind of attributes like the perfection of kindness or the perfection of truthfulness and the perfection of joy and so on, we, that we ascribe to God. And Pir-o-Murshid makes it very clear. We speak about God as though we knew God. But we don't realize that what we mean by using the word God is what we imagine God to be, it's our concept of God. And as a matter of fact there's a reason behind Buddhism; they're very wary of these kinds of anthropomorphic projections. On the other hand do you see that let's say the usefulness of this power of our imagination because this ideal, because that's what we mean by an ideal, seems to awaken the potentialities in our being. So instead of their being awakened by the challenge of the environment, then the, that's incomplete, one is highlighting perhaps the higher values in those DNAs of the psyche. So this is a different paradigm to the holistic paradigm. And this is what David Boehm arrived at at the end of his life, not just the holo (?) movement, moving from the implicate to the explicate state and the opposite, but a vertical kind of paradigm if I may say so, moving from body to mind let's say, or he calls it soma significance, somehow some kind of hierarchical fanning out of values. And so these projections, we are projecting somehow our idea of an ideal into what we, our image, our representation of God. And this has the power of resorbing the shadow in us or, as I say I have to be very careful about the use of the word shadow because it has so many implications in the party line of psychology and I'm not a good psychologist. So I would say the tumor, and, in our psyche. And what do I mean by the that, by the tumor, which one could call our deficiencies or whatever, our defects? Well, just think of this. The tumor is a growth within our body of the very cells of our body that do not honor the code of the whole body. And so that in us which does not honor our sense of the wholeness of the being of God represents a kind of alienation from God in that sense. And so it's like one is on one's own, right? One is not in contact with the reality that governs one's whole being. In fact, one is not in contact with one's whole being in all its magnificence and magnitude, which is tantamount to the being of God. Because when we say that the DNA of the universe is present, with, of the psyche, let's say of the universe is present in our psyche, or latent, well let's say that it isn't really fragmented so that it's not just within us, it's in the, it's of the whole universe. We are, it's like the wave embodies the whole sea. So we can't say that it's in us. So that is what is called the God within. And so the question is now how do we deal with that cancour (sic pronounced "canker"), that tumor, within our psyche? And perhaps you know that there are three ways of dealing with a tumor. One is excising it, and the chances are that it will grow again. And the second is resorbing it. The body has the faculty of resorbing it, but we have to create the conditions in the body which favor its being resorbed. And the third one is strangulating it, that is not giving it a blood supply and therefore it dies out of a lack of satisfaction. So the last method has to do with behavior. We don't act out those aspects of oneself that we don't like and consequently we deprive them of the satisfaction that would feed them. And we are left with those two solutions, excising or resorbing. And excising, and this is really the rub, as one says, this is really the big issue before us and I'm sure that each one of you has an opinion about it. But we find in two statements that seem contradictory in the words of Christ. One is, "get ye behind me, Satan," and the other is "resist not evil." (Snicker.) How do you reconcile these two? So I leave you with this quandary for your lunch break. Not that I have a solution! (Laughter .) I am waiting for you to give me the solution. Bless you. MAR 25, 1995 Tape 03 PIR VILAYAT INAYAT KHAN Seattle, Washington March 28, 1995 Tape #3 Yes, please sit down. So, being on retreat you're drawn to be inspired, uplifted. There's a kind of suspicion that behind this apparent universe there's a splendor which is starting to come through and perhaps this splendor is enacted as what you call a cosmic celebration happens and we think that this is happening up there somewhere And of course if we do that there's a split behind (inaudible-maybe "sansum") the splendor of our own Being and then the deficiency of our own personality. And that's why we, its better to, we've got to approach it in a different way. So there are different steps which will help us to do that. The first one would be... remember the practice that we did when we imagined our eyes to be two beams of light. And then we opened them and we forced it to focus and you continue doing that practice eventually somehow you are able to maintain your concentration and perhaps bring that, well the way to bring that blur a little more into focus is to try to grasp that which is transpiring behind that which appears to your senses. That which is transpiring through that which appears to your senses. And so consequently you offset your glance, the focus of your glance and in the same way you offset the focus of your consciousness. offset, its just not quite right there in its middle range. And then you find yourself in a transfigured world. That is somehow the thought that that which appears is only the surface and as I say the suspicion that there's something of great value that is coming through behind that which appears. That has the effect of helping you to see as I say, Beauty trying to manifest in the Form, at the surface. The forms, at the surface some of the forms that we perceive when our consciousness is not offset definitely have boundaries, have contours. But can you imagine, can you try to represent to yourself what we mean by a countenance instead of a face. A face has a profile, the skin represents a profile. But when you are smiling then something comes through that cannot be limited to the profile of your face. We call it the countenance. The countenance is trying to come through that form. The countenance, perhaps it is more like a configuration than a profile. For example a star doesn't have, you don't normally imagine a star to have a profile. And yet at the same time if one imagines a four pointed star, a five pointed star, a seven pointed star and so on, somehow one is able to represent to oneself what one means by a configuration that has not jelled itself yet into a form. So from the moment that you accept that the world is, what you see is only that which has jelled into a form that has a profile but behind it something is trying to transpire. Try to do that while I'm talking....and suddenly something flips in your consciousness and you really find yourself in a transfigured world. Like St. Francis. And as a matter of face like most contemplatives do. They find themselves in a transfigured world. And if you're doing it then you notice that its something that you knew as like you had a sense of deja-vu, its reminiscent of something that you knew but you, maybe it was the state that you were in when you were a young child. We don't know. Maybe its the state you were in when you're sleeping. Maybe its the state that your in when you're between day consciousness and sleeping. (inaudible- sounds like "di ano") consciousness and sleeping. Doesn't matter. The important thing is that somehow there's a kind of magic about it. And this is particularly emphasized if you doubt that the physical world is the way it appears to your senses. And that is the method used in yoga. Then the appearance of the world exercises less impact upon your perception. And then you develop that very fine, subtle sense of perception. In the ordinary sense of perception, we imagine that matter is solid and has clear-cut profiles, boundaries, objects. What they call discreet object. Now when you offset your consciousness, and perhaps you notice that while you're doing it, its like those objects that seem like objects now seem like made of gossamer, like transparent or translucent and fluid or volatile rather than solid and even able to intersperse with one another just like you imagine that the auras of people are able to intersperse with that of other people. In fact, the perhaps a very good method to trigger off that state is to be aware of your aura. You can feel, its more like feeling than seeing. Like you feel like a zone of light around your arms and your chest and above your head. And don't think that you are hallucinating because it is true that the body does emit light. It absorbs light and it emits light. Can be measured in the (inaudible sounds like "bausroom") and the fact is that the more intensely one concentrates on that radiance, the more intense it is. At first what I'm suggesting is that you having identified yourself with your physical body, you imagine that the cells of your body are able to absorb light and emit light. As you inhale absorb light from the environment, and as you exhale radiate light or emit light. I'm sure that when you're sun bathing, for example, you tend to open up the pores of your skin to absorb more light. So there's something about bodily feeling that invites the intake of light, and as a matter of fact instead of thinking of your body as just this lump of flesh, if you try to think of it as incredible conglomeration of cells, you can think that these cells, it is these cells that are glowing light. And if it is true that by representing this phenomena, well by representing light you can increase, by representing to yourself your aura you can increase the radiance of your aura, then it is true that by representing to yourself the cells of your body in the process of absorbing light, you will enhance their ability to absorb light, that means they will be absorbing more light, and they will be radiating more light but there's a further phenomena which is that, which you experience if you hold your breath between inhaling and exhaling and then you can actually feel as though the cells were activated. In fact the word used is that the cells, well its really the electrons of the molecules of the atoms of your cells that literally start dancing. It means that they are jumping their orbital having availed themselves of that form of energy that is light. They don't have to remain in their constricted pattern of whirling lets say, you would say they were in orbit but its really orbital, but so they are able to jump to the next orbital. Then having used up all that energy then they fall back to where they were. So there's a definite motion dance that is taking place within the cells of your body. And so that so maybe what is meant by the Dance of Shiva. As called once the cells are in an excited state. So maybe you can feel this incredible effervescence of energy in the very cells of your body just simply by the fact of representing to yourself, lets say that joy, the glee of the cells as they absorb light. Because they are thereby freed from the constriction of their original state. And so freedom always gives joy. And the consequence is that the cells divide faster. Its call mitosis, the process of mitosis. And consequently your body is regenerated by that very exercise. Working with light. Now this is equally true for the aura as whole, so at first you will be aware of the zone of light surrounding your skin, as we did, but if you go further then you realize that somehow this whole auric shroud doesn't have a boundary. It has some kind of configuration, I call it a configuration, it has some kind of countenance, especially your face, the face of your aura. There are good reasons for this of course because the success of the body to emit light, then of course the light is somehow going to espouse somehow the form of the body but with a difference because the nerve tissue absorbs more light, so that would be like a column of light, perhaps even three columns of light in the center of your aura corresponding to the nerve trunks in the central linked autonomic nervous system, and then there'd be just a lot of light above your head because of the enormous amount of nerve cells of course constituting the brain. But you notice that they, the radiant above your head is more like in the ultra violet range and even beyond because that light, the middle range light kind of breaks through the skull, so its only the very high frequency that does. And so you have a whole different sense, if you identify yourself now with your aura, it gives you a totally different sense of who you are than identifying with your body. And because your aura does not have boundary then its relationship to the environment is different to the body which has a skin so you feel a kind of interspersal, an overlap, an osmosis between your aura and that of people or objects or animals or whatever, the whole universe. So your sense of identity now matches your sense of the gossamer nature of the objects, so called objects in their environment. Therefore you find yourself in a transfigured world. You see that is a state which you remember, its like, Ah yes, of course! I remember that but I don't know when I experienced that, but its really a familiar state. But what you've done now is only half of the process. So we're going to have to consider something rather novel. Because so far we have been considering the way that our bodies absorb light, and then we identified ourselves with our auras, and then you could consider your aura plus your magnetic field, your electromagnetic field, as the template in which your body is being formed and therefore a much more fundamental reality than what you imagine your body to be. That relationship between your bodyness and the nature of your aura, it is that which, be able to extrapolate between the two you see. If you're just identifying with your aura, but if you also have a sense of your physical bodyness as like the crystallization of your aura, or as I said, aura as the template, then somehow you'll understand what is meant be that which transpires behind that which appears. You realize that something of the nature of your aura, lets say the countenance of your aura is trying to transpire through the configuration of the muscles of your face. And so if you stay in that state of transfigured world, you won't be adaptive to the physical world and that's the state of the mystics, but the beauty is that we can extrapolate between those two levels and consequently function in the physical world while always being aware of the light that is coming through that which transpires behind that which appears. From behind that which appears. OK, now there's a further dimension which is rather paradoxical. If you hold your breath after inhaling, and before exhaling, if you remember we were trying to sense what is happening to our cells. They're dancing as I said. Feeding on the light of the environment. But what is paradoxical is that there is a kind of inner light which surfaces from inside. Instead of thinking that you need to absorb light from the environment, which you do of course, but in addition to that, there is light that is surfacing from inside. And I suppose the best way of illustrating that and therefore making it meaningful to us is to think of what the astrophysicists now call white hole in space. And all those new theories about adjacent or subliminal universes. So that something transpires in this universe from a subliminal universe. Now that seems really far out but in our own experience, what would that mean in terms of our meditation, for example. You see our sense of what we understand by light is in some way related to the usual focalization of our consciousness in what I call the middle range, the usual commonplace way in which it is focused. As a consequence, light, our concept of light is that it is radiant. That it radiates from a source. And those sources are located in space. It could be a star which is a source of radiance, or the sun, or a candle, electric light, and of course it could be simply the way that all the objects in the world are fluorescing, that is are absorbing light and emitting light. So that's the way we think of light and that's the way that physicists think of light. Up to the present most physicists have thought of light. Call it a physical phenomenon. But then think of light as more like radio waves. That is diffused, all pervading. Not focalized in centers. So if you are used to experiencing other than yourself like the physical world outside other than yourself. But if you place a barrier between your consciousness and the way the world appears, if you imagine it outside then somehow or other your consciousness turns within. It makes a 180 degree turn. And then you'll discover the world of light emerging from within. Imagine for example that we are talking about the wave of the sea, well imagine a sea of light and a wave in that sea of light and imagine the wave is turning towards the ocean of light and sees in which manner it is, in which manner the whole ocean emerges in itself as a wave of light. Now if you don't understand what I am saying and of course you need more explanation, a more expert explanation than I am able to give then you could read the book of Dr. David Boone called The Implicate State and then you realize that the way that we perceive the world is only one way of perceiving the explicate state. And Pir Murshid calls this "the All Pervading Light". So there's a practice that has remained confidential for a long time and has been given out sometimes. In yoga its called yoni mudra. And yoni means the womb. And so it means like turning within and the only way to do that is to think that somehow you are contained from outside, there's a barrier lets say, and you're faced with a situation in which you are imprisoned, lets say walled in then somehow your need for freedom, for space is so strong that you tend to turn within and discover infinity of space as space is inverted, instead of an infinity of space when it is fanned out. But not like being enclosed. Its just that the apparent boundary opens up a whole new dimension, spatial dimension of your being Murshid calls the inner space. So I invite you to do that practice because if this is a retreat or a seminar, you are entitled to these how we say advanced practices. Whoever you are as long as you do not do these practices without my surveillance because they do make one otherworldly. But so its very much like a kind of attunement of an ascetic who has left the world behind and is sitting in his/her cave. And as a matter of fact I daresay that that was the experience of some of the neophytes in the mysteries of Eluysis in Greece. And of course the Hesicats (sp!) in the proximity of Mt. Saini, St. Catherine's monastery, allot of caves. The cave does it for you. The enclosed space until you find another space within. So that's the practice, one places barriers to one's senses, these are not just sentinels, these are real barriers. So first thing, the index is on your eyes, on your eyelids, but turn your eyeballs upward so that you don't press on the retina, well of course on the cornea which would press on the retina and then place the fourth and fifth finger on your lips to hold them tight together kind of to give you a sense of some kind of obstacle to your expressing yourself for example your words, language. And then the middle finger in the proximity of the nostrils but do not yet press against your nostrils, just keep them there in a state of readiness and then, now I have to tell you before you do this, before you close your ears (laughs) to, you only breathe three times through the right nostril, never through the left nostril. You inhale, hold your breath, exhale through the right nostril, never the left nostril. I could explain why but lets just do it. And then keep your eyes closed after that. .......(silence to allow following of instructions) Take your hands away, but keep your eyes closed. So I hope this practice has the same effect on you as it has on me. There's no doubt that it does alienate oneself from the environment such as one normally experiences it. And if rather than letting oneself think that one is imprisoned, if one is able to open up from within and one discovers what seems to be an inner world, but this inner world is no different from the outer world. It is just a different way of seeing the world. Because that is that which transpires behind that which appears or through that which appears. And when you realize that then you realize that you can reach the outer world from within. For example if you're in a boat or if you're swimming on the surface of the lake you see separate water lilies. If you're swimming under the surface you see the network of roots. But somehow you can follow the network up to the water lily. And so you can reach the world such as it appears from inside. Now you remember trying to get into the consciousness of another person. We did this morning. So it seemed that we had to let go of our vantage point to get into the vantage point of that other person. But they have another view of the same thing and that is that it is (end of side one) (beginning side two) complementary or an affinity between that person and ourselves that we can see things from their point of view. It is recognizing and honoring that affinity that enables one to communicate with a being beyond time and space. There's no judgment in communion. There's no sense of otherness. Its a recognition of a deep, of identity at a very deep level. And I think that it is that which represents the power of love. That is to say which triggers off the power of love. Actually there are two things that spark the power of love. And the first one is affinity and the second one is complementary. Affinity, for example, you have two gongs in a room and if you play one gong and they have some frequencies in common, then the other gong will start resonating what is called sympathetic resonance. That would be based on affinity. And complementary is because those are the two poles of the same thing. I think of polarity, for example if you were to break a magnet in several fragments, each fragment would function like the whole magnet, that is each fragment would have a north pole and a south pole. And so we also are polarized. So there's the two opposites in each of us and we recognize them by the poles of our being and the opposite pole in another. OK, now how does one then relate to the physical level, to the level of the lets say the explicate state as Dr. David Boone calls it, the usual state which we are in, where light is radiant instead of all pervading. Incidentally, it is very well possible, I don't know enough about physics, but its very well possible that what I mean or what my father meant by all pervading light is what is called in physics "the light field". OK, so how does one then recover the perspective of every day life, that is how does one move from this all pervading light to the sense of radiant light, the aura being radiant. So imagine, for example, in the depths, lets say the inner lining, lets say if you turn your aura inside out, lets say in the depths of your aura, you'll find that light is all pervading and part of the light of the whole environment from within. And then the surface of your aura is radiant. And Pir Murshid describes it as, illustrates it as the stars, what he's saying is that the all pervading light of the universe is focalized in each star and then radiates it from a point located in space. And so in the same way while you are doing this practice as you exhale, think that you are now radiating into the explicate universe. Lets say the surface of life. You're radiating the light that surfaces from within. And maybe you could also say that the light that surfaces from within carries all the, say all the frequencies are interspersed. Whereas the light of the aura is like the spectrum, for example, of the sun, or whatever the spectrum of light phenomena. So it has different frequencies. Could be red at the bottom of the spine and gold in the heart and blue eyes and beautiful kind of violet in the third eye and colorless light at the top of your head. Something like the rainbow, but upside down. So it is really very wonderful to tap the light from within and radiate it out. So instead of just thinking that you need to absorb light from the environment, because you can do both at the same time, of course. So can you while you are identifying with your aura, can you just feel the differences between the nature of the light in the upper part, corresponding to the upper part of your body, and corresponding to the lower part of your body. So its like the lower frequencies in the lower part of the body and high frequencies in the higher part of the body. Hence that the sense of those colors, the colors are just the way that we see frequencies. Now there's a practice, a traditional practice that you find at quite a number of traditions, particularly the Zoroastrian tradition, the Magi, the Macaderian tradition prior to the Zoroastrian tradition, which is inherited by the Zoroastrian tradition, and is called the transmutation of fire into light. And the reason is that the low frequency of light also gives you a sense of heat, temperature. Infer-red, ultimately of course infer-red. And the high frequencies gives you a sense of cold light. So if you shift your consciousness as you inhale from the bottom of your spine to the top of your head, move upwards very slowly, your recognize, you could imagine, for example, a flame. And if you looked at a flame you might distinguish different colors in the flame. The red is at the bottom and the blue and violet at the top. So if you imagine those frequencies, those colors, that sequence of colors as you inhale, it will give you a wonderful sense of what it means by transmuting, and perhaps even more what one means by transfiguration. It is accompanied by a parallel feeling of first of all one's bodyness and then gradually moving into being pure spirit. In terms of physics it would be shifting from matter to energy. Matter is continually being transformed into energy and energy is being transformed into matter. Or you could think of what happens in alchemy and in homeopathy. Matter is transubstantiated. Distilled to the point when all that remains of the original electrons is pure energy. Instead of moving up your spine, you could think of yourself as something like Chinese boxes, for example, so that you are shifting from those sheaths, lets say different sheaths that are interspersed. Now shifting from the grosser to the subtler ones, to the rarefied ones. And that means that your sense of identity shifts from thinking of yourself as an incarnated, discreet individual, or thinking of yourself, or discovering your celestial identity. So imagine your celestial body, if one can call it a body carved in the fabric of that level of light which we call the high frequency of light. Where there is no matter, no reliquid (?) of matter. And here again we have a sense of deja-vu. I would say deja-condi (?) is reminiscent of something that you do remember, but is rather vague, is a memory that is consigned in the unconscious, but you do remember somehow, yes looking into the eyes of a baby, the light in the eyes of a baby reminds you of something that is very difficult to see in the physical world, to observe in the physical world. As though the impressions of the world have not yet polluted the glance of that baby. And then it sparks in you a reminiscence of your celestial identity. And of course its very difficult to reconcile that sense of identity with one's ordinary self image. So it seems like a split. Now there are ways of bridging that gap. And one is to feel that first of all, I mean to realize that first of all your personality is playing a role in life, in society. The role that society expects of you to play, vying with the Jone's as one says. That is the degree to which you have adapted yourself to the challenge of society such as it is and therefore being conditioned by it. But when you have discovered your celestial identity, then you realize that that is not really you. That its, that aspect of yourself that has adapted itself. And it seems like a peripheral zone of your personality, your (inaudible) osmosis with the environment. But much more importantly, you discover that in fact you're wearing a mask. And now you have a feeling: ah, at last I know who I am. And I have identified all this time with this mask. And maybe this mask was due to the invention of the mirror which is very deluding, unless you can see what transpires behind that which appears in the mirror. The cheapest of all feedback systems, the mirror. But it started by, the Sufi story goes, the baby lion or tiger looking at its self in the lake, the parent tiger ..., the baby tiger, the cub was in a flock of sheep and thought it was a sheep until his parent came and said, "Look at yourself in the lake and you see you're not, you don't look like those sheep. That's the first sort of recognition of identity. Its all a question of identity. All of the sudden you discover a different identity to your self image. And you just spring with delight and you think, ah if only I had known this, I've been so contemptuous of my Being! And such a bad self image. Because I didn't know this. But then you think, "How can I reconcile this two things, I mean I'm wearing a mask, OK, but then is this mask definitely not me? And one can say that it is in some way a distortion of what one is due to guilt, due to the overlap of the environment, due to allot of things. Parental, ancestral inheritance and so on. There are allot of elements. One's need to adapt oneself to the environment and so on. So there's been a distortion, and as a matter of fact a defilement. And now comes the really crucial discovery. And the best way to illustrate it is in the voice of Caruso. The voice of Caruso can be retrieved now practically in its firstwhile (?) glory. From its very distortion in the bad recordings of the time. But what this really means is that our true Being is present within this distortion. So don't think that there's one aspect of me that is not me or that is defiled and I don't like it, and then there's another aspect of me that I like and that's my celestial being. That's splitting yourself in two. That is thinking in terms of duality. And that is the reason why that in adwaita(?) Vedanta one always tries to see unity rather than duality or diversity and this is the way to do it, to realize that even your immaculate Being is present within its distortion and yet it remains immaculate, even though distorted. I know it sounds like a contradiction, its not logical, but that's the way it is. And that its purity can be retrieved from its distortion. As Pir Murshid says, in the core of our being there is something which is like the mirror that can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. And so there you are, thinking as we did this morning of the input of impressions, in placing sentinels at the doors of perception and at the doors of your psyche, remember that those impressions seek deeper and deeper into the depths of your being, and however ugly they are, they can never tarnish the purity of your Being. That is the saving grace against any sense of disparaging oneself because of those aspects of oneself one does not like. So there is sense that nobody can really hurt you in the depths of your being. Nobody can take away what you are. Nobody can make you what you're not. That give you an inner strength. Back when I think of that lady, she was being lynched in the southern states and she said, "You can do what you like with my body, but you can't touch my soul." That is the ultimate freedom. The freedom from conditions. The freedom from one's identity. It's discovering the sacred status of one's being and in this one discovers the divine nature. Yes, the last words of my sister when she was beaten to death in a concentration camp was "Viva la Liberte!" Hail to Freedom. You can't touch me, I am free. You see how you're not bugged by random thoughts as you would be if you tried to force yourself to meditate, fighting those thoughts. I am sure that the mind is racing in the periphery, in the twilight of your consciousness. But somehow it is related to a deep discovery and therefore not random. There is a way of keeping your consciousness, like beams of your eyes, for example, straight ahead. And consider your thoughts as circulating in the twilight of your consciousness. That means that you do not turn your attention towards the incoming thoughts, and consequently they are integrated into your sense of meaningfulness without being disturbing. OK, so I think now we need to have a break, so we'll have a break for 20 minutes. Its now 4:00, so at twenty past four we'll meet again. ?? 95V03-25 Tape 04 TAPE #4 Seattle, March '95, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan Transcribed by Amira, Seattle ...... It's a poor man's beggar's bowl. And the reason for it is because I am collecting this time--I used to be collecting for the children's project, the Hope Project in India, and we continue to do that but since that time there have been so many homeless people in Europe and in the United States and charity starts at home. My heart goes out to these people and I hope yours does too. Some of whom are very wonderful people but for circumstances beyond their control they paid their last pay check out for their rent and ran out of money and end up in the streets with their kids: women, children, younger people or older people, in the cold. Imagine what it's like not to have a home. It may be that some are vagabonds but one doesn't know what hit their heart to have reached the point when they can't deal with the world any more. So that's the reason for this beggar's bowl now. We do have an organization that is working for the homeless. One of our mureeds in the Sufi Order, his name is (? sp.Jemaluddin), in Atlanta, and he has an enormous project distributing food to thousands of people in canteens in Atlanta and networking with kindred organizations in other parts of the states. He is also working with churches to ask them to open their crypt to the homeless and I don't know whether you know that Ex-President Carter is himself into a very wide-ranged project helping out himself with his hands building homes for the homeless. So we want to be part of this charity of the heart. (Jemaluddin?) told me there is more than giving them the wherewithal to survive because deep down, of course, Page 2 - Pir Vilayat - Tape 4 Seattle, March '95 there's the problem of their self image which has been so damaged that they don't have the courage to present themselves for a job because they are so used to being turned down and have such a bad self image. So we have the great privilege of being able to work with, ourselves, those people who are difficult to reach because they have been so damaged, but Jemaluddin says that when one does talk to them they all of a sudden open up, some of them, and they feel a kind of moral support. A lot of people think that they can't be reached, you know, you see them and they are begging and well, they give them charity or don't give them charity but somehow one doesn't think that one can reach them but I know that one can. One can talk to them. And there is something that comes through that is just absolutely heartbreaking when you talk to them. What it means to them! Just a smile makes all the difference to them. So the beggar's bowl is one thing, but your smile is maybe even more important: your recognition of the divinity of their being, of the sacred status of their being. Now it is true that we have a service in Paris of some of our Sufis who go around on the banks of the river the Seine, and talk to what they call the Clochards and bring them soup: hot soup. Well, they are drinking wine because it makes them high and so it's easier to stand the cold and stand their desperation, when their drunk, so let's not accuse them of being alcoholics; and perhaps some of them take drugs for the same reason. But hot soup on a cold night coming from a warm heart and then talking to those people sometimes through the night, and some of them have come--got back into life again. I mean, what we call life. They've got their job page 3 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle, Tape 4, March, '95 now and are able to function again so we mustn't think that the damage is irreversible but it is not easy. Thank you. OK, well that's the reason for the beggar's bowl and if you want to have more particulars then you could address yourself to Rashid who is the gentleman who tries to protect me from falling down the steps when I get up out of deference for my age. (laughter) So we've been working with turning within so you're out of it now but it would be good to see if you can get back into that state again at the command of your will so that you're able to do this at any time even if you're sitting in your office. You put your head in your hands so your boss thinks that you're tired or you're relaxing or you're practicing yoga or whatever. And so even just for a very short period of time it's good to know how one does it. So of course there are-- with more difficult techniques of shifting one's sense of identity but the more tangible techniques would consist of simply first thinking that you are absorbing light and then that you are a being of light and all of those different practices that we've done with light will help you to at least start turning within and then to think that that which is known to you, your perception at the surface of the lake for example, is only the way that that which is below the lake is able to transpire at the surface and you will find that indeed it is your search for freedom that will help you to withdraw your attention from the way things appear at the surface, particularly if you realize that you have been conditioned and freedom is of course ultimately freedom from conditioning. So the way I see it is that one is down-playing a perspective in order to highlight another perspective. So remember that because that really is a clue. For example, if you are looking at a blackboard and you've drawn a "Q" you can see it one way or the other way so Page 4 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle, Tape 4, March, '95 the other way so you can shift your perspective or if you were to look at a hologram--I've seen holograms in which there are two or more pictures, like for example the shroud of Turin of Christ and then a painting of Christ--and you can just shift your glance as though you can alternate between one perspective and the other. So that's what I mean by awakening and the only way in which you could modulate your consciousness in these dimensions which I am going to just describe but I'm trying to show how one can do it, is to think that indeed they are perspectives of the same reality so it's not like there's the world of the celestial sphere and there's a physical world and different worlds. No, it's the same reality but there are different perspectives of this reality and in order to gain a new perspective you have to down play the perspective in which you were and highlight the alternate perspective. In order to highlight--to let go of the former perspective you need to apply your desire for freedom. That is where something of the nature of the ascetic is present in each one of us although we are engaged and involved in the world. Somehow it is your sense of being detached and indifferent and untouched that enables you to free yourself from the common place perspective in order to reach into these other perspectives. Now, one of the ways in which I have tried to describe that perspective that you get into when you turn within is that everything intersperses everything else like radio waves: an osmosis between you and other people for example and the consequence is that it seems as though one's sense of space, of location in space, has collapsed. These are words of many mystics: for example, Al Hallaj. It corroborates with the view of Page 5 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 physicists--the inverted space. I would say that space--and this is helpful in my meditation, I hope it will help yours--and that is that space, or rather the location in space, is only meaningful for where there is matter: for one's body, for one's experiences in the physical world. But if you think of yourself as a celestial being there is hardly any sense of bodiness remaining and therefore no remnant of any sense of being located in space and therefore it is incongruous to ask the question: "Where are the angels to be found?" They're not located in space; or, your angelic counterpart has nothing to do with space. But what is more, it has nothing to do with the arrow of time. So now I hope you don't mind if we just have to look into something that might be a little bit difficult to understand. That is that the advance of time--well, first of all, that time is just as landscaped as space. Space is landscaped in what we call gravity--with gravitation, actually, through the presence of matter. It's contracted, let's say. And then it's rarified where matter is not so concentrated. So space is, let's say, landscaped; but so is time. And that means that time can stop; can stand still. And normally we don't understand what that could mean. 'f course, we have the illustration of the pendulum: that's the swing, there's a moment when it's almost as if--in fact it is that the pendulum stands still for one moment at the end of its swing on one side before it swings to the other side. So instead of thinking the pendulum stands still you could think that time is arrested and its forward march is suspended, just like in music. For example, you can have an apostrophe and in Indian music the dead beat gives you a sense of suspense but the Page 6 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 thing about it is that is the instant of time and it's important to see the difference between the instant of time and the moment of time. When you are listening to music, for example, the notes that you have just heart continue to resonate in your ears while you are hearing the present note so there is some overlap between the past and the present except that, as I say, there are cases where you have a dead beat in the music and that is intended to make you see the difference between the moment of time and the instant of time. One could also say that the present prefigures the future: that while you are listening to music you could almost imagine what the next note is. There is some over-lap there. But let's come back to the instant of time. The Sufi dervishes say: "Avuct." That is the instant of time. It's a sharp sword that cuts. Now, what they say is psychological here instead of metaphysical. It cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future. That is a very broad statement and we need to look at it. Perhaps you recognize that there are moments in your life that you turn a new leaf and somehow there is a definite break from the past. Therefore, what determines this break from the past? How total is this break? Is it really so that one's guilt--one can be exonerated from one's guilt or is it only relative? That is the question that you could ask. How do you bring about any kind of change because normally one thinks: "What I've done--" the consciousness is like a spotlight and then there is a hole sewn which is not quite so brilliantly lighted up--the twilight. So you're vaguely aware of them but they are able to sort themselves out somehow. But you don't turn your consciousness Page 7 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 toward them so you're not--you don't incur their sway upon your thinking. Now, while all of this is happening in the center of your being, let's say there is just a sense of meaningfulness without it being broken up in thoughts and perhaps this is what is meant by realization. So while our thoughts seem to be rotating, moving, jiggling as it were in the periphery, somehow a sense of meaningfulness seems to emerge from within--seems to be revealed. It isn't something that you can attain by your will but it is revealed to you gradually as you evolve. Because the whole universe is revealing itself in each fragment of itself at all levels: not only in the idiosyncrasies of your personality but in your realization. But, of course, there is no way of saying it and there's no way of translating it into one's ordinary thinking. So unfortunately we have to end this day now. I hope we'll meet tomorrow again and continue the work. Thank you for your attention. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Still Side I, Tape 4, Seattle, March '95 - Pir Vilayat ........because somehow we think in terms of causality unless our thinking is more sophisticated we assume that what we sow we reap, karma you know, causality as it was conceived in physics. So for example we imagine that a wave in the sea is the continuation of the previous wave but actually it is true that the previous wave does have consequences in the next wave but in addition to that the whole ocean emerges as each new wave so that there are two causal chains here, not just one. And so the second causal chain interferes with the previous one and if it were not for that there would never be anything new in the universe. And that is the meaning of a concept Page 8 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 that you find in the church: Ex ni hi lo. 'ut of nothing. That is, not conditioned. There is an aspect of your being that is not conditioned and that affirms your freedom and your pledge is, how can I say, the way that you actualize your free will and overcome the influence of the determinism of the past. So let us just think now of our past and the events in the past and the people in our past; of our behavior towards them and their behavior towards us and to think of how you have changed. And while there might be some continuity in your change, some progression in the developmental states of your being, there are leaps and bounds: There are moments--there are instances when you have suddenly changed from one condition to another, and you notice that that which determined that change was your pledge. And your pledge consists of two things: one is, "I will not do this again," and the other is, "I will do this," whatever it is that you've pledged. So you are prefiguring the future. You are bringing about some kind of action upon the past, some kind of freedom from causality by interrupting the arrow of time, the flow of time moving, of what one calls becoming. But you are also prefiguring the future--that is, your pledge represents a decision which could find its application in very practical things: "I am going to do this--or that." So you're planning your life, that's called prefiguring, and of course we feel very precarious when we plan our lives--especially in the days in which we are living. But, however, we need to plan ahead and there is something that we need to know here and that is, and I'm quoting a very wonderful scientist, Euler, who said: "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." Now, do Page 9 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 remember that. It's a whole new outlook. Instead of thinking that you are the consequence of your past think that your prefigurations of your future are pulling you out of the past and opening new possibilities that wouldn't be possible if the past continued the way it was. So we have a breathing practice that helps in that for each breath (whether its inhaling or holding the breath or exhaling) one has a different thought and so the breath, how can I say, organizes your thinking in specific ways that are useful and give you a very clear sense. So place the thumb of your right hand under your chin and the middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril and place don't press it yet-- and place the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand and place the thumb of your left in the proximity of your left nostril. Now first of all simply exhale through both nostrils and then inhale through both nostrils and then once more exhale through both nostrils, inhale through both nostrils, now hold your breath and then exhale through both nostrils. So to hold your breath you have to press the fingers on both nostrils and now you find that the more deeply you exhale, the more thoroughly you exhale, the more oxygen you are able to take in as you inhale and consequently the longer you can hold your breath. All right, now simply inhale through the left nostril by pressing the middle finger of your right hand on the right nostril and think of the past moving into the present. Now hold your breath by pressing the middle finger of your right hand and thumb of your left hand and just imagine that time stops and make a pledge. Then exhale through the Page 10 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 right nostril and make your plans. Imagine your plans for the future: how you could improve things, and therefore how you could free yourself from the way things are at present and to improve things you have to let go of the past and the present with hope for improvement. Otherwise, you stay sclerosed in the way you are. So do this several times now. Pause..... 'f course the instant of time does not have duration and so if you think in terms of the arrow of time then of course while you are holding your breath you think that that has duration but if you can imagine that the advance of time can be interrupted like the pendulum at the end of its swing, then just think of suspense and you are making a pledge. And a pledge is always a sudden change of tack. It has no duration. Turning a new leaf. And you see how you free yourself from even just thinking that the past has its consequence in the present. If you down-play that thought and highlight the thought, the future pulls you out of the karma of the past because you have pledged yourself not only not to continue doing what you did, but you have to pledged yourself to do something which you can really subscribe to. OK, now: Inhale through the right nostril and hold your breath and exhale through the left nostril. Now in this case you have totally laid aside any thought about the past and you're fully engaged in your planning for the future. But as you move from the right to the middle--let's say you're drawing in air (oxygen) from the right and then you hold your breath; you realize that your planning does limit your freedom. You realize that, don't you? If I've made a commitment Page 11 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, '95 to a seminar and there's a world conference I'm limiting my freedom because I've committed myself to a seminar so you are limiting your freedom by your planning. It does not mean that you must not plan but you are limiting your freedom. Consequently, when you hold your breath, just consider that your plans don't work out and so now you can free yourself from your planning just as you've freed yourself from your past. And the formula here is a word of Hazrat Inayat Khan. He talks about a fiasco that can aver itself to be a victory. So what seems to be a defeat might aver itself to be a victory and you don't know it. For example there is a story of the verger who, when the "powers that be" in the church discovered that he couldn't read or write, they dismissed him and he started a little business selling matches in the street and eventually he got richer and richer and had brought his money in the bank and one day there was a new man at the counter and he said: "You can't write?! Imagine how rich you'd be if you could write!" And he said: "I would be a verger." That is, I don't know if that is a word used in America. It would be sweeping the church and paid very little. So this is the way that our planning can stand in our way and Pir-o-Murshid says that of course by taking upon yourself a challenge you gain power and with that power you can face a still greater challenge but remember that your objective limits your power. That is the secret of what the Sufis call the Divine Power. If the purpose of your life is selfless you develop divine power: the power of the dervish. And wherever there is greed or covetousness, then your power is limited. And now you look at the past and you realize that all your mistakes, of course--I hope nobody is offended if I say that--and Page 12 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 you see that something is gained by them. You see that the future gives you new perspectives over the past. The impact of the future upon the past. And now breathe in through both nostrils and hold your breath and exhale through both nostrils and do it several times. Now you are encountering a very different situation. Supposing you were identifying with the bit of lead that is in the pendulum that is moving from left to right and right to left and then suspended in the instant of time, but you shift your consciousness into the fulcrum as there is a point of rotation, let's say the nail upon which the cord is suspended that holds the pendulum, and if you are able to do that then you might have a sense that there is something in your being, there is some point--maybe at infinite regress--which is unchanged; and therefore we think it is eternal. (SIDE II TAPE 4, PIR VILAYAT - Seattle, March, '95 So now imagine that--let's say at one extreme, one pole of your being, you are moving in time and space with interruptions in the flow of time. That would be, let's say, at the lower part of your being, let's say the lower pole of your being, and at the higher pole of your being there is a point which remains unchanged throughout the changes in your being. That is, you become aware of what one calls the eternity of your being. Now you realize that through your pledge you can bring about changes in your life by your individual will and therefore your individual will seems to contrast with your fate. You recognize that you can bring about some change in your fate by your free will. Is there such a thing as fate? What do we mean? Do we mean that our life is preordained? But if our life were preordained we wouldn't enjoy free will. And yet Page 13 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 things happen beyond our free will; beyond our incentive. And so there seem to be those two things, those two poles let's say seem to contradict one another and oppose one another and if you think simplistically then you think: well, there's God's Will and my will and sometimes my will is in sync with the Divine Will and sometimes your will is contrary to the Divine Will. That's a very simplistic way of thinking. Thinking in terms of duality. The fact is that your will, what you think is your will, is like the branch of a tree as compared with the Divine Will that is the total tree. That would be an easier way of thinking of it. But perhaps a more sophisticated way of thinking of it is that the Divine Will is customized by your will or let's say your will is like a branch of the same will but individuated and therefore you are customizing the Divine Will. L'NG PAUSE - Humming & Buzzing ? Cut off of tape and Drop out? Would it be conceivable if (? each of us could?) STATIC & HUMMING 'N TAPE bring about some change in the theme. Would it be conceivable your free will alters your fate. To talk perhaps a little more simplistically, is it conceivable that--man proposing and God disposing; is it possible that God proposes and man disposes. Is it possible that the One and only Being reaches fulfillment in the multiplicity of fragments of Him/Herself by conferring freedom to each one of these fragments? Is it conceivable that the way that the software of the universe is processed by our programming, would be fed back into the software. And that's the only way that life makes sense. There is a word of Jelaluddin Rumi which really shattered my understanding when he said: "Tonight the teeming world of the stars Page 14 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 gives birth to the life eternal." Now that's very challenging because we think it starts with the eternal and it moves down into transiency; that what we experience, the gist of what we experience, is somehow fed back into the total being is the only thing that makes sense of our lives. It doesn't make sense that all that we have experienced, all the know-how that we have gained gets lost. One can even go further than that. There is a saying of the Sufis who say: "Why do you look for God up there? He is here." Or rather, you are Him. Him/Her, I would say. It's a very challenging way of looking at things. And it's a total break from the old tradition. But spiritual paradigms are continually moving ahead and we are gaining new insight into the meaning of our lives and that will influence our being; our realization influences our being. And so one can say that each person is in life according to his or her degree of realization and that is one of the things that we are looking for. It is not just the unfurling of the qualities in our being, but awakening. Realization. Illumination. Now, so when you are doing this practice somehow you have a sense of moving from the pendulum, that is the lead, the piece of lead at the end of the pendulum, or whatever it is--the weight--to the fulcrum, moving upwards and then downwards. You're not moving left and right, you are moving upwards and downwards so the past and the future are downplayed. You are not concerned with them. You are concerned about that very paradoxical interplay between your free will and the over-riding will of the universe that sometimes over-rides your will. But the question now is whether your will can over-ride that over-riding will. Page 15 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March, '95 And there was a word of Jung that again really shattered my understanding when he said that if you do not meet your shadow it will appear to you in the form of your fate. So your free will is going to alter your fate. Well, maybe I'm jumping the gun here. Let's just keep to the words of Jung. Is it true that people who are dying in Bosnia are incurring this fate because they didn't meet their shadow? You can't say that. Other people are dying of starvation or--there are so many cases. You can't say that. But you could ask yourself: Are there cases where it's true. Now I'll try to illustrate it. When you are looking into the past and you say to yourself: "If I had been the way I am now things would not have happened the way they did." Because, if you look into the past and try to recollect the events in your life and how you changed in the course of your life, then your natural tendency would be to see how the events have changed your personality but what I'm talking about is the opposite. Try to see how the changes in your personality have drawn or removed situations. That is, if you had been the way you are now then you would not have allowed the situation to occur. So in some way your being has an impact upon your fate. So there may be cases where it is true and there may be cases where it's not true. So I'd like to just terminate now with--there are many more things to work with and we'll be going into them tomorrow morning but just at this moment what I'd like to do is just to share in a very deep silent meditation where you reflect upon some of the views that you've been exposed to by the interaction between Page 16 - Pir Vilayat - Seattle - Tape 4, March '95 my mind and your mind and your minds and my mind and so you look upon your life in an effort to try to see meaningfulness where before you did not see meaningfulness and then views may erupt quite dramatically in your mind, things that you hadn't seen before and give you what they call the "Ah ha" feeling. For example, you might have thought: as long as the situation is the way it is in my life I will never be able to attain illumination. 'r, let's say, the presence of this person brings the worst out in me. I'll never be able to become the (way I am ?) having to deal with this person all the time. What if this were wrong? What if it is just thanks to this challenge that you are able to see something that you had not seen before and that is what realization is about and if you had not been placed facing this challenge that wouldn't have occurred. And secondly, instead of adapting yourself to the environment can you adapt the environment to your sense of purpose? And then you are not the victim of the environment and consequently you have found freedom. L'NG PAUSE F'R THE MEDITATION End of side 2, tape 4 1 Tape #5 MAR 25, 1995 Tape 05 Tape #5 3/25/95 Seattle Yes, and the second day - as a preamble to what we are going to do - I just mentioned a quote of (Pir 'shNiraitan) who said, well, first of all he said, as I already quoted yesterday, that when we talk about God we assume that we're talking about God, but actually we're talking about what we assume God to be, so our projections - that he calls conceptualizing, conceptualizing of God. It is useful to start by that, and recall that, if you remember what I said yesterday, is that we carry within ourselves potentially the code, the DNA, of the whole universe not only in our body but also in our psyche. But of course most of the genes are recessive; only some are turned on, and somehow through by dint of our imagination we project those potentialities into an image that we call God and so that is as far as we get to knowing God at that stage, is through the projections of something that is present in us but recessive, most of it, so it is a kind of an intuition that we have that enables us to project a picture which is really (.........) because we couldn't project a picture if there wasn't something within us that we project, and whatever it is in us, if it is indeed the code of the universe, although as I say restrained, is of course the way that the universe is present in us and therefore what I mean by the universe is God or what I mean by God is the universe at all levels so that's conceptualization, but then (inaudible) says mysticism starts by the experience of God. So the conceptualization is only the first step. But then you could say, in the perspective of the Sufis, God cannot be the object of our cognizance because he/she is the subject. Well, if we use the word the universe, then we think that we are experiencing the universe, but what we are doing is simply limiting ourselves to the way the universe appears from our personal vantage point. Well, how God appears to us toward what Sufis call the sign, the signs through which reality is known, is made known to us, like the (pock) marks of a bear in the snow. We haven't seen the bear in the snow but the (pock) marks will give us some indication that the bear has passed that way. Those are signs. But then we have a paradoxical view which we encountered yesterday, and that is that instead of thinking that you are looking at the universe, think that the universe is looking at you. As the word of St. Francis of Assisi, so it is total reversal of all those things, those ways of looking at things with which we are familiar. Very challenging. And I would say that that is the key to Sufism, to understanding Sufism, because one is always seeing things from the antipolar standpoint to one is own standpoint. And if you think that there is still an assumption there about the existence of God, then we can say this, that in mathematics for example, number one is, or any number can only be, meaningful in terms of infinity. Mathematics would be inconceivable without the notion of infinity which (inaudible) describes as the ability to always imagine a larger number than the number one has imagined so far. So then the experience of God would be very different from our usual experience because we are not the experiencer, we are not the spectator, yet our consciousness focalizes the consciousness of the universe, reflecting upon itself as us through us. And then, in the third step (inaudible) says 'But then comes a time when God is awakened.' One awakens, therefore these potentialities. I already said that yesterday. Imagine that you have all the DNA but it's just like a keyboard, the keys of the keyboard of a piano, but most of them are scotch taped, and so awakening that, those potentialities, would be like pulling off the scotch tape. You can release potentialities that are waiting to be released, to be activated, actualized. And then after all of that, Pir (inaudible) said that all this is just a replicate of that reality which is transcendent, and so then you think of, it could be illustrated by a hologram, fro example, or rather holograph, so that the image that you see is a projection. Actually it is more that a projection, it is a real replica of the original image, but it's not the original image. It has all the features of it there; it's not (inaudible), it's not Maya, so that's the Sufi view. I hope it helps you. If you have been exposed to Buddhism then you find it a little more difficult now to believe in God, without this kind of explanation that makes it more acceptable. But what I'm talking about is not belief, but try to - how can I say it - to process your experience in order to discover further modes of experience than the commonplace one. And that is what meditation is about. So we're going to make a first attempt at this. As I say this is the Sufi view. So we start with a breathing practice, but instead of doing what you did yesterday, thinking 'I am breathing in, I am breathing out, I'm holding my breath,I think to yourself, and I'm applying simply the words of the dervishes, the Sufi dervishes, think that ‹my outbreath, my exhaling, is an extension of the divine exhaling.I tHere'S a bit of feedback, could you bring it down a bit?) My exhaling is an extension of the divine exhaling and my inhaling is an extension of the divine inhaling, so instead of thinking - What we did yesterday, if you remember, we said, just imagine that the universe is the ebb and flow in the universe, so you don't determine when you want to inhale and exhale, you just let it happen, you let the universe itself realize itself in you. And so it's quite a different thing to measure your breathing on the metronome, for example. Now this is a more advanced form. Now we're thinking of the universe not in its cosmic dimension but in its transcendent. So now these are the, you see actually what we are doing in meditation is, we are really applying a Tibetan model, which is this: The mind rides the wind. The wind is energy, the mind is the understanding or even consciousness, whatever, so it is like Belaphron and Pegassus, so breath, when one is breathing in and out one is not just in the sense of their (inaudible). It is not just taking the air and expelling the air but one is exchanging magnetism with the environment. Anyway, there's work, something happens at the level of energy, at the energy level, at the light field, one might say, but I think it is useful to take of this, one's inhaling and exhaling, to modulate one's thought to and fro, for example, alternating one is thought. And this might even happen if you are holding your breath and you can not only alternate your thought but you can entertain three modes of thought. So the Sufi motto would be this: As God exhales he (I'm using the ancient terminology) now these are the ways of the Sufis, he descends from the solitude of unity in order to actualize the splendor inherent in his being. Into the configuration of beauty at the existential level. So while we are exhaling, while you are exhaling, just imagine that you are really a denizen from outer space and you have landed on the planet in order to fulfill that need, divine need you might say. It's the need of the cosmos to translate the intangible existential way, your ideal lets say, splendor your ideal. Somehow your sense of having descended from a (inaudible) condition and with the task to try and build a beautiful world, a beautiful people I should say. 'n the model of this kind of inherent tradition you have of the splendor of the heavens, instead of thinking the heavens is up there, think that it is potentially present within us and we need to activate it. Actualize it. And according to Sufis, there is an emotion that triggers off this descent into, from the solitude of unknowing or the solitude of unity, into the multiplicity of and diversity of the existential condition. There is of course a fragmentation of the total being, but if you consider the holistic paradigm, then of course it carries potentially the code of the totality. But as I say, the emotion behind it is called Ishkala, which is nostalgia, so feel your nostalgia as a being who has landed on planet earth. It's a way of talking, of course, about a body out of the fabric of the planet, but your nostalgia that is what are your motivations, as we did yesterday, what are your values, so it is really an emotion. Maybe the values, we can try to figure them out with our mind, although they are archetypes, but behind these is nostalgia. There's a kind of wish, there's a kind of desire. There's an emotion, maybe it is an emotion of love, to create beautiful conditions. And some people do it better than others, composing beautiful music, creating a beautiful physical environment, and so from this point of view if you want to build a beautiful house and have everything nice and more comfortable and so on, or if you need culture like music and so on, well this is purely legitimate in Sufism. In fact, it is an expression of the divine Ishkala. Whereas in Buddhism, at least the original form of Buddhism, it was intended for monks and their objective is to find freedom rather than involvement. So as you're exhaling then realize that thrust, emotional thrust of your being seeking fulfillment in life, and of course you realize that in order to attain this fulfillment you need to involve yourself with deeper situations and that this involvement does, letS say, certainly limit your freedom, at least your circumstantial freedom, your freedom to move, to act or whatever - Some kind of one has to conform within the pattern that society provides for us or imposes upon us. Now as you inhale, according to Sufis as God inhales, or if you like as the universe inhales, if you think of the universe as not just the physical universe but all levels, and God draws the quintessence of that which has been gained by experience at the existential level back into the unity again, so it's almost paraphrasing that in modern language one would say that what is gained by applying the software of the universe is recycled into the software so that the divine programming is not static but is dynamic and continually upgraded and updated. And to do that one needs to, we are doing that ourselves, of course, in the sense that inhaling is part of the divine inhaling and what it entails is extracting the quintessence of what has been gained in our knowing how. Let us say that our sense of meaningfulness would be in the quintessence of our know how so that there's a lot of know how in that. For example, to become a doctor you need a lot of know how, but you can't carry that know how with you after you die, but the wisdom yes, the quintessence. So that is to be found in alchemy, in distilling, for example, the process of distilling. Transmuting. Making perfume out of flowers so the dross is rejected and the essence of the flowers lives eternally, So that is what we're doing, but it's good to realize this, that ultimately it is our realization which is the distillate from what we gained in terms of experience in our lives. And therefore we are highlighting awakening until it is unfolding our being (or put in charges?). We're highlighting awakening and it might be called elimination. But you realize that to distill does mean that one has to reject, lets say, the underpinning, the substructure, the dross as I said. And the fact is that we get attached to this underpinning. In fact, we get addicted to it and forget that it's just a support system, like a scaffolding support system. And so there's not a way of attaining any relation of awakening if we're dependent upon the substructure. Or rather, let us say it's like Pegasus, like I said yesterday, who could not reach the Olympus, the height was too high, so Belaphron had to proceed on his own. Bellerophon was the rider. So in the same way at a time when we have to kick the ladder, we have to use the ladder and then at a certain moment proceed without schlepping the ladder with us because we have to let go. So this is what we mean by freedom. And if you look at yourselves you find that you're pulled in two directions really, because on the one hand you enjoy involving yourself in life, your sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, and on the other hand you realize that it does involve some kind of constraint and limitation and what is more, conditioning. And something in you, if you're a devout being, something in you clamors for freedom. At least one perhaps of the most pertinent expressions of freedom would be freedom from conditioning, in fact it is the ultimate freedom. So for the Sufis, of course, it is the divine freedom that enables God, let's say the totality of being, to recycle existence and so there needs to be some kind of pulling apart so there may be a rebirthing and so for that rebirthing one has to let go of that which one is accustomed to and which constitutes the underpinning. all right, now let's follow - Remember what you did yesterday, we were turning within. We were doing several things, but that was one of them. We emphasized that. Now today we're going to emphasize awakening and that is transcending the existential state. How do we proceed? Well, there are two mottoes, how can I say it, two keys that Pir Murshid mentions. The first one is a kind of, he uses the word passion, for the unattainable. And that's a curious word, because how can you attain the unattainable? It's not logical of course, but the beauty of that is that it keeps on luring you further and further, so it is not something you can grab and put in your pocket, something that keeps on luring you. Your consciousness beyond. Let's say shifting the focus of your consciousness beyond the existential condition. Let us say, beyond the way that the software of the universe is actualized in the hardware. In other words, the hardware is only an expression of the software. But one forgets that. One gets attached to the hardware. So one thing is to give in to your nostalgia. Perhaps we should use another word; it doesn't matter what word we use, but (inaudible) used the word passion, a kind of real quest for one is kind of intuition that there is meaningfulness in splendor beyond what we experience throughout middle range, the middle range of our conscious act. It is an intuition. There's no way of proving it, of course, but I think the reason for it, although it is not quite a total explanation, a satisfactory explanation, is because while the DNA of the universe in your being, your psyche, is most of it is recessive, is potential, let's say in the software, let's say of the universe, it is perfect. That is, it is not headed back by the need for diversification because it's the fact that certain genes are turned on and others are turned off that makes for diversification between the different organs of our body, for example. But in the software, in the archetypal level of the software, there's no need for this diversification, because the sense of oneness is paramount. And so that is probably what we mean by divine perfection or the sublime or the sacred splendor of glory and it is that intuition, it is beyond understanding, our grasp, that lures us above letS say the commonplace condition in which we are conditioned and driven by our appetites and our covetousness and our emotions of, could be resentment or it could be jealousy or it could be even hatred. All those emotions that, if you act them out, will cause a lot of suffering to other people. So I hope that you feel that, longing isn't the right word, but aspiration, yes. And it's not like there's something there, no. It's as (inaudible) said, the further you've gone the further- it's like the horizon; the further you advance the further it recedes. So it's like something that helps us to shift our consciousness from its normal setting. I've already said, of course, that meditation consists in shifting the focus of your consciousness just as, for example, in a hologram you could, for example, have two pictures in the hologram. You could shift your consciousness from picking up one slice of the hologram, one image within the hologram, or the other one. So you have to downplay one setting of consciousness in order to highlight the other. And so to do this you're going to have to downplay the perspective of the physical world, such as it appears, in order to highlight another view of the universe which differs very greatly from the way the universe appears from our personal vantage point, because from our personal vantage point objects seem to have boundaries and the same applies to our thinking - when we think in thoughts, our thinking breaks up into discreet thoughts. Now to allow yourself to shift your consciousness beyond a commonplace view of the universe, and that means of your problems, there's a transition state which you can encounter if you identify with your aura like we did yesterday and you see that your aura intersperses that of other beings, that already different way of looking at the universe. There's an osmosis, an overlap, everything is intertwined with everything else, just like radio waves, so we've already encountered that yesterday when we turned within. But now we need to, if we want to awaken from those two perspectives, then we need to try to figure out another perspective whereby we see movingness behind form, we see after the present. Well, in the first perspective objects have forms, so you could say that the software of the universe is actualizing itself in forms, in configurations. At the second level, it is much more like configurations than forms. There's no profile. Like for example, the countenance of your face rather than the muscles of your face. The countenance comes through. But now this third level, we call this celestial level, it cannot be encountered by an act of will or any representation of what it would be like because all our modes of experience do not operate at that level. And the first thing that we have to know is that, as I said yesterday, space is only meaningful where there's bodiness, or there's matter. And we also explored the way that time can be suspended in watchacallit - an instant and that notion of eternity which is again in infinite regression, can never reach but still it is in infinite regress. So if you are prepared to let go of your assumptions regarding the nature of matter, regarding the nature of space, location of space, for example I need to be located here, I am in this hall here, and so on, if you would let go of those notions and while being aware that you are like a river, that is, a continuity and change, you cleave to the continuity and downplay your awareness of the change so that gradually you get to sense your true being in comparison with your, the transient aspect of your being. Those are not two different things, it is just different ways of highlighting one aspect or the other. And all of a sudden you have a sense of being able to exist beyond the existential state, eternally, or at least relatively eternally. Well in short, of course, what the traditions say is that one identifies with one's eternal being. So as I said before, freedom requires of you to let go of a perspective,. let go of the perspective of the changing world, and highlight the continuity. But these are just preparatory thoughts that at least your moving thoughts that obstruct the experience of awakening so we had to be clear about them but you can't reach it by your thinking or an act of will or an act of consciousness. The only way you can do it is to give in to your sense of deja vu, as they say in French. As I said yesterday, looking into the eyes of a child, of a baby particularly, and being full of wonderment facing the beautiful light that comes through those eyes is like a confirmation that indeed my intuition about splendor is really true and that is going to heighten your emotions because there's a whole gamut of emotions from the vulgar or about the commonplace and the vulgar and the gross to the (inaudible) ones and finally to what one might call pure bliss. AS Pir Murshid said, we pay bells for pebbles. There's no accounting for taste. If you can just try and shift your attunement letS say from the more commonplace and low key emotions or vulgar emotions, gross emotions to the finer ones and to those that uplift your soul. Now you have a feeling that you are - It is something that you know, but you - when you use the word déjà vu - It's something that is familiar to you, an attunement that you may have lost in the course of catering for the basic needs of life. So the two mottoes that Pir Murshid mentions are first of all the passion for the unattainable, and then secondly working through the ties with the world, he says. So working through. He doesn't say cut the ties, as the ascetics do, but working through them, so that would be like maybe looking at what is it that tethers you to worldly conditions. It is a rather severe word to use the word addiction, but of course one could use it in an extended sense. Like being addicted to drugs or tobacco, that is a bit taken for granted I think, but being addicted to - Are you addicted to TV? Are you addicted to comfort? Are you addicted to chatting, vain chatting? Are you addicted to spending your time in idle things? Well, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but that is, it robs your freedom, so it is necessary to be very clear as to where those ties are and how important they are as compared with your need to experience the fulfillment of the sublime nature of your being that seems to go underground. MAR 25, 1995 Tape 06 1 Pir Vilayat March 26, 1995 Seattle Tape 6 Awakening in Life tape #6 3/26/95 We just have this hour and a quarter. This afternoon, cosmic celebration. I wish it could be longer. We would need at least five days in a place away from the city, away from our homes, so that we don't ... we can just dedicate ourselves totally to a retreat. But still I'm trying to touch on the most important features of the retreat. I like to call it a treat rather than a retreat, or a rehearsal for life rather than an escape from life. So that is when you're doing your practices, that's where you can look upon your life, and perhaps discover something you hadn't seen before. It makes all the difference, and then correct you handling of situations accordingly. OK. So, if your objective is reaching Samadhi, that is awakening beyond life, then of course you need to sit still, because motion is part of life, and that the reason for the macaba in the Jewish faith. The throne becomes a chariot. So, the Sufis strive to awaken in life rather than beyond life, and consequently the body participates in the awakening. And so it is good to see what the body does to your energy and to your thinking, and what your thinking, your emotion, does to your body. So, at first let me just tell your a short story because when Jelaladin Rumi's friend and teacher Shams Tabriz was killed by his disciples, he was distraught, and was looking for his friend amongst the stars because the stars are very, very, one is very aware of the stars as a nomad in the desert traveling in the night. And one assumes that one continues to live as a being of light. There is something of the nature of the whirling, written right into, maybe written right into our flesh, like the orbiting of the stars and the planets and the galaxies. And so if you feel that, then your body will, if you want to get totally in sync with that cyclic motion then you can whirl your body several ways of course. One is the dervish whirling like a top, and the other is the motion of the Zikr. So turn your head toward your left shoulder, then toward your left knee then toward your right knee and right shoulder and back up again towards the zenith. And so keep on whirling and see what you're experiencing. Now identify yourself with your magnetic field instead of your body, so think of yourself as a magnet, and so if you set a magnet into rotary process it becomes a dynamo, that is its energy is increased tremendously. So, I hope you feel enhancing of your energy, body energy, electromagnetic field, or your life field. Now, um, you may, I draw your attention to two forces which you might feel. One is centrifugal force, that is moving from the center towards the periphery, like for example if you had, let's say a piece of lead at the end of a string and you were whirling it and then you let go, then of course it would move further and further away from your hand. So that is a centrifugal force. And one of the ways of doing this at best would be to imagine that instead of being, instead of tracing the circle, you're tracing a spiral and your consciousness is getting wider and wider, more and more encompassing. Think of the starry sky, the almost endless classes of stars. And the way they look now from the earth is a is insignificant in comparison if one could be right out there and get into the proximity of those different stars one would realize, and see things one has never seen, have no idea on the planet earth, but you could think of sparkling and flashing and kaleidoscopic formations and beings of light, Buddha calls radiant beings and the likeness of the kind of things that we sometimes experience on the planet, for example the way that snow gets configured into snowflakes which are like crystals, or the way that somehow the thinking of the universe passing through the minds of composer, mind of a composer, becomes music so that somehow that music is almost latent within the thinking of the universe. And maybe the motion of the stars, harmony of the spheres as Pythagoras says. So, if you think that way, then your heart will go out into the magnificence of the universe with glee and rejoicing and bewondering and realize just how extraordinary it is that one is able to be aware of this magnificence. By the fact that one is endowed with a body that is made of the fabric of the stars. And in which light is being absorbed and emitted, so you could identify with your aura instead of your magnetic field. Of course there are many thoughts, I'm just highlighting some of them. You could also think of your involvement with the environment, then further and further and it never ends. And the fulfillment, the enrichment, and the fact that one is always looking for another one's self who is better able to manifest what one is than one's self. So one learns from that interfacing. Alright now, I hope that you also feel a centripetal force, because, as you know, if you are circumambulating the temple, your concentration is on the temple, it strengthens your concentration on the temple. There is always two opposite forces that complement one another, so I hope you feel a kind of pull towards your solar plexus. Imagine that your solar plexus is the gravity center around which you are whirling. Now, if instead of it being just two dimensional circle or spiral, if you think of it as being a vortex, like for example a whirl pool, then three dimensional, then you, perhaps you realize that the center of a vortex is a void, vacuum, like the center of a hurricane is a vacuum. So Buddha is very often represented as sitting in the middle of a storm, but where he sits is peaceful. So you could imagine that there is a lot of turbulence around you as you are moving, but somehow the center of your being, the solar plexus, the level of solar plexus you're perfectly peaceful. Now if you feel the centripetal forces, then you will be aware that the universe is being absorbed in the vortex like the whole water of a lake is absorbed in the whirl pool, passes through it, then gets spread out fanned out. And so, and you remember what we did yesterday. One filters impressions and also one transmutes them as they get into the core of one's being. Somehow there are two things that are happening. 'n one hand one is disintegrating at the jagged ends, and on the other hand one is being resorbed in the void of the center. So there are two fanas let's say, two modes of annihilation. And I think that they illustrate two modes, two of the three modes, which I talked about yesterday, whereby you can handle a tumor. The first one is excising, the second one is resorbing, and the third is strangulating. So that when you are aware of the centrifugal forces, then you have the sense that you're being disintegrated, and you have some selection into what you prioritize in taking that turn and being rejected, consequently, it is true that to some extent that one feels that one is able to let go of defects, that if one were to hang on to them it would prove to be deleterious. So maybe that is what Christ meant when he said, "Get thee behind me Satan". The sense of um . But it is well possible that what one is rejecting is the behavior that corresponds to that negative emotion. So one doesn't kill someone because one is jealous. That's rejecting something. But that's only in the realm behavior. otherwise there's always a danger of not owning to a defect, not acknowledging the defect. So in that case it is better to a look at it and then absorb it, resorb it. That's where the centripetal forces come in. Feel those centripetal forces. Like a kind of void in the solar plexus, you know, like a vortex , like a whirl pool in a vortex, you feel like you're being drawn deeper and deeper like in a black hole. A feeling of a, that's where aspects of yourselves are being resorbed and maybe recycled in existence. Now we have totally different motion which is up and down, ascending and descending the head. When the head has reached the point where it is turned towards the zenith, upwards, then that is the moment when the centripetal forces are the strongest, felt the strongest, the Sufis call the kemal state. And that's when then the head seems to be drawn toward the solar plexus. And so you have um, let's say, three quarters of a circle followed by a vertical line, a vertical axis. And of course as you know, perhaps some most of you know, the words are La illaha illa, and so when the head comes down, you have a totally different principal which really intercepts the cycles of becoming. It's very often called the axis God-man, man-God. As Pir -' Murshid says God is human perfection, and man is divine limitation. That kind of a thing that polarity between infinity and number one. Um It is also sometimes, since there is a movement of the head from above towards downwards and then it is followed by the fact the head rebounds and returns upwards . It could be illustrated as incarnation and resurrection. Anyway, what I want to draw your attention to is that ,um, when you turn your head towards the solar plexus, that is when you experience what we have described as turning within. So when you go in a circle you experience what we describe as the cosmic dimension. Turning within, when your head comes down, then you experience turning within. That means that you are experiencing the universe from within instead of from through lets say your senses, a different mode, an alternative mode of cognizance. Now, as we said the head rebounds upwards, like a ball, for example. And that's where, one says 'lla, that is when you need to take advantage of that upward motion, not just of your head but somehow your whole energy is now turned upwards. And the energy then carries you like Pegasus carried Bellerophon upward towards the Olympus, so a sense of ascending, or at least shifting your identity from, when you're turned within then you identify with your life field, let's say magnetic field, aura maybe, but now as you are moving upwards you shift your identity from thinking of yourself as aura of light, physical light into further notions of what we mean by light that are not what is ordinarily understood as being light, physical light. For example, one says "This person brings a lot of light in the room". So we're not about necessarily a physical light, just something about their being is full of light. One says , "The eyes of that person are full of light", and maybe it does also mean that they emit more photons, but that's not all. There's something else, which we have difficulty in defining, but as long as you accept that, it is helpful when you're meditating to identify with being a being of light. Having always been a being of light, because at first we said well the body absorbs light from the environment. Then we said, um, the aura is a template in which the body is being formed. So we get to the point when we shift our identity from being a body and being a magnetic field to being an aura of light, of physical light by luminescence, to being a being of light. And that requires you to entertain beautiful thoughts and beautiful emotions. Any shadow in you thoughts, any kind of resentment or anger or dishonesty would immediately cause your sense of identity to drop down to the, maybe to the human level. And so it is , it's really an attitude of innocence that will help you earmark, let's say, your identity as a being , as a celestial being, as a being of light. As being without guile, and that means actually defenseless, so that, it's of course difficult in this world to turn the other cheek. But it is that kind of confidence that a child has in life, without the skepticism that develops perhaps later that gives you access into the heavenly spheres. So now you shift your sense of gravity from the solar plexus to the heart center, cardio plexus. And then shift it up further to the thymus gland which is, well is identified by the Tibetans as the wheel of fire, and then to the throat center, shula chakra, and then to the eyes, then to the third eye, then to the pituitary gland and then above your head, above the fontanel. So your are really shifting your attention up your spine from your solar plexus, as you say "la", so you say "la illaha illa 'lla" when you say "la" when you transfer your attention from one center to the other, and while you're doing that you shift your identity from being a physical body or being an etheric body to being a celestial being. So, the word bodiness doesn't seem to make sense any more, although there is some continence, although no profile. All those things that we said yesterday, remember? And then moving on upwards, one has to really be familiar with those planes. And actually Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism and Kabbalah and even Christianity in the early days, their systems are very similar. There are really parallels between them. So the , when you, you do not pronounce the first "a" of "alla" you see, "illa 'llah". So, that first "a", when you say that first "a", you don't say it, but you think of it, you concentrate on your heart center and radiate light. But then you are moving upwards transfer your attention to um, the um, what we say is called the wheel of fire. Now that transits here, you see, and the "l" always represents a transit from one state to another. So there are two "l"s. The, um, first "l" represents the motion from the heart center to the wheel of fire, and second one, the second "l" of " 'llah", represents the transfer of your attention from the wheel of fire to the throat center. Now the wheel of fire corresponds to that state the Sufis call Jabarut, which is the way that one thinks without basing one's thought on experience, a kind of innate protocritic kind of knowledge that is inborn within our intelligence, and thus Pir-o-Murshid says intelligence becomes consciousness when it is faced with an object. So instead of thinking, "I am the knowing spectator, I am the knowing subject, I think I am intelligence that carries knowledge within itself without having to derive that knowledge from experience. That is the state of Jabarut. And then the second "l" takes you into the second "a" of "alla", the "a" of "alla", um "la" throat center. That's where you, you know it's often called the locus, that is the place, the palace, sometimes we use the word palace, of the archetypes. One uses the word "the Word" "the word that was God" the logos. Those are the archetypes. That is the level of Lahut. When we are doing wazifas, what we are doing is we are trying to establish a bridge between Lahut, that level at which we have some sense of the archetypes of which the features of our personalities the idiosyncrasies are the exemplars. For example, pure compassion or perfect compassion, and then we in our personalities exercise some measure of compassion, but we always imagine perfect compassion, and so on with different qualities. So that would be Lahut, throat center. And then, we move up to Hahut which gives you a sense of unity beyond the diversity of qualities. And that which spells of unity, is the divine presence. So, if you say that if a person is present, you are not referring to their qualities. And so, that is really the ultimate point in the Zikr, corresponding to Hahut, the plane where somehow you have overcome the sense of your individual"I" as separate from any other "I". And it's at that point that al Hallaj said "Ana'l Haqq, I am the truth". So this is, let us say, awakening beyond life, in the state of Samadhi. That would correspond to the "h" at the end of the word Allah. And in the Jewish religion the "H" is considered t be the highest name of God. And now you draw your attention down to your heart center, or rather you invest your heart center with, let's say, the realization that you have attained in that high state. So this would correspond to awakening in life. So, you say the word "hu", so that last "h" of allah has, is now inverted and has given rise to the "u" which always depicts the heavenly spheres. And so you are descending through the heavenly spheres. And if you just think of the word "human" you see that it starts with "hu" and then comes "man" and there you have the "m and the "n" the masculine and the feminine. And once more the "e" as represents the state of awakening in the world. So this can be done as you exhale, as you swirl your head in the circle, actually three quarters of a circle. You'll be saying "la illaha". So actually when you're doing this you're doing exactly what I described when I was talking about being in love with the Universe, with God as the Universe. Because you are incorporating all the levels, even the "h" at the end "llah il laha". There is an "h" there, which represents the highest level. So that means that you see the sublime nature of God in existence. But um, and at the same time part of your being is being disintegrated at the gagged ends, as I say. And it is the being of God him/herself that is disintegrated continually. And there is a new birthing as you turn your head downwards. You now, you inhale as your head turns downwards. Exhale in the circle, inhale when the head comes downwards. And continue to inhale as the head moves upwards. So when you hit the solar plexus that is when you are experiencing two things. One is a total resorption of one's being into its ground. Like for example, in the winter in certain cases the plant has gone to seed, as one says. All that remains is a seed that's in the ground, the bulb, or whatever, the root. And then out of that plant, that root, a new plant is born. Or the Sufis call it "fana baqa", annihilation and reinstatement. And you must always do both. It's not just annihilation, never fana without baqa. And the thesis that you find in Islam is the recurrence of creation, that one is continually reborn. And so, I illustrate this by a wave in the sea. In one sense of course the previous wave does have some influence on the next wave, but on the other hand the whole ocean emerges as each wave. So just consider that the whole of the Universe emerges anew continually anew in every instant in us, and in you, in every one, and in all beings, and animals sometimes and so on. But in order to be reborn, you need to honor all levels of your being. So although it emerges, it seems as though it emerges ex nilo from inside, as it were, it surfaces. One needs to take into account that all levels of one's being participate in that renewal. And that's why you have to review each of these levels as your head moves upwards. As you say "llah". Be very conscious of the a that one does not say, the first "a" of "allah", the radiance of your heart, and also identifying yourself now with being the celestial counterpart of your being let's say. Buddha used the word radiant beings. And then the kind of thinking that goes with it, which is Jabarut, which means compelling. It's a paramount way of thinking, that always overrides the kind of thinking that we gain by experience. And so the Sufis who way that it is God who knows himself. God knows himself as us through us who are extensions of his/her being. But does in addition know himself in eternity beyond what he/she learns in us and through us in his/her eternal state, beyond existence. And so that level is called by Buddha "beyond existence". And then the next world , level, according to Buddha is the level that he calls the world of all possibilities. So, he even says it's "beyond existence and beyond nonexistence". So that is Lahut. the world of all possibilities, the level of all possibilities. So at that level you realize that there is no end to the bounty that is yours. That is offered to you, bequeathed to you in your divine inheritance. And it's op to you to accept this bounty or not. And then that is the moment when you can consider your personality. But it seems a little bit out of reach, but still. Now maybe I didn't make it clear that in this, as you are turning within you're not rejecting aspects of yourself that you don't like. But they're being resorbed like a tumor is resorbed, can be resorbed, in the body. But it is our aspiration that has the power of resorbing the tumor, in other words you're reversing the process whereby a chunk of yourself alienated itself from the totality of the being. So by rediscovering the divinity of your being, your shadow , the tumor is as I say is resorbed. Where as if you fought against it you would be a split personality. Now one of the ways of doing it is as follows. Take an example, for example peacefulness, the shadow of peacefulness would be indolence. Take mastery and the shadow of mastery would be ruthlessness. Or compassion and the shadow of compassion would be to be too lenient, to be too accommodating, and so on. So now you match that quality with its shadow. So for example you have peace within you but there is laziness, indolence. Your have mastery, but there is also ruthlessness., and so on. So, because of the fear of incurring the shadow, you find it difficult to masterful, or you find it difficult to be peaceful. But somehow the strength of the emotion of peacefulness is so great, that you can't be lazy. It's resorbed, it's kind of resorbed in its ground. And, for example, mastery, it could be ruthless if you alienate the mastery in your being from its archetype, from its divine ground or seed bed. That is if you're on your own, then of course your mastery can be detrimental. But if you see what is really meant by mastery, if you get into the Lahut level, the level of archetypes, then you realize that it is, I'm trying to find the word, the precedence given to the archetype over its shadow, for example. If you give precedence to the divine mastery over the shadow. Let's look at this a little further, because Pir-o-Murshid gives a very very clear definition of mastery. He compares it with a boat, or a yacht, for example, and the divine impulse, the wind, and somehow the... we deviate the divine impulse by being out of tough with that impulse. So what was originally an impulse has become deviated and spoliated in us so mastery could lead towards ruthlessness in us for example. So, mastery would consist in giving a new direction to this impulse, so that you're using the same wind, but somehow by adjusting your sails you are able to decide where the ship is going to go instead of letting it be blown wherever the wind listith. So that would give you a sense of, let's say mastery would be like giving precedence of the quality over the defect. Giving precedence to peacefulness over laziness or indolence, or giving precedence to joy over frivolity, or giving precedence to mastery over ruthlessness, or compassion over permissiveness or accommodation, being accommodating. So mastery would be like discovering the divine power in one's being. Instead of exercising one's own personal power. That would be a whole new definition of mastery. And then of course, this is very rare of course that one should be able to see the unity behind diversity, but I remember making a retreat in Jerusalem, and I, in this wonderful cave at the top of the Mount of 'lives. And then I wasn't allowed to stay at night. So coming out amongst a crowd. I could just see, like, it was like a puppet show, people had no idea what they were doing or where they were up to. But somehow one could see an overall purpose, like the purpose of the beehive over the bees. So priority,precedence given to the overall reality. As soon as you sense that unity, then somehow you find that you're touching upon the core reality, the reality behind the unreality of life. The unreality, the multiplicity of views and so on, of qualities, it's a secondary way of looking at things. But the paramount way of looking at things is to see the unity beyond that multiplicity. As soon as you do that then you're not thinking any more of qualities, you're thinking about the divine presence. You feel the presence as the most basic reality. Because somehow the qualities are, let's say the archetypes of what is to be found in existence. Let's say they are the seed of which unfurl as plants. But there is a deeper reality behind the seed, and that is the programming. And even beyond the programming the intention. So that is awakening beyond life. Samadhi, beyond multiplicity. And that can only happen if you have lost the sense of being a fragment of totality and consequently you identify yourself with the totality. With the total being. And you would stay in that state of Samadhi, as a lot of Rishis in the Himalayas unless you've asked yourself this question " But then why was I endowed with a body? Why the whole existential state?" And then you understand why the Sufis say that God knows himself from all eternity in the principal of his being, but acquires a further knowledge through existence. And so you realize that it's because of the second knowledge that we are involved in existence. Then you come to very surprising views which seem to contradict what you seem to think when you're in Samadhi. And that it is in the existential state that the fulfillment of God's purpose is to be found. And that's why the Sufis say, "Why are you looking for God up there? He is here". So that would be awakening in life, as you say "hu". Now what I am doing is dividing the exhaling and the inhaling in two halves. So when I say "hu" I start exhaling, first half of the exhaling. When I say "h" of Allah, I'm still holding my breath. As soon as the u is added to the h, I'm starting to exhale. First half. Second half of the exhaling I go into the circle "la illaha illa" the first half of inhaling as the head goes down. And then the second half of inhaling as the head moves up again. And then hold your breath in the h of Allah. Then "hu" as you descend again you awaken in the existential state. So let us ...I hope you remember all these thoughts that um. The beauty of the Zikr is that the different positions of the body and the state of the breath, whether inhaling, or holding it or exhaling is the signal to a certain concentration of your thinking and of your realization. It's almost like a mandala, but it's dynamic instead of static. It's in motion. So whatever you do remember of things I have been saying, if that will add something to your experience of the Zikr then that will be helpful. So let's do it again now. First of all we can say it, then after that we'll do it on the breath. For example, "la illaha illa 'lla hu, la illaha illa 'lla hu" "practice repeats". So I just wanted you feel how powerful it is if you say it slowly. Each one of you say it in your own rhythm. But I think that we're so used to rushing things that we tend to say it faster and faster, and lose the feeling of it and also lose the opportunity of concentrating on the meaning, so we're just saying the words and we're not getting into the meaning. So you can even do it slower than I've done it. La, you think of the universe right? the starry sky. La, and not just think of it, as I say, you're in love with the universe. You're in love with the being of God, which you're full of admiration for the incredible beauty the incredible intelligence, the incredible all that you see that is very little in comparison with what is there at discovering the beloved. La illaha. Just imagine that you're very deeply in love, that you're absolutely lost in that emotion overwhelming emotion. La illaha illa. Like um you're getting to the very depth in this whole process and you're finding freedom from all those, the support system, all those aspects of yourself that act as an underpinning. All being resorbed and then recycled again. So you go through that process of death and resurrection, of the death of God and resurrection of God. illa So. not just the solar plexus, the solar plexus is like a gate opening up into the void. Or perhaps it's not the word gate, perhaps it's like I say, if you look at a whirlpool in the water then there seems to be like a hole in the water. It goes deeper and deeper. illa And there is great peacefulness there. So when you're turning towards outside there's joy and pain, but when you're turning inside there is just and peace. Because you are able to grasp peace by your freedom, that will give you peace. Freedom from attachment. And then, as I say, to be reborn you have to take into consideration all levels of your being, so you survey all these levels. And the only way to do it is to shift your identity from one level to another. And then you'll remember that you existed prior to incarnation and conception. And try to remember that state. Now the fact is that we're saying this, I'm saying this, but we are in that state at present. It's just easier to remember it from past than to capture it the way it is now. Because identification with our humanness is so strong or so impelling. But it's not just at matter of being aware of your celestial being. But the attunement to the celestial level so that it seems like a level of reality that is, where there is a kind of celebration. It's like sacred, um. So if you can... it's very different from like thinking of your, in your usual way of thinking of yourself as being this is me and the universe is other than me. At that level let's say that the angelic beings are not outside you. It's very difficult to understand that. But as Pir-o-Murshid said "When you're dreaming, the world is inside you". But what Ibn Arabi says is "You're invited to participate in the high council of the angles". Exactly the kind of feeling that you have if you are very high in a religious ceremony. Somehow the veil between the earth and the heavens is split and you have a feeling of a kind of opening of the heavenly spheres. Gives you ecstasy. Let us say that your ideal, at first it was a projection. Like, I imagine cosmic celebrations, heavens, I imagine that everything is hunkey dory up there. All those imaginings. That's the way that we approach it. Pir-o-Murshid says you have to shatter your ideal on the rock of truth. So when you realize that it is a projection, you realize that it's not the real thing. It is just an image that is projected of the real thing, but it's not the real thing. And so gradually you have to... every time that you say "illa" you have to somehow shatter that representation of the heavenly spheres or God or divine perfection. And then it's replaced by something more germane, more authentic, until it's less and less imagination and more and more real. Because, as you know, if you fragment a hologram in small pieces, every piece acts like a whole hologram, but less well. The smaller the less well it functions as the whole hologram. But it still does not function as a fragment of the hologram. It functions as the whole hologram, but less well. So if we identify with our being as a fragment of the totality , then what we bring through of our, or what we realize of our being is extremely limited, inadequate. But the more we identify with the totality, and are able to recognize that bounty as being our true being, then of course, the more representation of God is a reality, and not just a representation. That's what Sufis call the experience of God. Then, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "Make God a reality, and he will make you the truth". Let us do this once more before we end now. So on your breath, without saying it aloud. Move very slowly. (pause for practice) So now were going to end with just a little experiment. What can I say, shake yourself from complacency. Be very, very alert , like very, very alert, very clear, awake,very awake. But instead of thinking of awakening in the here and now, that is the I'm aware of what is around me in the physical world and so on. You're aware of the fact that the reality behind it is coming through in the physical world. So not just confined to the experience of the physical world. You're awake not beyond the physical world, but you're aware of the reality that is trying to reveal itself to you while you are aware of the physical world. And together with that you dwell upon your life and the meaning of life in general, and your ideal and the shattering of your ideal. To replace it by a kind of conviction that you get a sense of realness when you have given up being attached to what I've been calling the support system. (long silence) And we could make this even clearer by saying instead of identify with your aura or even being a being of light, identify with being a luminous intelligence. So instead of being passive, as consciousness is passive, picking up information, intelligence is active, thrusting its light, that is its knowledge upon all things. And the consequence is the only way of knowing things is by matching the things that you see with what is already in your intelligence. (long silence) So, relax now. So, this is something you can do all the time. You don't have to do it sitting in your room or a meditation cell. You can do it all the time. Remind yourself to awaken in life. You become very alert and very, very aware. Bless you. Page 1 Tape 1 Spring Retreat 3/31/95 MAR 31, 1995 Tape 01 Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan 3/31/95 At the Abode, Spring Retreat Tape 1 (inaudible) so that hopefully we will be able to get back to our responsibilities with greater insight and greater mastery and perhaps more love and compassion and power. So we're going to need to train ourselves. And that is why we're going to examine and share many of techniques used by the ascetics. Now to shift your consciousness from middle range perspective and be able to look at things from a different vantage point, modulating consciousness and its focalization from what we think is our consciousness. And also attune our emotional charge from the perhaps the grosser emotions to the sublime by an act of glorification and honoring the sacredness of our being, and also unfurl the potentialities of our being. So I'd Like to start by trying to get into the attunement of the retreat. Let us say, I'd like to think of this retreat as a rehearsal for life rather than a retiring from life. Therefore our problems are the theme of our retreat, rather than artificial ones, but viewed from a different angle. And I warn you of the danger of simply shifting one's ordinary perspective looking at these problems, first of all because there not the way they seem and secondly because in a retreat one is in a very sensitized state and so it would be more difficult for one to deal with the emotions than in situations in life where we are involved in everyday activities. And we have no time to think of the deeper issues in life. So imagine that you are on a pilgrimage, and have left your home on a quest for the, let's just say, for the temples in the high Himalayas. There is of course the severing of ties which can be painful, but which is offset by your prefiguration of a sublime state. In the course of the ascent one's real life seems to get more and more remote, and it is only one's, one begins to realize to what extent one had become dependent on circumstances. And they call it addiction. And it wasn't just addiction to the more usual addictions like drugs or tobacco, but to what is in esoteric schools called the world. In a pleasurative sense on the one hand one values what has been achieved and is excited to be a part of building a better world. And in so doing one unfurls latent qualities in oneself. And so what is meant by "the world" in the sense used by Christ when he says "We are not of the world"? And it's a general problem. So were speaking of that which we find in the esoteric schools. Well, I suppose it can best be ascertained if one thinks of the more abusive developments that you find in our society; people adultering, pleasure, and personal greed at the cost of values that we attribute to the soul. And in the words of Christ, "What use if you gain the whole world and you lose your soul/". Or, now in a more general way, that's true of many of us, one might say the support system takes over. That is simply the effort that it takes to be able to survive, and live up to even the minimum standard of what is called the life style. Those efforts are so great that I suppose it's very much like supposing that one spent so much energy, money, time in building the base camps there wasn't enough energy to reach the top. That's why so many of us are feel extremely impoverished by not having time or finding favorable conditions in order to foster our need for that, let's say that spice that makes for meaningfulness in our life. So how do you do this? So I think the beginning of a retreat is a practice in which observe our involvement in the world with a perspective that detachment will give us. So it is indeed our need for freedom, freedom from conditioning, or freedom from dependence upon involvement that will give us more insight. Pir o Murshid says, "There comes a time in one's life when one is moved by a passion for the unattainable, and at that time one needs to work through the ties that link one with the world". He didn't say "Break those ties, sever those ties" no. But look into those ties and see just how they affect our emotions. And the one thing that is going to give you a sense of freedom, and we all need freedom, spiritual freedom, is to check out what is one's degree of dependence. And of course the more independent one is the more free one is, of course. And consequently one can involve oneself while at the same time maintaining an inner freedom. Or then one, rather than thinking that one has to free oneself from circumstances in order to find freedom. So could you just do that for a moment. Just look at where ever you are in a state of dependence, and at the same time just think about how it would feel to be an ascetic. And be specific. Think of each clear case where you'd find difficulty to do away with things that are very wonderful, music for example. It would be difficult be able to do away with music. Or the people one loves. Or joy about civilizations, what they have achieved. I'm not saying that we have to leave the world and go into the Himalayas, seek refuge in a cave in the Himalayas no. That's a cop out. But whether we can be involved while let's say eschewing the kind of greed and covetousness that comes from dependence. It's an inner process, not an outer. It's not a question of freeing oneself from outer circumstances. It is really recognizing where one is dependent. We're not condemning being dependent. We want to see exactly in which ways one is dependent, and one must also see where one is co-dependent, and in which cases there is interdependence, where we depend upon each other. And perhaps the best illustration of this would be unconditional love, to be able to love without asking, and without one's love being dependent upon the person's qualities that one values, that is to be able to love even if that person makes themselves difficult to love. This is a step towards an ultimate fulfillment where this love gets extended further and further until it becomes all encompassing into that being that is the Universe and whom we call God. That becomes a state of bewondering which leads to glorification. So it starts by being turned on by the splendor and the meaningfulness that tends to transpire through that which appears. That is also true when the power of love is power of being able to see that in a person that is trying to come through their outer appearance or demeanor. That's where you discover beauty wherever you go. This will inspire you and lift your consciousness. And it is only when one's consciousness is in high attunement that one can reach that culminating objective which is called awakening or illumination. It's really recognizing, in one's perception of the Universe, the perfection of the totality of the Universe that is latent in each one of us, latent just like,for example, the DNA of our whole body and even of the whole Universe is latent within the DNA of the cells of our body. Most of these genes are recessive. Only those are active in the different organs, that makes for the differentiation between the different organs. And so in the same way in our psyche we carry also the code of the whole Universe. But most of that is still latent, recessive, latent. And we are overjoyed when we discover ourselves in the Universe if we are able to see that which is trying to come through behind that which appears. And as a consequence we project this latent perfection in an image in which we ascribe to God and call our ideal by the power of imagination. And eventually it's not an illusion it's the way that the latency within our becomes tangible but becomes more knowable. And therefore it lures us beyond the limitation of our shadow nature. Our ideal lures us further and further beyond the limitations of our self image. That's why it's very useful to represent oneself an illuminated being, a wonderful being who has attained realization, who is endowed, with mastery and love and insight , compassion, purity. The curious thing is that is ourselves, but we have difficulty in believing it, because we're so used to believing in our self image. And so at the start of this retreat I think we need to be very clear that our self image is not ourselves, it is a notion that we make of ourselves which is emitted by the very limitation of the way our consciousness functions, the middle range. Let's try and look at it a little bit deeper. Let us not confuse our self image with our personality. And let us not confuse our personality with the reality of our being. Our self image is a notion that is a representation that we make of ourselves. That we make of our personality. It's like a replicate, like a holographic picture which is, it is a replicate, but it's not the real thing, but it's not an illusion. If for example another person perceives your personality differently to the way you do, and several people will have a different perception of it, so your perception is not any better than that of other people, and their perception is not better than yours. These are just how we perceive our personality or how others perceive it. But what you mean by the personality is those qualities in ourselves that have become actualized and therefore are functional. For example, one has a certain amount of compassion but only a certain amount. It doesn't go much further than that point. One has a certain amount of mastery, but not more than a certain point, to a certain degree. And so on. Or one has certain insight, but one has a blind spot in one's eye. And, but even if you identify yourself with your personality, you are constrained by that limited representation of yourself because if you compare your personality with a plant, you realize that there is much more bounty in the root or the seed of the plant than ever comes through the plant. And so it would be a mistake to identify yourself with that which has come through and you'd be missing out on all that is behind, all the bounty that is that lies behind what appears at the surface. So would you follow this thought with me a little further now. Imagine that your personality is like a plant, like a tree, and you fell the tree to its stump, and the tree grows again. And will look different. But is it the same tree? Is it a different tree? Well that's metaphysics. What is important is that you discover a deeper level of your being with which you identify. And in order to do that, you have to let go of your identification with your personality. And letting go, of course, requires freedom, the way of the ascetic. It's like downplaying a perspective in order to highlight another one because it's difficult to extrapolate between both. Now isn't it a wonderful relief to at last free yourself from your self image to discover that it is not reliable, and that it has a very constraining effect upon you, where as the reality of your being is limitless? And therefore carries the promise of hope over the despair of the kind of judgment one makes of oneself in the limitation of one's understanding. And that is there is always the positive and then the shadow. And what we, paradoxical really. Because one thinks that the shadow defiles one's being. What is paradoxical is that the excellence of one's being is present within its distortions. Just like as I often say the voice of Caruso is present within its distortions in all its glory. If we can just overcome this, if our minds can reach beyond middle range and accept the reconciliation of the irreconcilables, then we are able to vindicate the beauty of our being hidden within the shadow. And that does not mean that we deny the shadow or disown it. But we are able to see both at the same time. Basically behind this is again a paradox, namely that seems to be a reconciliation between the eternal and the transient dimensions of our being. So if you think of yourself as transient and fail to recognize the eternity of your being, you identify with your shadow, or if it's not the shadow, at least you identify with your self image which includes the shadow. So as Pir o Murshid says, "The breakthrough comes when you are able to earmark that let's say dimension of your being which is eternal, which is able to overcome the predcarity of the transiency of your being." Perhaps one way of grasping this is to think that while it is never the same water that flows under the bridge, one says it is a river. Therefore the river is a continuity in change. Therefore, instead of identifying with the change, that aspect of yourself that is transient and perishable, you suddenly discover the foundation of your being which is of the nature that we attribute to God, undefiled and not subject to the limitations of transiency. Yes, so this was instruction to the principles upon which the retreat is based. Let us start with a practice. Let us first be clear about the nature of the practices that we undertake in the Sufi order. It can best be described by a Tibetan slogan "The mind drives the wind". So let's say that you imagine that the wind is the energy of your body. And the mind, well it could be awareness, your realization. So practice consists in somehow, for example, in your breathing in and out or holding your breath you're working with energy. You're exchanging energy between the energy of your body and the energy of the environment. Or then marking a halt between the exchanging of energy as you hold your breath. But rather than just working with breath, you somehow mark an alternation between two complementary thoughts as you breath in and as you exhale. So this morning we have been earmarking two poles of our being, the need to involve ourselves and the need to find freedom. They seem to be contrary. If they are contrary, then they would be pulling us in opposite directions, and we would be split somehow between those two goals. But if we think of them as complementary, then there is a way of finding freedom in involvement and involvement in freedom. So this is a Sufi breathing practice based upon the realization of some of the dervishes at the time of (Hug Hujwiri?) who was Pir o Murshid in India long before Moinadin Chishti. And he said,"As God exhales He (nowadays I would say He/She) descends from the solitude of unknowing motivated by a nostalgia to actualize the divine splendor in beauty and harmony in the existential stage". And thus as we exhale, we think of, let us think of exhaling as an extension of the divine exhaling, and therefore at the same time we become aware of the nostalgia which causes us to wish to involve ourselves in life with people circumstances, with all that has been achieved by our civilizations. And consequently build a beautiful world and beautiful people. And that means might involve all those things that we try to achieve in a material world and mastery through accomplishment. And then as God inhales, God extracts the quintessence of that which has been gained by experience at the existential level back into the divine programing. I'm paraphrasing, of course, the words of the old Sufis. And so the emotional impulse behind this is a nonemotion let's say. It is peace rather than joy. And it is of course an expression of freedom instead of involvement. One needs to free oneself from the underpinning of experience in order to extract the quintessence. For example, wisdom rather than know-how. So you see the part that is played by our need for freedom in grasping realization out of its underpinning. Let me remind you here that for Buddha freedom is ultimately freedom from conditioning. So our conditioning is let's say establishes the norms that make our relationship with the existential world, let's say that govern our relationship with the external world. That's conditioning. But conditioning is limiting. And as one evolves one is able to free oneself from the more elementary forms of conditioning in order to find one's ultimate freedom. So let us with this practice, let's start breathing according to the methods of yoga. That is first as you exhale, you contract your abdomen first and then your chest, and as you inhale you dilate your abdomen and then your chest. And the curious thing is that you are, while you're contracting you body, your abdomen and your chest, your magnetic field seems to extend as you exhale. Then when you inhale, while dilating your abdomen and then your chest, you have a feeling that you are converging the energy of the Universe. So it seems to go in the opposite direction. So let's just start by being aware of your breath without trying to slow it down or to regulate it in any way.(pause for breath) You'll notice that by the very fact of your awareness of your breath it is going to slow down without your trying to slow it down. An just try to think of your breath as being in sync, let's say customizing the ebb and flow of the energy in the Universe while putting you will aside. So that's a first step in, you see nature has a way of self organizing itself if you don't intervene. It is only at a second step that you start customizing the will of the Universe or the divine will. So that you are able to carry it one step further. That is what is called mastery. So, perhaps one of the first expressions of mastery is staying with it. Maintain your concentration. That's training. And eventually, of course, you'll be able to apply your will to take longer as you exhale and to extend your inhaling and hold your breath longer than you would have ever thought possible. So that will give you a sense of being in charge. That's what one means by mastery, taking charge. But according to Sufis as the ambassador of God. That is by establishing a kind of link of sovereignty with God as the Lord of one who has become the vassal by dent of a pledge of filty. So in the first step you feel, you sense the power of the Universe coming through you or as you. And at the second step you have a sense of your own power as delegated power, but still personalized power. We call it spiritual power. And it will give you a kind of stay power when confronted by challenges in your life, a kind of resilience against trauma. OK Now your mastery is going to apply in thinking of your involvement in life, that means your motivations, what you are doing in life or what you're trying to achieve in life as you exhale. And then the ascetic in you, the measure of your independence, detachment that bespeaks of freedom from conditioning, as you inhale.(pause for practice) . God bless you now. MAR 31, 1995 Tape 02 Page 1 Tape 2 Spring Retreat 3/31/95 Spring Retreat at the Abode 3/31/95 Tape 2 (Tape two) And realizing that the reason why it lies beyond the middle range of our mind is because normally my mind is functioning in this middle range and therefore not encompassing wider horizon or grasping the high levels of reality. The second one is that I feel a real call rising out of the potentialities of my being to unfurl and have a sense that many of those potentials are still born because I'm not paying attention to them, not giving them the necessary protection and so the necessary support. And thirdly because life is a very a wonderful opportunity to fulfill a purpose in accomplishing something that is fulfilling not only to one's self but to other people. And I suppose in that sense one is carrying the divine creativity further. As Pir o Murshid says," God can attain a great degree of perfection in a being, but where that being consciously participates in that pursuit , the divine pursuit, the divine objective, then of course God can attain a greater degree of perfection". And that is also true in our creativity, creativity as an extension of divine creativity that's carried further in us. So those are, well very inadequate of course, descriptions of what our objective is. But what we need to be clear about is that these objectives remain purely fictitious unless we train ourselves. So that's what were doing on a retreat. We're developing skills that hopefully will trigger off those pursuits, those goals that we're trying to, that we are hoping to, that we are pursuing. So, the training does consist in on one hand eschewing any kind of deceiving oneself of deluding oneself, which is what the Hindus call Maya of course, and which is simply due to the fact of the limited way in which we look at things. And the reason why it is limited is that we tend to look at things, let's say to assess our problems from our personal vantage point. Now in physics it's very clear that if you look at say if you look at Notre Dame from one vantage point, you haven't seen Notre Dame. So in physics it's very clear that if you're looking at things from one angle, well it's not, it doesn't give you a picture of the physical world. Dr.David Boehm proposed an experiment cina camera where one would photograph with two cinema cameras a fish in an aquarium from both sides. Then you would have two screens and you'd play both films at the same time. And you would see that they are quite different and yet there is some commonality between them. So that is then, it's clear that looking at things just from one vantage point, one hasn't seen it in its reality. So that would be the first practice we need to learn to do. We can't extend our consciousness ultimately in what we might call the cosmic dimension, but let's say compare it with our eyesight for example, if you look at the page of a book, there is all the difference between looking at the pages of a book and encompassing a wide horizon with your glance. So we are able to modulate our glance. And in the same way we can do the same thing with our consciousness. So at the purely physical level, and that's the first step, you see we are somehow conditioned by our civilizations to live in little rooms and in an a rather enclosed physical and social environment. But I'm sure that you have in you the need for wide spaces. And that's the reason why the rishis in the Himalayas meditate in caves in high places where they have a fantastic wide vantage point. Buddha also he made his retreat in a cave with a fantastic view of a wide panorama. And you can do this, it would help you to extend your consciousness if you would for example meditate at night time and look at the stars as I've often done. It's a bit cold but still it's very healthy to expose the body to cold for a short while. And just allow yourself to be carried by the shear glee of just realizing to what extent your glance is able to encompass such enormous distances. It's quite incredible. Of course as you know many of the stars that you are looking at do not exist any more. But still the fact remains that you are reaching out not just in space but in time, beyond the middle range, that's a word that one can use. And so of course the first thing you could imagine is what it would like to be out there, not realizing that we are out there already, because the planet earth is in outer space. But what would, how would the stars look if you got close to them? Of course you discover visions of reality very different from that the way that they look on the earth. So that we realize that the way that we conceive the starry sky from the earth is totally inadequate. But of course if your consciousness were able to extend, not just reach out to a star, but encompass more and more space, then of course you'll get a still further view of what the Universe is like. So that's the kind of thing that has a very strong impact, not only on our, the outreach of our consciousness, but also on our self image. For one thing just imagine that your body really started with a big bang. That it is the Universe that has been processed in the course of the eons of time into this very, how can we say, sophisticated form of matter. It enables the consciousness of the Universe to awaken within a body as an extraordinary thing that is happening to us a great privilege of being human. So there is a kind of emotion that arises here. An emotion, one could call it the emotion of immensity, which affects not only our consciousness and our self image, but also awakens faculties in us that are dormant because of they are squeezed in by our middle range thinking. Just think of that for a moment. Just ponder upon that for one moment. (pause) Now of course it is true that being used to middle range, we tend to get spaced out when we start extending, expanding our consciousness or our sense of identity. In one way of course, it's very pleasing for those who feel the constraint of their individuality and are seeking far beyond. And of course, for those who, I suppose there is in everyone some measure, hopefully not too much a measure of self hate. So that one won't get the satisfaction of ridding oneself of one's self image. But the trouble is that you have to know that how ever much you would like to lose yourself, you can't anyway. Because, as you know, the eddies on the surface of a lake, and you think that you can't see them any more when they form a wave interfere in the pattern with other waves, other eddies. But, they can be retrieved. I warn you against the thought of, against even the danger of losing your sense of your individuality. Consequently this requires a mode of thinking beyond the usual commonplace way of thinking to be able to extrapolate between your sense of having a strong individual center and also your sense of the your interralatedness with the totality, not as a fraction of the totality but in accordance with the holistic paradigm, which means that as much as you fraction the totality every fraction carries within it the totality, potentially the totality. It's a different relationship, our common place way of think of ourselves as a part of the whole. That is the farther you reach out the more you discover the richness latent within your individuality. OK Well, now this is of course a very wonderful and very pleasant theme of meditation and is very helpful to help you find an expression for your need for immensity, but let's say especially during a retreat it is your problems that are the theme of meditation for you. Just delighting in the wonder of the Universe is very ecstatic and is and of course wonderful for an emotional experience, but we do not want our ecstasy to serve as a spiritual bypass. So I invite you to a second step which is, you see being on retreat, if you followed what we did this morning, that is think of yourself as a pilgrim, you don't leave your world behind, you look at it with a certain distance, which gives you insight that you didn't have when you were right in the middle of it. And that is what one means by seeing things in their context, instead of looking at one's problems in a kind of container, a container that is based upon the limitations of one's self image. So, let's try to say this more clearly. The commonplace view about our problems consists in the way that, what they mean to us personally. I think most psychotherapists would tell you, Dr. Kubla Ross for example would say,"I'm not interested in your concepts of your problems, I am interested in how you feel. In other words what do these problems mean to you", that is you and your sense of your personal self image? I would say in the purview of your personal self image. That is a valid point of view but a partial point of view. But at least it is good to be clear about it. So, let us start with this. And so just think of your problems in order of priority. The more urgent are easier. I mean they strike you, you are more familiar with them I hope. So for example, it's really hard to work with this person because this person tends to put me down, tends to try to dominate me, tends to tell me what to do. And I don't have that kind of ego that person has and therefore I succumb to that impact upon my psyche and lose my self confidence and I feel a lot of resentment against that person but I really don't know how to deal with it. Is that the kind of problem you might be facing in life? Or then I hear that I am supposed to have unconditional love for people, but I must say this person is so, makes himself so unlovable, really I find it very difficult to love this person. And I feel that it's something in me that is not right, otherwise I should be able to love this person. But the more I should myself to love this person, the less I love them. These are real problems. There might be other ones like I just can't face the challenge of my life. It's all too difficult, too overwhelming. And all this competition and that's not where my heart is. I'm doing it because it's a question of survival, but it's very demeaning for me. Or then I'm dealing with people, and just I find a certain grossness in just listening to their voice and feeling their kind of attunement so out of sync with my own attunement. So it's very stressful emotionally. And so on. There are many other problems of course. If only I didn't have all these problems, I would be able to attain illumination. Those are the kind of conclusions one comes to in a rather perfunctory manner. It might be the other way around, of course. It is in fact the other way around. One is always challenged in that which is the most difficult. 'h God, why do you make life so difficult for me? Why don't you give those problems to other people? Why just me? That's a kind of, what I call middle range thinking, or common place thinking. As long as we think that way, of course we're lost. There's no doubt that we just cry for help. So how far, in what measure can meditation help us? That's the question before us. So let's take advantage of this in the course of our retreat. Well, first of all could you get into the consciousness of...let's take each separately because we're just undertaking too much at the same time. So take a problem, a particular situation where there is some disparity between your view and the view of another person on your problem. So just try an see how things look from the point of view of that person. So, just apply the experiment of Dr. David Boehm with two cinema cameras photographing a fish. You see that those two views are complementary and so you see that just looking at things from your vantage point is not only an inadequate assessment of the problem, but there is a kind of distortion of reality due to our psychological projections on reality. So that we're never really grasping reality, but the reality as, the way it is distorted by the lens of our personal vantage point. And we take it for granted that that's the way things are, and it's certainly the way that things appear to us. So it's already a help to try to look at things from the vantage point of your adversary, but of course, his or her vantage point is no better than yours, of course. But still it is complementary, so it will give you a further a wider sense of meaningfulness. Now if you would extended it to the point of view of more people. Could you do this? So you get a truer picture although not an ultimately absolutely paramount picture, but a truer picture. Now, if we were to be able to proceed in infinite regress, now we come to a breath taking view which has been expressed by St. Francis when he said,"I used to think that I was looking at the Universe, but actually the Universe is looking at me". So those are two then complementary views, but not like the views of the two cinema cameras. But one is infinite and the other is finite.(pause) Well, let me explore this a little bit further, because our first step was, could be expressed by those of us who feel, I think it was Ibn Arabi who said,"I see through his eyes" I would say his/her eyes. And the next step was, I see myself through his/her eyes. See yourself through the eyes of another person, particularly through the eyes of a person with whom you have a problem. So it's not just looking at the problem, but trying to imagine how you appear to that person, how that person perceives you. And then another person, you see their perceptions are totally different, and of course different from your own perception of of yourself. Now include more and more people. And somehow, even though that composite view is not ultimate, it still is better than either your personal view or that of a personal, a person. And if you could carry this further in infinite regress, you'd get into what is called cosmic consciousness. There is a technique used by Buddha. One extends one's consciousness into a vaster and vaster embrace and at a certain point, one's consciousness is reversed. So one's consciousness now seems to be the object, and the subject is the consciousness of the Universe. So one sees one's consciousness as being the focalization of the all encompassing consciousness of the Universe. So although one does not know the consciousness of the Universe and cannot stipulate it, one can not just infer it, but one can actually reach it by proceeding further and further, imagining more and more the view that people have of oneself, including more and more people, but I would say including the masters, saints, and prophets, illuminated beings and also the beings in the celestial spheres, if that's meaningful to you. Now that's what is meant by God consciousness. So it's not just extension horizontally but vertically, if I may use such metaphors. But as I say, at a certain moment you have to switch over 180 degrees, about turn, as one says. It's a breathtaking switch over. But to carry this further, let us go to Ibn Arabi who talks about this further step in the active consciousness where one is able to imagine how God discovers Him/Herself through one's own person. So it's not just God just looking at you, but discovering Him/Herself as you, not through you but as you. That is Sufism. In the same way that you discover yourself in the Universe. Now this might be difficult but well this is Sufism and that's the reason Sufism is more difficult to follow than Yoga, and Buddhism and a lot of isms. It's very challenging to our thinking. I don't know whether your noticed that I said,"God discovering Him/Herself in us, through us and as us". So it's not that simple. And I was using a word which if you've been subjected to Buddhism you could question, the word God. I've been using the word the Universe sometimes in place of the word God. It's more acceptable to some people. It's a matter of semantics. But the fact is that in mathematics, if you don't mind my opening a parenthesis here, in mathematics, well mathematics would not be conceivable without the notion of infinity. The number 1 is only meaningful with reference to infinity. And as Poincare said infinity represents our ability to always imagine a larger number, than the largest number we've imagined so far, and consequently there are capable of grasping greater perfection than the most wonderful state that we could imagine in infinite regress. Somehow if you reversed that, and you could say that if we are able to have some inadequate representation, some albeit inadequate and anthropomorphic representation of God, it is because potentially that perfection we project towards a being other than ourselves is potentially present within us, potentially. So if you look at things from the reverse point of view from our point of view, then you understand Ibn Arabi's words, "God not just looking at us, but discovering Him/Herself". Well at first we would say, "through us". What does that mean? Well there are two senses we could apply. One would be through our consciousness. That is through the way that His/Her consciousness focalized in an individual way. And through our personality which actualizes His/Her nature, or let's say investment in our being. So that would be one way one look at things. I would say a rather simplistic way, that is in terms of duality, God and us as other. But then a more advanced way of looking at things is God discovering Him/Herself as us, because then you are not thinking in terms of duality. That's a more advanced way of looking at things. That's what Sufism is teaching. When I say," as us", it means as Him/Herself actualized in each fragment of Him/Herself and that's what we mean by us. Could you just reflect upon that for a moment? And try and imagine how things would look from an antipodal standpoint from you own standpoint. Discovering His/Her perfection in our imperfection. That's rather like discovering the voice of Caruso within it's distortion. It's again a paradox. So from our point of view, we are not disowning our shadow. But we're not so blinded by our shadow that we can't see the reality behind it. I mean we can't see, yes the reality behind it, because the shadow is always intimately related to something positive, and can never be separated from it. So it's not a reality per se, that is a reality in itself, but a reality that is related in another dimension. For example, laziness would be the shadow of peacefulness. So the the shadow is related to the reality behind it. So one has the defects of one's qualities. So if we look at things from the divine point of view, you would see the qualities, how can I say, hidden, masked by the shadows. (long pause) Whereas in our human perspective, we tend to either see the shadow or the quality, but find it difficult to extrapolate between both. Somehow we are able to reach beyond our thinking in terms of categories, into the divine thinking. And may I add that the divine thinking at the edge of our consciousness liberates us from despair. So just, I want you to realize that although one can never say that one has attained divine consciousness, one can somehow reach beyond the middle range in, by always trying to imagine the reverse point of view to one's own point of view, the antipodal point of view. Even though one can never reach it, at least in infinite regress, moving further and further in the opposite direction to one's own vantage point.(pause) And first of all may I say that it has a healing, therapeutic effect because it liberates us from our self denigration or even self hate, which we didn't know how to get rid of because we got caught in a bind, while still acknowledging the shadow instead of denying it. You know that it is the power of imagination that makes this possible, so do not think that the imagination is deluding. It is a faculty that we of projecting in a tangible way something which we grasp in an intuitive way but needs to be made more tangible for us to be able to sense it, to fathom it, to grasp it. Say this personal note, meditating in the oriental room of my father's in Surene, and at a certain point and at a certain point looking at a picture of Pir o Murshid and thinking to myself, "What is the magic whereby a human being can become a spiritual giant, as he was?" Then it occurred to me that it is by the magic of what one can call imagination. It's the same word. The ability to project into a being whom one considered other than oneself, something that is already present in oneself, but one cannot grasp it in oneself. It becomes knowable when it becomes the object of one's knowledge. Therefore it has to be projected into what one imagines another being. But of course this projection is inadequate of course. One ascribes to God what one would like God to be like. And based upon whatever one's grasp, concept is of qualities that one values, but limited by one's ability to conceptualize these values. And consequently this image of God, this concept of God as Pir o Murshid called it, needs to be continually shattered and renewed, because it incurs of course the limitation of our imagination. That's why Pir o Murshid says,"Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth". So one is continually questioning the reality of this image that one forms of God. And then it needs to be replaced by a more germane one, and the only way to do that is to be able, as I say, to reverse one's vantage point, and try seeking from the reverse point of view, the divine point of view. The words of Buddha which are helpful here. He said,"When consciousness extends beyond the range of the personal consciousness, overflows beyond your usual range, then the consciousness of the Universe takes over. And consequently one remembers the condition of the whole Universe". And he proved it. For example, he said there was a time when there was no smoke on the planet earth. How did he know? In those days they didn't know that meant there were no humans. How could he know in those days that there was a time when there were no humans on planet earth? He said that there was a time when planet earth didn't exist. How could he have known in those days? One didn't even know the existence of planet earth. He said there was a time that the Universe didn't exist. How could he know? It's only in the last few years astrophysicists are saying that. So in other words, and then he said, "And then one Universe collapses and another Universe is born". These are the very latest views in astrophysics. So he proved that there is a cosmic underlying knowledge behind our personal knowledge which may be consigned to the unconscious until we free ourselves from the limitation of our personal vantage point. Then it surfaces and emerges with great power. Like just imagine that the consciousness of the whole Universe is able to emerge, to erupt through your consciousness when you have dispelled the boundaries of your outreach, of the outreach of your consciousness.(pause) And one can understand the words of the Chinese. One can only laugh and realize how stupid one was, I hope you take no offense, at the very limited assessment that one made of one's problems if we look at them from this point of view. We realize that we are experiencing in our limited manner the drama of the Universe, and perhaps missing out on grasping that the cosmic celebration is trying to break through that drama right down here, not up there somewhere, but down here. OK So now can you just try and see, or this is of course a little more difficult, if you can see your problem as the way that the cosmic drama is working itself out in your case and in the case of other people and so on. What I mean by the cosmic drama, is that things by nature can't be hunky dory because then nothing would be gained. Conflicts, and so on, result from that most wonderful of all gifts which is freedom. That's what is gained, at the cost of suffering, agony. That is free incentive, and the consequence is that people make disastrous decisions that involve suffering of millions of people. That's the price of freedom, and hence the drama. But that there should be glory in this drama is of course difficult to see. Maybe the catch word is to be found in the words of Pir o Murshid,"A disaster that avers itself to be a victory." Like the crucifixion of Christ that was the coronation of Christ. I think of that priest who used to celebrate mass in concentration camps. The Nazis would come and beat him up. He would crawl back to where he was before and he would celebrate the mass even more gloriously than he ever before. It's in life that the cosmic celebration takes place, you realize. So just see if you can see that in your life. So that is, well to say it in a simplistic way, one has the intelligence to believe in God faced with proof of the opposite. But I would put it a different way and say that if one is able to stand by one's conviction that the issue in life is that splendor should manifest as beauty, not just in form but in actions, and that the intention behind the programing should become known. If one has the strength to stay by that conviction even though one's mind tries to convince one of the contrary, then one gives oneself over to glorification. That is where the cosmic celebration is able to come through one. The only way to glorify is to represent to oneself this splendor which is trying to come through in human actions sometimes. So it's a figment of one's imagination until one is able to see it actually happening in real life. And the same thing, one imagines the light of the heavens. But do you realize that the photons in the beer can on the garbage heap are as beautiful as the photons of the stars? Now a concluding remark, perhaps you know that of course the physical world is transposed in our psyche. That is the way that we perceive the physical world leaves its mark in our psyche, our representation of the physical world. And so one could say that it is transposed. It continues to live in our memory. So when you are meditating, you might not be experiencing the physical world, but it continues to live in your psyche. But more importantly, our assessment of our problems and our self image leaves a very deep mark in our psyche. So imagine that your psyche is carrying a false representation of the physical world and particularly of your problems. And that means that we are schlepping false assessment of our problems throughout our life in our psyche. It is not surprising that people incur despair based upon an error of judgment. It's very serious. So the, I would say the first step in Yoga which is called Savitarka Samadhi, Patanjali Yoga Sutras, consists in freeing oneself from one's psychological projections upon reality, upon the world. That is one might call that being objective, objectivity instead of subjectivity. And that is the teaching of Buddha. But we're living in a time when we are encouraging subjectivity, the personal self. And this is where freedom comes in. And as a matter of fact, we suffer in our need for freedom by being jammed in the bind of subjective representations. And the ensuing emotional attunement is very demeaning. Therefore we need to bring the fresh air of, how can I say, the Himalayan altitudes into our lives in order to heal us from despair. So once more discover in order to find that freedom, I find it helpful to just try and discover in yourself the ascetic together with the person of world without having to cop out of your problems, drop out of your problems. And that is the meaning of the words of Christ when he said,"They are in the world, but not of the world".(pause) Can you see that that is the reason why you came here? Because you must have felt that something in you, that albeit in the world, is not of the world. Remember the words of the king in the play of Pir o Murshid. In the end of the play he hands the inheritance of the kingdom to his son, and he says,"I am in search of another kingdom". That's the reason why Christ is talking about the kingdom of heaven. And why Judas couldn't understand what he was talking about. He was hoping that he would help him to free himself from the Romans. Or, give Caesar what belongs to Caesar but give God what belongs to God.(pause) Now just relax, breath heavily. As you exhale move your fingers and hands. Start stretching. We'll have a break now for around 20 minutes. MAR 31, 1995 Tape 03 Tape 3 March 31, 1995 Abode Spring Retreat page 1 So one generally assumes that meditating consists in turning within. One closes one eyes, and the danger is that one should just simply wallow in introspection rather than really turning within. That means that one is still assuming that one is a spectator and instead of perceiving the physical world, the environment, or even one's problems and circumstances, one is judging one's own person or, rather, one's self image or one's own interpretation of one's problems, and so one is jammed in in the constraint of one's personal representation of oneself and, of course, one's personal vantage point. It could even lead towards schizophrenia, split personality and, therefore, it could be dangerous and, therefore, I would suggest reaching deeper within and, at the same time, reaching out rather than be encapsulated in one's psyche. So instead of being encapsulated in one's psyche, that is thinking of it as a contained, discrete entity, think of it as bottomless, as reaching inverted space, let's say, but that is infinite, instead of being bounded and, as I say, reaching out from within. For example, we have been trying to get into the consciousness of people with regard to our problems, for example, and it is true that we can transpose our consciousness and try, at least, to see how things would look from the point of view of another person, but that is just looking at things the way that person would be looking at things if they were in their only consciousness the way that we are in our only consciousness, but there is a way of reaching people from within. I would like to illustrate it, the difference between swimming on the surface of a lake and seeing what seems to be discrete lotus flowers or water lilies. Just see the flowers as, I say, discrete entities. Being able to, if you were swimming under the water, you'd be able to see that it is really a network of roots that emerge(s) into what seem to be different flowers, but there is unity in the depth, and so there is a way of reaching each flower from the depth instead of from above, and then you would see much more when the vantage point or the perception of that person comes and the way that person knows him/herself. That is a deeper way of relating to people. So instead of trying to transpose your consciousness from your consciousness to that of the consciousness of another person, you realize that there is a commonality between you and that person. There is an affinity and, consequently, you resonate with that person rather than considering... that means you consider them as an other yourself, rather than thinking of them as other. That is what Martin Buber calls the I/Thou relationship, instead of the I/it relationship. In the I/it relationship, you assume, you pretend to be the judge but in the I/Thou relationship, there is an interactive process whereby you commune with one another without judging one another, in the spirit of affinity. Then you might find the aggressivity of this person is due to their feeling threatened or perhaps it's their way of validating their self image which is very badly depleted, so you could even have compassion for the person who is torturing you. So that is a deeper way of looking at life. So the way to plunge deeper than the personal vantage point as one turns within... There are two ways. One is to consider your thoughts to be like the surface of your mind, like the waves of your thinking which has a deeper reality. Your thinking breaks up into thoughts just like the sea seems to break up into waves. In fact, there are no discrete thoughts. That is again a concept. The reality is the flow of thinking. And in that sense, your thinking is part of the thinking of the universe. Instead of thinking of it as being your own thinking. So the Hindu method consists in considering your personal thoughts as being deluding because they do not take in the reality behind them, and so once you question, let's say the validity, let's say consider your personal thoughts as inadequate expressions of what you really mean, then you begin to grasp meaningfulness, a deeper meaningfulness. But that means that you have to exercise freedom from your, I suppose, habituation of taking your thoughts for granted. And there is conditioning in it, of course, freedom from conditioning. Could you try to see this now as you are meditating. If you just withdraw, how should I say, your concentration from the surface of your thinking, the thoughts and, as I say, there is another aspect of this which is instead of identifying yourself with the spectator, think that there is that spectator which is the universe but emerging from within, that is the subject, and that the real object is your thinking, is the thinking of the universe coming through as your thinking, then thinking of it as being your thoughts. So you see that you are withdrawing from the commonplace dichotomy subject/object which is deluding into a very different mode which Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state, as compared with the explicate state, which is illustrated by, for example, in our explicate mode of perceiving, it looks as though this tree is here and another tree is there, and that person is there and so on and so forth, and I am here. In the implicit, implicate way of thinking, of perceiving, one perceives the interrelationship between all things. For example, one sees the lie of the land instead of seeing the separate streets, for example, or one is able to understand what is meant by radio waves that compose of one another, forming a wave of interferent patterns instead of... so they are not really localized in space; they are spread out in space. This is a different mode. And in your psyche, the correspondence is in the difference between explicit thinking and implicit, what you imply behind what you explain, and you realize that while you explain something, you are always implying a lot of things that you hope that people will also imply; otherwise they couldn't possibly understand you and, of course, you realize that you could never explain all that you imply, and that is the reason for practicing silence in a retreat, because we are used to explaining our thoughts and, by so doing, we limit them to our language which is made of static words like thoughts, for example, and does not account for the dynamics behind them which are dynamic thought, it is dynamic thinking instead of discrete thought. So if you are able to practice to observe silence over a period of time, you do not try to explain, of course, what you feel or what you think, but you... even not trying to translate what you think in terms of language while you are in silence, finally you get to a point when, since you don't have to explain how you think even to yourself, to your, let's say, concrete mind, you are able to reach, how do you say, to encompass, I would say, broad context in your thinking that you could never do if you were trying to translate it in the semantics of ordinary language. So you see that the only way to turn within then is to let go of any attempt at explaining either to people or to yourself the kind of realization that you are coming to and also relinquishing any attempt at thinking of yourself as the thinker. There is a zen word which is 'the universe thinks me instead of I think the universe.' That is a very pertinent way of proceeding. Now, of course, I realize that we are not used to this way of thinking because it is, as I say, beyond the commonplace way of thinking. That is something that one begins to fathom as one reaches deeper and deeper into that infinite space that we think is within. It is not exactly within but it is a different direction to reaching out into the universe, the physical universe, the universe actually as we image it to be, the existential universe. It is discovering the universe that seems to be in yourself. The same universe that you are experiencing outside yourself is to be found in yourself, like Pir Murshid said, "When I am conscious of my bubble self," (that is having boundaries, of course) "then I seem to be a fragment of the universe, but I am conscious of the divinity of my being. I realized that the ocean is present within the bubble." I said before every fraction of the totality carries potentially the totality but in a potential way, of course, in a latent way. So since it is latent, it cannot be the object of your knowledge. If you think of this as a subject, there is no way of knowing what is in the depth of your being. Physicists know that there is no way of knowing an electron if you watch it because then you are disfiguring it by your observation. So it is very difficult for us to switch over to, turn about, and give up thinking of ourselves as the subject, the knowing subject. The formula used by the Sufis is that we are talking about knowledge that is revealed instead of attained, and so one has to place one's aspects of oneself that one is a spectator, to say as the Egyptians do, and they call it the ba. The ba is placed on the top of a door in some of the papyri. So one is dispensing with the activity of that aspect of one that is a spectator. And then something gets revealed. So, can you do that? See how it works? Encapsulate yourself in your psyche. Just consider the thoughts, the random thoughts that arise in your psyche, as being exercising some kind of pull upon your consciousness just like the objects when you open your eyes and look at objects. So these random thoughts are part of a process of digestion of the psyche and one worries about them. One thinks 'well I can't meditate because these random thoughts come and disturb me.' The thing to do is not to turn the spotlight of your consciousness towards those thoughts. Let them circulate in the twilight of your consciousness without allowing them to exercise an impact upon your consciousness. That is, again, a question of detachment and, of course, helpful if your realize that these random thoughts are deluding. They are not absolute. They are relative and, consequently, rather deceptive. If you turn towards them, then you are their victims. You are caught under their spell, and you want to be free. They have every right to be there but they are working in the twilight of your consciousness so don't turn towards them. (long silence) So you see that you can just capture a sense of meaningfulness without being able to translate it into your ordinary mind. And it would be distorted if you tried to. And you can't say that you grasp it; it's just something that seems to flash itself upon your mind to reveal itself without any kind of proof or any kind of infrastructure. It's like the meaningfulness of meanings, or the meaningfulness behind meanings. That would be a very good indication of what one means by realization. As soon as you try and grasp it with your mind, it escapes you just like the bluebird, and you musn't try to hold it. The Upanishad says 'it has passed before you realize that it was there.' I like to imagine Buddha in that state where the meaningfulness of life started to emerge with great clarity but he tried to find devices whereby to convey it to his disciples because otherwise how could they benefit by the realization that he came to? His way of doing it, I hope we will be doing it several times on this retreat. Can you just be very, very alert, very awake, and that does not mean being aware of only the here and now, but as I say, the way that the everywhere and always manifests in the here and now. So it is a very all-encompassing, all-embracing and, at the same time, transcendental realization that contrasts with one's usual commonplace, as I call it, middle range, as I call it, vantage point. It is as though one were liberated from the constraint of one's only vantage point. And that is what is meant by awakening. I think the best description of awakening is downplaying a perspective and highlighting another. Think of a hologram, for example. You might have two superimposed pictures in a hologram and you can't extrapolate between both of them at the same time so, in order to highlight one, you have to downplay the other. Then you could reverse it, and that would be awakening, by downplaying the personal perspective and highlighting, how can you say, the impersonal, cosmic, transcendental perspective that we generally ascribe to God. Downplay your personal perspective without highlighting the transcendental one. This would be very negative, like thinking that one doesn't know, or one does not know that one does not know, or that one knows that one does not know, or one does not know that one knows, or one knows that one knows. So let's say that most of the time one does not know that one knows and if one stops thinking that one does not know that one knows, then there are chances that one will know. But I say this because I find that a lot of people won't admit that they are half dead, and they get into a lethargic state. So you have to keep on shaking yourself and awakening all the time. The universe tries to do it for you, but you do have to do something about it. Maybe there is an error in thinking that one has to leave one's mind behind. There is a kind of elasticity of the mind so that one is able to shed one's mind in one's awakening by transmuting one's mind or transfiguring one's mind. I mean one's ordinary thinking. That's why I would say don't discount your ordinary thinking as maya. It is valid but relative. It is the way some things look from a certain vantage point, so that has some validity. And one's realization does trigger off the unfurling of one's potentialities, and you can work with trying to develop quality and not get very far but, because one's way of thinking is standing in the way, it is really discovering the universe in oneself potentially. Not just potentially but discover the way the universe if trying to reveal itself to one in one's self instead of looking for it outside oneself. And that's why Platinus said "That which one fails to discover in contemplation, one tries to experience in the world." In other words, one is seeking for oneself in another one's self who is better able to manifest what one is than oneself. But now we are doing it the other way around. We are allowing the universe to reveal itself to (one in) oneself. Now, the skills, the methods, now to make this really happen... It is quite difficult to meditate without some kind of practical underpinning, for example breathing or whatever, wazifas, that is mantrams, and so forth. The technique... well, behind the technique there are some metaphysics. There are some ways of looking at things that perhaps you are not familiar with or that doesn't fit into the way one has been educated or taught at school. It consists in... you see, what we are talking about is the way that the universe that is latent within one but, as I say, when most of the genes are turned recessive, turned down by only certain active.... It reveals itself by actualizing itself. It is like a knowledge that one acquired by doing, like a sculptor discovering his/her statue by making it. So you can't know what is in you. There can't be the object of yourself as a subject but what one needs to grasp is the way that the universe is trying to emerge or erupt recurrently when one's thinking is not limited by the process of becoming. I have got to say that a little more clearly. Now perhaps you realize that the way you perceive yourself includes the past. You can see that you have changed in the course of time and maybe you could almost prefigure how you could be if you would be, if you might be, so somehow we are thinking in terms of what they call the arrow of time. This could even lead toward what is called karma in the Hindu tradition. You think that your present state is a consequence of how you were before. Causality in physics, la Placian causality, has been replaced by lots of new vectors and retrocausality, all kinds. I won't go into that. But as far as in our meditation, then we have to account for another factor. Then the one that moves forward in the process of becoming, instead of thinking of yourself as simply moving forward in time, like a river. So there is some kind of influence of the past upon your present condition. If you dwell upon it too much, you get sclerosed in your self image. You think it has been determined. Your present condition is determined by the past and, therefore, it is difficult to move into the future. Now the complementary way of thinking, to be found in Sufism, is that one is recurrently reborn which means that a new dispensation emerges that intersects the process of becoming. There is a new factor coming in and, if it were not so, there would never be evolution, there would never be progress. The present would be the consequence of the past, as a lot of scientists used to think in the past. I'll try to illustrate it. For example, if one is looking at the sea, it looks as though each wave was the continuation of the previous wave or the consequence of the previous wave, but actually, in addition to that, the whole ocean emerges as each new wave. So there are two factors, not just one. That is the whole universe keeps on trying to emerge recurrently as you, while at the same time needing to take into consideration all that you have inherited from the past, all that you have set into motion in your actions in the past, and that is undetermined and, therefore, unconditioned and represents your freedom from the conditioning of your life. And so the message of spiritual liberty that Pir Murshid mentions consists in discovering one's measure of freedom within one's conditioning. You could say that the divine freedom is delegated to each one of us, so instead of thinking that our free will violates the divine will or even contrasts with the divine will, consider that it customizes the divine will and thereby enriches it. Just like variations on a theme enrich the theme so that the being of God gets enriched by those expressions of Him/Herself that we think of us. So instead of thinking... and this is a view that Pir Murshid expresses when he says "And do not think of God as being static, or of your life as being preordained; think of God as a sculptor or painter, an artist who is continually rethinking His/Her painting or statue and our thinking as part of this rethinking." These are very new, different ways of looking at things, than the traditional way of looking are religion, and represent the breakthrough in our time, the spirituality in our time. They make all the difference in your way of perceiving yourself and of unfurling the potentialities in your being. But this theory... Now how do you actually capture that new birthing that is trying to erupt and, as a matter of fact, intercept the process of becoming your life, in your being. Well, there is something in our way of thinking that needs to be rectified. We need to realize that the process of time can be interrupted by what one might call an apostrophe, or let's say that time can be arrested, be suspended, and all you have to do is to think of a pendulum and you will realize that it looks as though the weight, whatever it is, (it might be lead, for example), the weighted object. It seems as though it stands still for one moment at the end of the swing before it swings in the opposite direction. Yes, that is one way of looking at things. The other way of looking at things is that time is not uniform and that it can stop, and it is in that state of suspension that new dispensations can emerge in the process of becoming. And that means that somehow the influence of the past can be suspended. I don't say neutralized, that would be saying a lot, but it can be suspended so that it does not stand in the way of the new dispensation. For example, if you have a feeling of guilt and figure, 'Well, I will never obtain illumination because I have done something so terrible that I cannot forgive myself, I stand in the way of my illumination.' That is thinking that one is damned forever, and that is a very negative thought. It would not be accepting the divine grace. So the divine grace is in our freedom to be what we want to be. The most marvelous gift there is: freedom. But that means we take responsibility. Well, what does it mean when you think of your guilt of the past? Well, there is a way of doing it, and that is to make a pledge never to do it again, or to do things the way one tends to do them, that's a pledge, and a commitment. A pledge is a commitment, And, if you notice, a pledge takes place in an instant of time. It interrupts the sequence of causality, the chain of causality the causal chain intercepted. So let's do this, the skills that we find in meditation. If you place the thumb of your right hand on your chin and place the middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril. Don't press your nostril yet, and place the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand, and have the thumb of your left hand on approximately your left nostril. Don't press it, and simply breath normally, but perhaps you could concentrate not upon the exhaling. Breath through both nostrils, of course. And extend your exhaling a little longer until you have evacuated all the polluted gas in your lungs. All right. Now, press your right finger on your right nostril and breath in through the left nostril and think of the way the past is moving toward the present, and press both fingers, including the thumb, of course, on your left nostril. Hold your breath. That's the state of suspense beyond the march of time. And exhale through the right nostril by releasing your middle finger, and there you are prefiguring the future but, for the moment, you just simply concentrate on the way the past is moving to the present and the way that you can trigger off a new dispensation. So, once more, inhale through your left nostril. Hold your breath, and as you hold your breath, make a pledge. I will not do this. I will do this. Exhale right nostril. Start again. Inhale left nostril. Think of the way that the whole past is moving into the present. It is still there but transformed as it moves into the present, but now something new is erupting because your pledge is changing things as you hold your breath. You are set on a different course now and, as you exhale, you find that this is going to change your future. So, again inhaling through the left nostril, see how one is determined by one's past, yet at a certain... As you hold your breath, you can realize that somehow you have the free will to change your track. It doesn't mean that you free yourself totally from the past but you are able to, let's say, give the past a new orientation, just like the yacht's person is able to orient the wind in a different direction to the way it is blowing by the use of the sails. So now as you exhale through the right nostril, consider the new prospects that are opening up into the future by the fact that you made a pledge. So the pledge is not just I will not do this, but it is I will do this. So you need not to continue to concentrate on your breathing but simply just sit back and think of all the implications of what a pledge does to your life. Now this last thought, and that is that it is a word of, well I think he was a great mathematician. He also has a great knowledge of biology. He is called Euhler, and he said these famous words, I hope you will remember them: "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." Because that is the thought that releases you from the weight of your past, and it has triggered off a whole new way of looking at things and science, at least for the avant-garde scientist, called retrocausality. That is instead of assuming that causality moves from the past into the future... for example, the evolution of chemistry on planet earth would not have been possible if the advent of the human being had not already been foreseen. It couldn't be the result of the past, just a result of the past. That is why (Daadashadan) said ('mega) was already in the offing at the beginning of time when one only knew about them. It's a whole new way of looking at life. The only thing is that you might limit yourself by your projections of the future. There was a word of Swami Satchitananda who said "No appointment; no disappointment." So be prepared that your prefigurations of the future, your planning should collapse or aver itself to be counterproductive, and that's where one has to realize that a fiasco can aver itself to be a victory. You can turn the tables on fate if you look at things that way. As I said there was an example of the crucifixion of Christ that averred itself to be a coronation. Because one is limiting one's freedom by one's projections, by one's planning. It might turn out to be better than you planned. It might turn out to be, in your mind, less good. So as Pir Murshid said, "The optimist takes the chance of losing, but the pessimist loses the chance of winning." That's where we come across paradoxical elements in our lives which we were trying to discount by affirming our freedom, and that is what you call our fate. How can we reconcile those two? Well, we will have to leave it for after lunch. Keep you guessing! MAR 31, 1995 Tape 04 Tape 4, Abode Retreat (What was) your appetite to deal with fate? I beg to be excused, if I may postpone it. I feel we are not ready for it yet. We are not ready for fate yet, because I feel tempted to succumb into the games of my mind. And I would like it to come from a place of experience. I have been discussing these questions with physicists and realize that the physicists, (too), that's not what they expect of me. They expect of me to see what light meditation can throw upon these problems, so we will be getting to it eventually but we need to prepare ourselves for that and we haven't got there yet. Also I triumphantly decided on the benefits of objectivity over subjectivity, even claiming that that was the way of Hinduism/Buddhism. That is a rather simplistic view. Maybe it ( ) first step. That is (savitat) samadhi, that is being wary of one's psychological projections upon one's problems. But actually, we need to bear in mind that reality is interactive instead of thinking of reacting to reality. As I said, you only know an electron by interacting with it. You don't know what it is of its own. I suppose it doesn't have any meaning, except in as much as it is interacted with, and the same thing is true of our problems. So you see, there are several steps here, and I would like to take those steps in turn until we are very clear about how we experience it. As I say, I myself succumb very often to the temptation of trying to explain things to other people and, of course, to myself. And I think that waylays one from actually experience. And what you want here is experience. So what we are going to do is to somehow open a bridge between the outer and the inner, so to speak. At first, we will have to highlight maybe the reaction to events which involve us. As you know, we are subjected to impressions of all kinds, some of them really nefarious and really damaging to our psyche. 'n the other hand, of course, we are getting much tougher, so maybe that's part of evolution. However, one can be over- stressed by emotions that are damaging to the sensitivity of our soul or, let's say, the core of our being. And we may even develop a split personality by overprotecting that sensitive core by shutting out impressions without knowing that we are doing it. So I think it is necessary to look into this very deeply. So, think of the amount of impressions that...well one could never make a list of all the impressions that one is subjected to in a day's time, particularly if one spends a lot of time watching TV, or reading newspapers, or walking the street. Millions of impressions. And sometimes we think that these impressions passed upon our consciousness like water on the back of a duck and then, in the course of our dreams, they recur, which means that they have left a mark on our unconscious that we did not realize and, consequently, they were meaningful in a way that perhaps we didn't know how to integrate in our being. And our unconscious is trying to do it because of conscious couldn't cope with it. And the unconscious can do some things better than the conscious, but some things the conscious needs to deal with. So this is something that you become very aware of when you are meditating because many of these impressions crowd into your, let's say, on the screen of your mind trying to draw your attention, and that is why many of us feel, 'Well, I just cannot meditate; maybe I am not the meditative type' or whatever, but that just doesn't work, so you come to a seminar with Pir Vilayat and it still doesn't work. So I have got to try and make it work, of course, fix it. So maybe I should talk to you about my own experience, because there was a time when I just thought I would never be able to meditate. I was convinced I wasn't the meditative type. And it really took...I remember really struggling for hours and then for days, and even weeks, and I didn't make very much progress so I thought, well, who am I to teach meditation if I can't even do it myself. So I canceled a lot of seminars. Scruple of honesty, and I thought, well, let's look into the traditions, yoga, and Buddhism, particularly, even Kabbala and, of course, the teachings of Murshid, of course, and of course, the Sufi's, that was a real breakthrough. And I saw that here are people who have been dealing with this very question and somehow who have found ways and means of reaching a state of realization and, so let's say that one is... Well, it's not a dialogue, of course; one isn't talking to them, but one is hearing them, and so I think that we need to take advantage of all that research that is being done by all these beings in order to be able to pursue our meditations. So that first step is if you remember that one must be aware that what one thinks is one's assessment of one's problems is only, that what one thinks is one's problems, is just one's assessment of one's problems. One is grappling not with one's problems but with one's representation of what they are. And so, of course, that would lead to a negative attitude like, I don't know because I realize that I am distorting my assessment of the problem so if I don't make any assessment, then I still don't know what my problems are, so how can I deal with this? And that is why one needs to perhaps try to see what light these methods throw upon the problem. Well, just a little bit of theory as a preparation because we start doing it. I am referring to Tibetan adage which I have already mentioned: the mind rides the wind. That is that the wind, therefore, is not necessarily our breath. I mentioned it with reference to our breath, but the wind would be like energy, like the underpinning of our being, matter energy, you know, exchangeable. So that's the underpinning, that's Pegasus. Then, the mind, well, let's say realization, our way of thinking corresponds to a sense of our identity, let's say, with that underpinning, and so for the Tibetans, if you identify with your physical body, or what you think is your physical body, (it is not what it is but what you think it is), then you think in a certain way. And they call that the gross mind. But if you identify with your subtle body, then your mode of thinking is going to be different again and, of course, if you identify with your very subtle body, then your mind is going to be a very subtle mind, so there are three steps here. So while you are meditating, if you still identify yourself with what you think is your physical body, then your assessment of your problems is going to be very inadequate, gross, as they say, and based upon I/it, you know, the dichotomy between subject and object, and a very simplistic way of thinking in terms of categories, as Emanuel Kant taught. So that we can't see the context because we get caught up by the details. We can't see the woods for the trees, one said. So now the second step would be if you are able to identify yourself with your subtle body, now what that means...I have tried to see what it means in physics, and I suppose there are many ways of looking at it. One's electromagnetic field, well, that is something that can be measured in the body. The traditional word the etheric body or the astral body. The word the life field is, I think, more comprehensive, less well-defined, and maybe the notion of being an aura of light or rather, well, it starts by radiating light but eventually the body radiates, well, absorbs light and emits light, but eventually identifying with that luminous shroud or, let's say, well, think of the aura as a template in which the body is being formed. That would give you a very different sense of identity, obviously; and consequently, your thinking is going to be different and, consequently, you are able to understand aspects of your problems that are not clear to you when you are in your physical consciousness. I am saying this and, well, to follow this up, it wouldn't be easy, it would take a whole training. So it would be a shortcut just to say well just do it, just imagine that you are a being of light and then think about your problems and see what happens. Well, let's do it, but as I say, it needs a little more elaboration, but it would be a first step just to, well, you know I think we will just have to follow the steps here. So, first of all if one could ever...I think it is very good to be able to have some kind of idea about what we mean by our body. Our body globally, that really does not give us a sense of what we are, but if you could represent to yourself the cells within your body, as, really, relatively autonomous beings that are endowed maybe with some intelligence but anyway which are excited maybe, that's the word used, by their interfacing with light, by the way they react to light, absorbing light, emitting light, dividing, pulsing, maybe jiggling, but if you get down to the atomic or subatomic level, and of course you have got a lot of things happening within the atom: the electrons jumping the orbitals. So there are a lot of things happening within the cells of our body just simply by the interfacing of the cells of our body with the light of the sun or the light of the stars, or the light of a candle or electricity, and so on. Now that's the first step. You are still identifying with what you imagine the body to be or the cells of the body to be, and then the second step would be quite the opposite, to, well there are different ways of doing it. One would be to realize that our bodies originated in the Big Bang and so they are essentially crystallized light and that they are still light. At some level, they are made of the fabric of light but maybe not limited to the party-line physics approach to what we mean by light. But it is a way of thinking that will suddenly trigger off a kind of memory of always having been a being of light, instead of thinking that light is something that the body draws from the stars. Let's say that we are beings of light and our bodies result from that, (or secondarily) or, let's say whatever we mean by our bodies, our substantiality, or whatever. So that represents a level of identification beyond the usual one and, consequently, one begins to grasp a subliminal level of reality. I don't know if this happened to you. Maybe it has. Of say, for example, walking in nature and all of a sudden it appears as though nature were transfigured, the trees were transfigured, and everything is kind of different, as though one has switched on the light of something and, at that time, you have the sense of déjà vu. You have the sense of yes, I know that, but how is it that I forgot that, but then it is not the same thing as the way I experience the world, so how is that possible? It is just as though you had been looking at the physical world in, let's say, ordinary light and then you all of a sudden saw the world in infrared or intraviolet, so it is the same world, but it looks different, you see. And you can actually switch into that state, almost...you can't do it with your will. In fact, there is only one way of doing it, and that is being a mad idealist. Of suspecting there is splendor behind even ugliness and really believing it to the point of seeing it, actually, and testing yourself like looking at the face of someone and, especially, if you can just select a very ugly face, and you see beauty in it, then you've made it, because that is the reality behind that face. Of course, one of the methods that we used was getting to the consciousness of the trees, for example. You can do this walking in the Abode and think that the trees are looking at you instead that you are looking at the trees. Don't overdo it because you don't want to end (up) in a clinic! (laughter) You could alternate between looking at trees and letting the trees look at you. So don't lose your personal vantage point ( ). The thing to do is...of course, the key is to realize that normally with one's normal setting of consciousness, one only experiences that which appears at the surface. Imagine, for example, that the world were three-dimensional. It isn't actually, but imagine that it is and that you are an animal, an insect that can only conceive of two dimensions, so all that you know of this three-dimensional world is wherever objects intersect that surface, and that's really the way we are in real life. So there is a kind of suspicion that there is something that eludes our perception that is continually trying to break through, and another practice that we have often done is having your eyes closed and imagine that your eyes emit light, which is true. Well, it's not your eyes but it is the light in your brain that is threaded through the optical nerves and reaches out into outer space through the cornea, but then as soon as you open your eyes, your cornea will serve as a receptive organ, an organ of perception, and will transduce events whatever they are into whatever it is, nerve impulses that you interpret as being the world. So you are now reacting. You are passive and, consequently, you have lost the sense of the light that is passed forth from your eyes, but if you are able to maintain your concentration on the light that is emitted through your eyes, while opening your eyes, at first the world will appear as a blur. Then eventually, if you are able to train your eyes a little bit closer to a flower or a vase, or whatever, an object, you will begin to grasp something like the countenance behind the features of the face, for example, and a further dimension of reality that you have not perceived when you were just perceiving the surface of things. If you just do this. (silence). Actually, this is something you need to practice a lot in order to be able to do it, but maybe some of you have already managed it. All of a sudden, you find yourself in a transfigured world. The reason for that is because you are not just reacting, just receptive, but you are interacting, that is that you are really discovering your inner world by matching it to the outer world, or discovering the outer world by matching it with the inner world. But to say that more clearly, something is trying to transpire behind that which appears, through that which appears. And if we just train our eyes on the apparent, then we cannot grasp what is trying to come through, so it means that we have to offset our glance from the usual focus and that the level of the consciousness means that we have to offset our consciousness from its normal setting. And you know that you've really done it if you all of a sudden have the sense I know this, this is familiar, strange I forgot it. I wonder where I know it from, I can't quite remember. Maybe in one's childhood. Now, of course, the Hindu view that the way that we perceive the world is maya is, of course, can be borne out by physics and so on, of course, but what I am saying is that there are different perspectives on the same reality, so if you know that, you can shift your perspective. Actually, one cannot really do it with one's will. Actually, it is because, as I say, that one suspects that there is splendor. In other words, there is a kind of pending emotion that impels one to try to grasp what one suspects behind reality and behind the appearance, of some kind of a flair that one has. So it does result from one's aspiration. So you see, there is something subjective about it. In fact, it is essentially subjective. Now, if you move a little further, one step further, then instead of considering the physical world, consider your problems, let's say your circumstances, and now you suspect that there is something beautiful trying to break through what seems to be occurrences that one might, of course, ascribe to fate. Of course, I could have said that there is meaningfulness behind what seems incongruous but, if you just do that, then you are just working with the mind but it is your emotion in the discovery of beauty that will give you insight and will reveal meaningfulness. For example physicists are now saying what they discover is not only meaningful, but it is elegant. It is aesthetics. And maybe it is because it is elegant that it is meaningful. 'kay, so that thought will shield us from rather perfunctory assessment of our problems, as I say, that leaves a mark in our psyche that we carry with us wherever we go, so this is a kind of therapy; however, if we build a bridge.. I mean that bridge is already there, of course, between the outer world and the inner world, what we experience through our senses and that upon which we cogitate in our minds. The bridge is open and so... There is a word of Buddha: 'Place a sentinel at the doors of perception. ' That is we do have defense system, in fact, a very complex defense system. For example, our body has some kind of, presents us with some kind of shield (against) contagion but of course that shield is very delicate and so the same thing with our psyche. So in the case of the psyche, by being aware that we are equipped with these defenses will shield us, the sensitive core of our being. How do we do this? You see, at first sight, of course, as already said, we are feeding on the universe. We are being enriched by the environment not only on the physical level, but on the level of the psyche. We are ingesting impressions and then processing these impressions and being enriched by them and also being damaged by them, overstressed by them, though in meditation we learn how to regulate all that. So how does the immune system provide defense to the body? For example, the body will reject a transplant, unless it is an organ that is very similar to the organ that belongs to the body with the same DNA. What does that mean? The body recognizes me and not me. And rejects not me. But then there is a second immune system which adapts itself so that, for example, you can eat organs that are very dissimilar that the body is able to adapt itself and, if it were not so, then we would not be able to eat food at all. So what we are suffering from now is overadaptation to the environment. And losing ourselves. And that is why meditation is a way of affirming the uniqueness of your being interacting with the environment. There is a balance between the degree to which we adapt ourselves to the environment and the degree to which we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. And that differs for each individual. So we have a selectivity there but we are not always using it. It is a kind of recognition. These are impressions which I can deal with. I see they match things in me that are enriching to what is already me because of infinity. Now these are the impressions, I find they are so different to what I am that, let us say, I cannot cope with them. It does not mean they are necessarily bad or whatever, but I can't cope with them. So as you meditate, do you have the power to repel an impression? What is that power, if at all? It is that power that resides in your self identity, not your self image but your self identity, that is your awareness of the realness of your being and there is a way of strengthening that awareness but, you see if you identify yourself with your aura, that aura is not just a radiate being, but it has some kind of semblance of your face and so somehow you will be amazed to discover your real countenance hidden behind your apparent face. Just do this for the time being. If you could just identify yourself with being a (being) of light, having always been a (being) of light and the body is being formed...It is a template in which your body is being formed, but somehow... Well, of course we know that the body of light is considered by physicists to be a physical matter, but still... Think now that somehow the matter that you inherited from your ancestors doesn't always lend itself to the reality of your being. It's like having to sculptor hard rock which is not malleable. It is much more difficult to configure than clay, for example. So there is some resilience and so consider that... and what is more, that you are really wearing a mask to be able to deal with the challenge of the world. You are wearing a mask and you are playing a role which life is asking of you to play, but that is not the reality of your being. That is the way that you adapt yourself to the environment and there is some kind of osmosis in the periphery of your being between the environment and yourself, so kind of deformation of yourself at the jagged end. But at the core of your being, that is where you discover the realness, your real being and your real countenance, and you know it when you touch upon it. You know this is me. Ah, I wish I had known this before; this is me. How wonderful! Just imagine I have gone through my life not knowing who I was and making all the mistakes I made because I didn't know who I was. Now you don't have to use your will to repair thoughts that are damaging to your real being. You feel such, how can I say, inadequacy in these impressions that they don't affect you. As you develop, then of course, you will be able to, how can you say, process impressions that are different to your being, but you realize, of course, to do that, well it is the same thing as digesting food. You need to (avoid) foods that, depending on the constitution, that we have difficulty in digesting. So it is the same thing. And then if you have a good constitution then maybe you can still eat Haagen-Dazs without having liver trouble, so there is a way of processing, and the body has a way of processing, but it means breaking down the impression and reconstructing it again so it is a whole process of digestion so eventually one becomes more and more, the more cosmic one becomes, the more all-bountiful, let's say, one is; and so it is more difficult to say this is me and this is not me because you become more and more encompassing. But as you say, it requires a ... (long pause) ...and so what Jung calls integration of personality, so at first don't overstress yourself. And therefore, in your meditation, if you come to this point when you have some sense of the reality of your being, then you will find it much easier to meditate because you are not bugged by all those impressions. So perhaps you have noticed there are two steps; one is filtering, that is placing sentinels, not just a sentinel, and not just at the doors of perception but at the doors of our psyche, and (let's say) several lines of defense. And the second one is being able to process impressions, digest them, incorporate them in a transformed way, let's say that's transmutation in alchemy, for example, but you can only do that if you have a very strong sense of yourself, and you cannot have a strong sense of yourself if you just identify with your body. Now this... We missed something in what I have said so far. I said have a strong sense of yourself because yourself is continually recurrently reborn, and so it would be a static view to think you know your real self, because it is in the process of becoming all the time. And so, so far, we have been examining, let's say, the traffic from, reaching from outside inwards, but there is traffic that goes from inwards outward, and we said already, yes, you distort impressions by your projections. If you are in your only sense of identity, then, of course,it is your self image that is distorting your experience of the world. There is some relationship between your self image and your experience, but if you identify with your subtle body, whatever that is... You see, in the first place, you are interacting with the universe by interfacing your projections with your experience. And we said, well, try to eliminate those projections. That is how we (talk about) samadhi. It is still elementary. It is not totally satisfactory, and that is why the next step in yoga is (savikara) samadhi where you do identify with your subtle body, and now what you are projecting, because you are interacting, as I said, with the universe, so what you are projecting upon the universe is much more real self than your self image. Can you see that? Perhaps there is more to say about this than I have said so far, because the opposite is also true and, as it is seen from this perspective, the universe reveals yourself to yourself, reveals you to yourself. Because, as I say, one is always looking for oneself in another one's self that is more capable of manifesting what one is than oneself. As you know, it is the enzymes, not just of the liver, the pancreas, but even the enzymes that govern the replication of DNA and RNA that process the food. So that is your action towards what you ingest, and the level of psyche is the same thing. You are providing psychological enzymes that predigest your impressions of the universe before they are resolved in the core of your being to enrich your being. Now there is a clue here, but it is very subtle. Let's come back to what the Tibetans say. They say the gross mind is simply interpreting events in what they call the speculative mind. Speculum means the mirror. But the subtle mind is able to project into tangible forms emerging... I can't use the word impressions. Let's see, something emerging from within that becomes concretized in the form of the projection of our imagination. Let's say it is discovering the universe as it emerges from within. The creative imagination. That's why, as I said, it is the sense of yourself, but not your sense of yourself in a static way but the emergence of yourself becoming concretized in your personality, for example; the way that your creative imagination can alter your personality in a creative way will help you to discover yourself in the universe and discover the universe in yourself. Now try to think this over as you are meditating now. Maybe I didn't say it clearly enough. You see in the (Manduka) Upanishad, that is not the same thing as yoga; it's Vedanta. The Manduka Upanishad recognizes four levels of the activity of consciousness. In the first one, (you are one), you experience other than yourself. In the second one, you are both the spectator and, let's say, the midwife of what you are experiencing. In other words, you are projecting into forms something which originally does not have form but becomes known to you by being projected as a form. That's creativity. And, well I could go further, but now the beauty here is that this form of your imaginings matches some dimension, let's say, that you are perceiving in the outer world so there is a matching going on so you discover yourself in the universe and the universe discovers itself in you. I think we are going to need to have a break here. And we will continue in 20 minutes. MAR 31, 1995 Tape 05 Tape 5, Abode Retreat March 31, 1995 And you don't realize that what you are in love with is what is coming through that person to you. And that, in fact, you are really in love with God, but you don't know it. But that love is so strong that you carry it beyond yourself and discover yourself in that person and that person in yourself. Perhaps it is the first time in your life that you, by the power of love, you have discovered God in yourself. But it doesn't matter if you don't know that you are loving God. It might put you off because you are attached to that person until you begin to see some defects in that person, and then you think 'was I mistaken or could it be God? Could it be that there is some imperfection in God, also? ' How could whatever we mean by God be able to be dynamic instead of static, that means improved, God improving? If He/She could not break down at the jagged edge and be born again? and that (big)... (laughter). That's called entropy and that is that a given harmony to be improved has a breakdown and a part of the scheme of things, and that's why Pir Murshid says, "We, in our projections, we imagine God to be good and God cannot be good and perfect at the same time." So we are shoulding God to be good instead of acknowledging the bounty of the divine being. And that means also that the thing about entropy is that it enables the program to work by trial and error instead of preconceiving things, ( ) So now you reflect upon your love letters again, and you love that person with an unconditional love, not trying to make that person fit into your your idea of what is good. Then all of a sudden, you discover dimensions of that being that you could have never grasped if you had limited that being to what you imagined that being, you want that being to be. Then your love has become golden, and this is what I call divine love. Now, let's get back to what I said, I think it was right in the beginning this morning, that somehow or other, we carry the DNA, let's say, the psychological DNA of the whole universe in our psyche, but most of it is turned down, well, it's recessive. And maybe that does not mean that the universe is other than that what is within us is a replication of it. There is no inner or outer. It is just in our minds that we think of the universe as being, if you like, that's what I would say a very modern way of thinking of God as the universe at all levels. But that universe is in us. It is coextensive with the reality of God as the universe, except that in the universe the dreams are not turned on or off. And no, that is not quite true. They are, that's right, but ultimately, what we mean by quest for transcendence is that condition of the universe, let's say, where all the dreams are in a state of, let's say, undifferentiation, as in the blastomere, for example, of the embryo. That's what we mean by divine perfection. And so that is that upon which we build our ideal, our representation that we imagine to be perfection, and this ideal awakens the potentialities in our being. Let's say awakens the God sleeping within, or the Goddess sleeping within, the sleeping princess. And otherwise, most of those qualities will remain recessive. So it is the power of love that awakens the God within. And we cannot know it by trying to know it, as I have often said. You cannot know a person unless you love that person, and the more you love that person, the more you can discover all the dimensions of that person. So that we carry within us the divine nostalgia, Ishq Allah, which bursts forth in the power of love. It shatters and overwhelms our being and carries us beyond our limitations and resolves our shadow into the reality of which (share) the shadow. So we cannot try to develop qualities in ourselves by trying to develop them. It is only by our, I like to use the word bewonderment, but it is more than bewonderment. It is our ecstasy when we, as I say, espy the splendor in the beloved, the beloved as the universe. We espy, as I said, we suspect something, that we have got feeling that it is there but we don't have any evidence until, through our admiration, we discover it more and more and, as such, we discover it in ourselves and, consequently, we discover those potentialities that are lying within us. The thing is that all of those values are there as a scale of values, and what we mean by the ideal is that we give precedence to the more lofty ones. We have whole scale of values and values that are less valuable to us than other values, and that is why we make a difference between the love of God and the love of humans because in humans we only see a certain part of the spectrum of those qualities, and we ascribe to God the higher ones, and so love becomes glorification. That accounts for the words of the prophet Mohammed when he said "By glorifying God, God is able to create Himself as us." We are responding to the divine love by glorifying and, hence, the importance of prayer and the importance of the concept of God. As Pir Murshid says, 'it is just like the stepping stone. We make a kind of, with our imagination, we make an idol of God, a picture, and then we destroy that picture because it is totally inadequate, and then it is replaced by one that challenges our understanding in infinite regress, further and further, gearing our emotions and understanding beyond the middle range. So perhaps you felt something in this music that matches how you feel being lured further and further, one imagines upwards, by one's sense of the value of the sacred. So I want this to be very high emotion, not subjective personal level of emotion (which) is constraining. I moved from there very quickly into the high dimensions. It is not like the love of God and the love of human are two different things. It is all one reality polarized but part of our meditation is knowing how to value the levels of emotion. Buddha has gone into this very deeply moving from, on one hand, dogged emotions, of course, that you look and you see around you and then divine bliss on the other hand, at the other end. But also between the more personal feelings to the, I would not call it impersonal ones, but to the cosmic all-embracing, call it divine, so that's... because you see one of the wazifas of the Sufis is Ishq Allah (mabudlala), so it is not (malbublala), it is not God is the loved one, God is the glorified one, so we respond to the divine love by glorifying God and that is always less because it tunes our emotion to a high, sublime pitch which otherwise could draw us down into the limitation of our own inadequate self image. That's why I say we discover ourselves in our love because we discover all the dimensions of our being instead of just the personal one. (pause). The secret of this is to shift our sense of identity from body-ness through being a subtle body to being a celestial body to discover our celestial identity. And that matches a level of emotion which, quite rightly, we ascribe to the angels' innocence, purity, sacredness. So identifying with one's aura of light is not sufficient now. We have to reach a further level of identity and the notion of form as being transmuted in some way so that we have to leave these notions behind, and that is why (Azib Natomy) says at this point in our meditations, we have to forego the active imagination, and, of course, in Tibetan Buddhism, the very subtle body and subtle mind, beyond perception and beyond imagination. It corresponds with the third state in the (Madukayat) Upanishad. That means that while you are meditating, not only the impressions of the outer world and of the occurrences in your life gravitating in the twilight of your consciousness, but any imagination is also relegated to the periphery of your consciousness. Though you wake up from anything that can be the object of your consciousness... So consciousness is bereft of its object, of its content and, consequently, as Pir Murshid says, "Consciousness (resolved) in its ground which is pure intelligence. So there is a practice that we can do here. If you are working with light, at first you thought you were absorbing light and emitting light, and you started to identify with being a (being) of light and now you identify with being a luminous intelligence. Buddha calls this beyond existence. The Sufi would say the being of God beyond the qualities that one ascribes, that qualify His/Her being, that predicate His/Her being, that we invoke in the wazifas, the wazaif. Because, as I say, in unconditional love, you love a person irrespective of their qualities. What you want is their presence. And so your emotions become sublime. Some psychotherapists might call this the spiritual bypass. I am not talking about denying one's personal emotions. I am talking about sublimating them. That is the way to resolve the shadow. APR 01, 1995 Tape 06 Yes, well we'll try to explore the different levels of our being and of course of the universe. And let us bear in mind that for each sense of identity there is a mode of thinking and therefore of realization. And so starting with what we assume is the body, let's call it something substantial and I have the sense of that substantiality by the fact that it is endowed with resilience. And that is, there is a cohesion of the cells, the force that holds the cells together. And the body as a whole is clearly located in space. There are definite boundaries, the skin so you can feel them. Actually, one can actually feel the gravity field of the universe and particularly of planet Earth in one's body. It's, as I say, it's a kind of cohesion, cohesive force that, for example if you imagine that you were on the planet but the planet were upside down you would not fall into space; there's some kind of pull that holds you. So that gives us a kind of anchor. One says have your feet on the ground. So that is our basis, and curiously enough, another thing is we are really connected with the whole universe in our very bodyness because, well I think the best description of gravity would be: imagine the skin of an orange that had dry specks and so the whole of the skin would be drawn towards those dry specks. So, if you think of that then you realize how by,well space is landscaped by gravity and to what extent your body is involved in the bodyness of the universe. Now the consequence of identifying with this level of your being is that you think of yourself as different from what is outside you and therefore a clear sense of what is me and not me. Me as a subject and outside me as the object, and even by extension my body as the object of my knowledge and my thoughts as the object of my knowledge and so on. It's very clear sense of subject-object. Now see if you can feel like a kind of, I suppose one could say a kind of power, a power field, a force field surrounding your body. You can feel it in your arms and shoulder, shoulders and perhaps in front of your chest. Just like the magnetic field of a magnet, electomagnetic field of a magnet. As I'm sure that you, at school you've placed some metal filings around a magnet and you saw that those filings are distributed according to very wonderful patterns and that are beautifully harmoniously ordained. So imagine that your body is the same as a magnet and it has this ability to radiate energy. Just, I just want you to feel that field. So now our sense of identity has changed. We're beginning to think of ourselves as a field rather than a discrete body, which means that our magnetic field can intersperse, be interspersed with that of other people or objects, everything, in fact the magnetic field of the planet and of the universe. So you see it's a different way of thinking in terms of being a field. That is, one has a different sense of space, one is, the field is not really located in space. It is everywhere. And so you have a different sense of identity. You don't think of, if you can now identify with that electromagnetic field, well it's an electrostatic field to start with, then instead of identifying with the body, and the way of doing it is think of this field as the template in which your body is being formed. And so something more primary than what you think is your body, like an electrostatic jacket. Like, for example Dr. Becket is using coils to help bones, the bones of people to heal. He finds that in fact it is that magnetic field that configures the, that fashions the configuration of the cells. So it's a more primary reality, primeval reality than your physical body. So if you think that way you can identify with that field and it's not just outside your body, it's also inside. So you could just think of it as a body of energy instead of matter. That will give you, it will give you energy just to identify with it. Then you notice that it doesn't does not have the resilience of the body. It's almost like the clouds in the sky, like vapor. And it has some kind of free play with regard to the physical body. The body seems very stable and solid in comparison. So how do you think now when you identify with this electrostatic body? You experience affinity, resonance. You don't perceive other fields as being other fields but somehow they have some commonality with your own. So it's, for example you discover another person in yourself and yourself in another person. Kind of osmosis between beings, one calls it communion. Rather than that I-it relationship, Martin Buber calls it the I-Thou relationship. So for example when you feel a great deal of closeness with a being you find that being in yourself and you find yourself in that being. There is a kind of, as I say, commonality. Now of course if you move the magnet it becomes a dynamo, rotated for example, so the electrostatic field becomes an electromagnetic field and is greatly enhanced. And so that's what we do in the dervish whirling, or when you're whirling your head in the Zikr, well you're whirling your whole body in the Zikr. Now you could feel this field; if you place your, the palms of the hand facing one another like the Hindu greeting and then pull them apart you can feel some, a kind of pull. And it's not a gravity pull, it's a different power, a different force. And if you, what you could do is just imagine your whole magnetic field, and the difference between the very high frequency magnetism at the, in your head and the lower frequency in your feet, for example, or in the bottom of the spine. And just be aware of this whole very powerful field that intersperses the cells of your body and be conscious of the motion. It's as though there were currents within this field so it's dynamic instead of static. The cells are pulsing, the, you're neurotransmitters are moving along your nerves as a whole, there's a tremendous amount of activity going on and consequently this field is continually jiggling, ebullient with power and you can direct this energy in your arms and into your hands. You can feel it of course moving up the spine and down the spine and you can feel it moving in a spiral up and down and then you can direct it downwards from the top of your head through your arms and then you can actually feel it in your hands. Now if you place your hands close to one another you'll find it's almost as though you had a, there was a ball, a rubber ball between your hands so have to really press that ball, you know, to get your hands together. And by the same token, you can, in order to separate your hands there's a pull in the opposite direction. And I hope that this evening you'll have the opportunity of experiencing the Dervish whirling and maybe tomorrow we'll be practicing the Zikr so you can feel the way that this field when it is set in motion becomes enormously enhanced so the magnet becomes a dynamo. And what is more by that motion, the magnetic field induces a current which rises in your spine or descends down your spine, depending on how you move. Now, this is going to, if you follow this up, it's going to alter very considerably your way of experiencing the universe, because you don't have the sense of being located in space as you do if you identify with your body. And consequently you are getting to that, how can I say, that perspective that Dr. David Boehm refers to as the implicate state. And in science is called non-local and consequently, I'll give you an example of that what could mean. For example, if there's a solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse, the solar eclipse is only meaningful to you if you're in a certain point in space. If your consciousness were scattered in space it would not be any different from any other situation between the sun and the moon. So you see how things look differently if we think of ourselves as occupying a point in space, or if we don't, if we are scattered in space. And it is in that situation that you can reach into the consciousness of beings without going to visit them. But you do not, you are not the judge of, I mean you are not the spectator of their being, you resonate with their being. So it's a different form of communication, than being there sitting with that person and constituting yourself as the judge of that person. And maybe you have some sense of this. Maybe some of you have flying dreams and you think they're dreams of course, but maybe you've had the experience of a kind of jerk when you come out of that dream. They call it coincidence. That's a state in which your astral body, which is your electromagnetic field, has found some kind of way of separating itself from the physical body, which is of course very surprising, very paradoxical from the point of view of physics. So you can actually really identify with this field. Now if you remember, this corresponds, the way of thinking here corresponds to the subtle mind of the Tibetans. And if you'll remember it is that creative imagination. So somehow one is reaching into a subliminal level, where new dispensations emerge into the existential level. Imagination always starts by, well I don't know how to call it, an impulse. It is, it's not, it doesn't have a form. It could be an emotional impulse, a realization that is not definable in the mind and then it breaks through the threshold between the unmanifest and the manifest and manifests in a tangible way by assuming a form. Like for example Beethoven had this kind of quandary about the meaning of death and so it was, you know, like we all have. It's not something you can actually define, and it doesn't have a form; it's an emotional, it's not even fear, it's a kind of emotional attitude. And being a musician of course he translated it into knocking at the door, pah pah pah pah, and that was the Fifth Symphony. So this is the second mode of thinking. Instead of perceiving the events of the world that seem out of oneself, outside of oneself and interpreting those events, one is discovering the universe from within by projecting it into forms, which the Tibetans call the illusory body, the, or because these forms are illusory, the maya. You see, it's imagination, maya, the magi, the same word, but they convey something new. That's why I call it new dispensation as compared with what we pick up from the environment. So it's a process of self, of discovering the universe in oneself, projected into forms. And the forms are only signals that give us a sense of what's coming through. So as you turn within, if you really have turned within then you will be aware of being continually reborn just like the fresh petals in the center of the flower. And you will realize that much of what is trying to come through gets stillborn unless you protect it and give it all your support. And that means the support of your attention, of your awareness, even your faith in what is coming through. And realize that that is where you are invested with hope for your future. There is no hope in just processing the environment. There is hope in projecting your being into the environment recurrently new, recurrently renewed. So it's a condition that one gets used to and the amazing thing is that one really gets in touch with people, and not only people but of course masters, saints and prophets and beings, even angelic beings, but we're not quite ready for that yet. There's a sense of belonging to the universe from inside if I may say it that way. Instead of belonging to the universe such as it appears, as one perceives it. And of course a wonderful sense of freedom from the gravity pull of the body. So this is a different force in physics; it's the electromagnetic force instead of the gravitational, although there is in fact some relationship between the two. But I won't bother you with that now. But they say the secret is in the liken [??] field, the way the configuration of the atoms are distorted by gravity and that distortion has implications in the electromagnetic field. Well, now we're going to try and lift ourselves to the next level. And the secret of that is to identify oneself with a being of light. And so we've already done practices, I think, when we started, we were identifying with the body and then we were absorbing light and emitting light, and there is even a further practice. Well, if you were, the light you emitted is called fluorescence, biolumin, well fluorescence. But we also have the ability to, well let's put it another way. We are also continually burning our bodies and producing light in the infrared region, that's called heat. That's called phosphorescence, right? The ability of fireflies to produce light or bats in caves or deep sea fish have the ability to produce light out of the combustion of their bodies. So we produce, the light that we produce is generally in the infrared region so it's heat. But of course there is a way of transmuting that radiation so that one is really radiating light. And that's called phosphorescence instead of fluorescence. You could do this consciously. That's the practice of the Tibetans called tumo [??], to produce heat consciously in, sitting in the ice, cold and drawing a cold, wet sheet on your back to increase the phosphorescence of the body. But transmuting that infrared into middle range light is of course much more difficult. But these are, and then of course the next practice consists in, well trying to become aware of the different frequencies in the aura, so we perceive those frequencies as what we imagine to be color. So normally the radiance of the aura is rather nondescript but random let's say. But you can ordinate the colors in, according to the cosmic laws that you find in the spectrum, with the red at the bottom and violet at the top and all the different colors in between. So we have already done that. But since we have learned to turn within, in what is called the implicate state, we are able to, if you follow this up, then you could ask yourself, well what is the state of light in the implicate state? Well, in our normal perception of light we perceive radiation, light that radiates from a source. That is located, the source is located in space and light radiates from that. But if you shift your perspective into the implicate state, then you perceive or no you don't perceive, you grasp light that Pir-o-Murshid calls all-pervading, that is not, that does not radiate from a particular source. Just like a field is spread out, so light is spread out without being radiated from a particular point because you're in the implicate state. Now this is best, you see I don't know whether you can follow what I'm trying to get at. And that is it is simplistic to limit light to what we perceive as radiance. And the word in physics is the light field instead of radiant light or whatever, the way it could be [?conceived of light. I'm sorry if I keep on referring to physics, but it's the only way to really understand what we're doing. TAPE ENDED HERE, 2/3 THR'UGH FIRST SIDE APR 01, 1995 Tape 08 Abode Spring Retreat April 1, l995 Tape 8 Touched our hearts. So, we want to do it now. We've had a lot of instructions. So, you get into a place when you turn within, and of course you're not very aware of the physical environment. Of course, we're in a very peaceful place here, but it's more difficult to do it if there's the sound of the cars in the street. But there's a way of getting into an attunement so that those sounds seem to be remote, seem to be coming from a very great distance. It's just as though one were flying very high in an airplane, and the landscape seems to be blurred and shadowed with clouds and kind of one could reach it, but, as I say, one's consciousness is offset from that scene. And, as I say, you can't do that with your will. The only way you can do it is to discover the ascetic in your being. Discover that aspect of yourself that - - that suffocates by fitting into the conditioning of our societies. Detachment, indifference, so you don't obliterate the memory of the physical world in your psyche, but well, you're protected by that thought that it is not absolute, that it could be misleading, and that it's only one vantage point, so it's remote. Even your memory of it is remote. So, what I invite you to do now is to just imagine that you are awakening from a perspective, and so you need to call a new perspective, or else you'll still be held back by the former perspective. So, the new perspective is just find yourself in, imagine that you're just about to go to sleep, but you haven't got to sleep yet. You're able to maintain yourself on the threshold, so that the impressions of the world are still there, but very remote, but now thoughts are coming, all kinds of thoughts. And, as I said, you are not monitoring these thoughts, but you can draw your attention to what's coming through at this time. And to avoid vagueness, it's just as well that you -- there's a quality that is trying to come through. Can I just sense what that quality is? And, you don't have to fit it into any of the categories of the wasifas, for example. And maybe there is no word to describe it in English. It's just an attunement. At first, it's much better if it's just an attunement, let's say an emotional attunement, rather than a definable thought. Think of yourself as a flower that is unfolding. The jaded petals need to fall away, so that you need to accept some kind of disintegration of at least the surface of your being, the jagged ends. Now, that is what the Sufi's mean by "fana" and "baka". There's always the two. So, perhaps there is some synchronicity in that the quality that is trying to come through is something that has been on your mind lately a lot. And, as I say, perhaps there's some synchronicity in that you saw that quality, or detected that quality in a person and you thought, " 'h, I wish I had that mastery," or "I wish I had that patience," or "I wish I had that compassion, or that love, or that joy, or that peace." And the fact is that you do have it, but you didn't know it. So, maybe the thought of that person will act as a catalyst, and in the same way, we often think of a master or a saint or a prophet who in some way is a role model for us, gives us some sense of what we want to be ourselves. But do not get attached to that role model. And that is why in Islam, one is destroying the idol, that means destroying one's dependence upon that role model. And then one finds the same quality that one was looking for in another person in oneself. That's trying to come through. But you see, there is some trust in it, and I suppose that's the place where faith is really recognizing that the totality of the bounty of the Universe is present in you. But most of it is not active. It just needs to be awakened. We've said that several times, but I can't insist upon that too much, because that's the key. And that in order to awaken it, one needs to project it into some idealized form. It could be what one ascribes to God, but that's an idealized form, it's not God, but it's a form in which we project the potentialities in our being in a form that we can perceive or contemplate. Or then, it could be a quality, just a quality. It doesn't have to be a quality that is actualized in a person, but just a quality that is your ideal. Like, my ideal is awakening, my ideal is mastery, my ideal is . . . so on. And that is the way in which you awaken that quality that is within you. But as I say, then, if we identify with our body, it's kind of sclerosed. It doesn't bend itself; it's not very malleable. But if you identify yourself with your etheric body, then it is so susceptible to change, like a cloud can assume different forms. But now, we're identifying with our psyche. And you see, it could be sclerosed, and then there is no hope. Well, then you could think, "I am in the process of transformation all the time, and that means that some aspects of my self are disintegrated and new aspects emerge. A very nice picture is a river. It's never the same water that passes under the bridge, but then you say it's the river. So think of yourself as a continuity in change. And now, in order not to eradicate altogether the scene of the physical world, think to yourself, "Now supposing that I were to apply this quality when meeting my problem, when meeting that person again, and when talking to that person, I would apply the kind of quality that I have developed in my meditation. For example, I would confront this person with great mastery. What would happen? How would it alter the situation?" So, you're not losing altogether the bond with the environment, but instead of being receptive to the environment, you're casting your being upon the environment. So it's positive instead of negative. Now, we need to make an ascent through the spheres. It's something we've been exploring through the whole morning. So, I repeat again the words of Pir-o-Murshid that are really keys to this. The first one is that, "There comes a time in one's evolution where a passion is awakened for the unattainable." A passion for the unattainable. So, if you thought that it could be attained, well, then you would say, "Well, I haven't got it, but some people have it, and maybe I'll get it." That's not the way. No. It's always like the horizon. It always advances. And the beauty of that is that you realize that your ideal is like the horizon. Reality lies further ahead. So that you don't become attached to your ideal. You're prepared to, as the Tibetans do, destroy the mandala and then build a new one. And then, the other word of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan is, you remember what I said, I thought it was "loosen the ties." He certainly didn't say "sever" the ties with the world. I thought that he said "loosen the ties," but when I looked at the text again, I found that he said, "Work through the ties." Not the same thing. So, just look at those ties and see, "Yes, it's true. I am addicted to whatever it is. Hagen Das. So I can see, addiction is a tie. There is a tie there. But I can do without it." And, a kind of sense of freedom, "Yes, I've been addicted to looking at the o. J,. Simpson trial, but I can sure do without it." (laugh) So, "I like hanging around and chatting with people, but when I think what happens in meditation, and I think of Buddha sitting there in that cave and reaching right into the whole meaningfulness of life. And what am I doing in my life?" So, there's a sense of, "What are those ties? How are my ties, my addiction, my dependence, standing in the way of my illumination, and what a chance life offers!" And believe me, it goes by very quickly. So, looking at those ties objectively and seeing, "Well, I'd rather have my cocktail in the evening than illumination." Well, OK, if that's what it is, then that's what you'll get. You'll get what you want. I don't say that your cocktail will stand in the way of your illumination. There is no such rule in the Order. But to know that you can do without it. Now, there's a further thought of Pir-o-Murshid which is really a very important key, and that is, well, he says, "I can exist without a body." So, that needs looking into. But if you've done astral travel, then you know that you can see without eyes and fly without wings and walk without feet and think without the mind. And that gives you a wonderful sense of freedom. Now, what I say is not altogether true, it's just, it's a very good pragmatic thought which is very useful if you're meditating. The fact is that in astral flight, there is some underpinning, and it's not different from the physical body; it's just one aspect of the physical body, that's maybe -- I don't know, it could be the electromagnetic field; it could be many other things than those which I have mentioned so far -- things that, the chi force, for example, and a lot of other forces, the four forces for example in physics. But there is an underpinning. So, it's not quite true to say that I can exist without a body. It depends what you mean by a body. But, think of a further metaphor -- that is that Pegasus could not reach the Olympus, so Belaphon, his rider, had to use the momentum that Pegasus imprinted upon him to continue on his own and reach Olympus. So that there is a time when maybe the underpinning becomes so unphysical or non-existential, that whatever remains is very tenuous. For example, at the point when you identify with your celestial counterpart, it's so not only unmaterial, but seems to not fit in with what we understand by existence, and that's why Buddha calls this beyond existence. But if indeed the unteemed stars give birth to life eternal, the quintessence of your bodiness continues to serve as an underpinning. That is what is meant by "the body of resurrection"-- it's like the perfume of the flowers. So there has to be some rejection of the -- one throws away the contingent aspects of the flower and keeps just the quintessence, the perfume, that is immortal. Just think of that as you're meditating now. (long pause) It's called Lahut. You have a sense of the bounty, as I've said, Buddha called it the plane of all-possibilities, and so you, you understand that, as I've said, the only way that existence is possible is by the diversification, for example, of the cells of the body, so that they are not all the same -- I mean some genes are released and others are recessive in one organ or another, different -- and so in the same way, it is true, this makes for the uniqueness of each one of us. We are all different. But it is true that the more evolved we get, the more bountiful are the features of our personality, that includes all those qualities which we try to list in the wasifas. You become a cosmic being. So the secret is, then, you see, if you -- actually, we've been following the stages of samadhi. I'll try and just recapitulate them so that you're clear about it. We start with (saritaka) samadhi. So, sar means with, so that means consciousness with experience, and then its clear that you are projecting your psyche upon your problems. And then, (niritaka). You have ceased to project -- you are wary of any type of psychological projection upon your problems, and so you try to be objective, although yesterday we said that ultimately life is always interactive, and so you can never say that you've reached the state of pure objectivity, because you never know reality without acting upon it. So, but however, it's a kind of catharsis -- it's a first stage, and what the yogis say is that then, vegyanam, which is consciousness, gets turned into perusha, which is considered the ultimate realization. So, as I say, it's a kind of clarification, the Sufi would call it a clarification of the mirror of the heart. That's niritaka. Then we have saritara, and that is now, you identify with your subtle body, call it tanmachra, subtle. And so you're still aware of it, and that's why you're conscious of, not only your subtle body, but of everything in the Universe. And then niritara samadhi, your consciousness in not resting upon your experience of your subtle body, or the subtle nature of the Universe. And then you get into a state which is called anandatara samadhi, which corresponds with malakut of the Sufis, the celestial state -- ananda, bliss. And you realize that you cannot hoist your consciousness to that level by your will, and so it is indeed that passion for the unattainable; it is like the lure of your ideal which will hoist you, and I have already said this, the shadow is going to hold us back unless we resorb it instead of excising it, and the way of resorbing it is -- imagine that, as I said, the code of the whole Universe is present in each one of us, but most of the genes are not active. I've said that. Now, you have the ability with your imagination to project that picture of the bounty of the Universe which is latent within you -- you can project it in what is called the ideal. And in your projection, that ideal does not contain any taboos, any genes that are recessive -- they're all active, you see -- so, in other words, it's kind of an ideal situation which you represent to yourself and you ascribe to God, and which, let's say pulls the scotch tape off the keys of your piano board, let's say, that releases the recessive qualities in your personality. In other words, it's the ideal of God that helps us to resorb our shadow. So that's not excising; it's resorbing by power of our ecstasy. And then you'll find that that ideal was a projection, was inadequate, and then you are beginning to doubt your ideal, unless you have the power of faith, or I would call it conviction, so, and the intelligence to give up your ideal, to break your ideal upon the rock of truth, as Pir-o-Murshid has expressed it, and replace it by a more real one. And that's because you can only replace it by a more real one if you have just sensed the splendor of your own being, within its defilement. There's a contradiction there, but you see that. As Pir-o-Murshid said, the aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego, together at the same time. Somehow, that is the ingratiating factor in your life, that pulls you out of your hell by the power of the heavens -- with emotion, you see. It's, it's bewondering, and it all starts by just being full of wonder. Whenever you come across something that is wonderful, give vent to that emotion of bewondering -- the light in the eyes of a baby, the ( ) of heroes, the beauty of music, the beauty of cathedrals. There is so much in our civilization that expresses that ideal in a tangible way, and if we allow ourselves to be continually overwhelmed with joy as we discover these evidences of the splendor behind the universe. And that emotion hoists our consciousness to what is called the heavenly sphere. And that is why I'm saying that the heavenly sphere is not somewhere up there in Venus, it's, how will I say, interspersed, it's hidden sometimes behind the drama of the Universe. But we do think of it as hoisting, and the reason why we do is because, as I say, we are not aware any more of the gravity pull exercised upon our body, and therefore we have the feeling of being hoisted. And, as I say, the secret is to be clear that one's sense of space, one's ordinary sense of space, is only valid when it comes to the motion of bodies, or our bodies, bodiness. But at the level of where the mind is thinking when there is no reference to bodiness, space has no relevance any more. Think of space as just a framework in which our mind is able to understand what we could not understand unless it were monitored n this framework. Just like, for example, we would not be able to understand what the waves of the radio were telling us unless they were processed by our radios. So at a certain point you forgo, you forego the limitation of the framework of space and time, and the only way to do it is to let yourself be attuned to a very high emotional attunement. Not with the mind. It won't do. Now, so that's ananda samadhi, so that your retreat is just ecstasy, just ecstasy, overwhelmed with ecstasy, and the curious thing is that that ecstasy opens the door to a new realization which the Sufis call jabarut, the jabarut level, and the Hindus call asveta. You can't reach that understanding by your will or by simply figuring things out in your mind, but by having been hoisted by your emotion, all of a sudden, your way of looking at things is reversed. First of all, as I said, Surawardi said, the angel in you is looking at the Universe, not your physical eyes. And then, a sense of meaningfulness is revealed, without it being the object of your cognizance, and all of a sudden, it's just as though, maybe you see something which you always thought, but you could never quite grasp it, but somehow. . ."I always knew it, but somehow; now all of a sudden it's really very clear to me." It's like awakening from misconception. It's the aha feeling. "It seems like I'd always thought this, and then all of a sudden, and then I'd think, well, what if, what if the way I'm thinking is wrong? All of a sudden, then, how would it look from this other point of view?" And the consequence is, that whilst before I saw the obstacles, now I see all possibility. That is, there is a way of overcoming the obstacle. That is there is a way of overcoming the obstacle, if one sees it, one blocks it. As you know, we have a blind spot in our eyes, and one gets blocked by becoming overly impressed by the obstacles, by the sense of limitation. It's by discovering the limitlessness of the potentials in our being that we are able to overcome the obstacles. So, it is at the level of all possibility, that now, as I say, our mind in its ordinary way of functioning, would think of these possibilities as static, as archetypes, and then so, as a further stage, one realizes that they are evolving too. They are mutating, just like the seeds of a plant. And so we haven't quite attained eternity yet, but of course in contrast with, let's say the recycling of the plant, the seed has some kind of permanence. Now, I would say the accent in Sufism is breaching the plane of lahut to the plane of nazut. In other words, bridging our divinity with our humanness. Let's say, seeing the, matching the archetype with the exemplar. And the Sufis outlined this by putting forward that when we were still a sheer possibility, let's say in the loins of Adam, we made a pledge to, well, it's the pledge -- I'm paraphrasing it, of course -- it's the pledge of the knight to establish a link of suzerainty with the lord, so that he or she may affirm divine orderliness, and thus represent, say the government of the world. And that orderliness is to be found in the qualities, in the archetypes. Everything that occurs in the world is the way that these archetypes actualized in the existential world, so this lies, let's say, beyond the existential level -- that's why Buddha calls it beyond existence -- he even says, "beyond existence and non-existence. And the Hindus call it sarbicha --bicha means seed-- that means with seed, you are conscious of the seeds of existence. So that's the level at which our wasifas should lead us, of being aware of the perfect -- what Pir-o-Murshid calls the divine perfection, the limitless outreach of those archetypal seeds, out of which the whole Universe is like the plants. Then, matching these with our personality, that is discovering that we have compassion within us, that we have mastery in us and so on and so forth, and we have those qualities, so we're matching them. But our minds are able to always imagine a greater perfection than the one which we have imagined so far, and therefore, somehow, at infinite regress, we can have some sense of that archetype. And so, that sense that we have of that archetype, is going to release our potentialities, or let's say, enhance that quality that we already have in us, I mean that we have already actuated in us, in our personality. And so we become more masterful, or we become more peaceful, or whatever. It's matching the two. So it's a bridge. But there's a very extraordinary saying of Pir-o-Murshid, "God discovers His perfection in our imperfection." So, what are the Sufi practices that lead to that realization, because otherwise these are very beautiful words, but how do they apply? I think we just have to follow a sequence of stages, you could say developmental stages. So, at the bottom level, rock bottom level, we think that we -- let's say that if we are idealists that we would like to know God -- but there is no way of knowing God, but then according to the Koran then, the signs the pugmarks of the bear, you must know what those are, we can see those signs in the physical world. So, we haven't seen the bear, so it gives us some sense of what we mean by God, but it's only signs, signals, ayat, signs. And then the second stage is that we discover those same signs in ourselves. So, let us say that the features of our personality, the idiosyncrasies of our personality, are signs, and the symbol, the sign, a symbol is a sign, has the faculty of drawing the mind toward that of which it is the sign. That's a very -- that's very important in Sufism. So, in other words, the awareness of whatever -- Compassion-- in us will lead us towards having some sense of unlimited compassion. For example, think of Mother Teresa in Calcutta, refusing to have a fan in her room, because the other people who are dying cannot have one -- there's not enough to go around. And those nurses, giving up perhaps marriage and other aspects of life to go and draw water from a well perhaps three miles away, in order to give water to the dying. Now, that's compassion. So, how much compassion do we have. So, there's always a greater compassion than the compassion that we have imagined so far. So, this is not samadhi, in the sense that -- I'm talking about Sufism now, not samadhi, because samadhi is just grasping these qualities -- well, you can't even say one is grasping them, because one has lost the sense of being the spectator. There's a saying in the Aran...achibad Upanishad that says that where there is duality, one sees the other, one hears the other, one smells the other, one feels the other, but where all becomes one, of what kind of knowledge are we speaking? So, it's a level of knowledge where there is no more antinomy between the subject and the object. It's not the ultimate state of samadhi, but it's very close. It's the penultimate state, sabijan, but it is leading towards asaprajatha samadhi, which is the ultimate samadhi. Now, what I have been doing now, is I did not follow all the way up, because that is not acknowledging the physical world, the existential world. It's a spiritual bypass; there's no doubt about it. And that's why the Sufis promote the opposite, samadhi with open eyes, or what Pir-o-Murshid says, "Awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life." And so in order to do that you have to match the lahut level with the nazut level. We always, so OK, so we've said, for the first step you see the signs in the world, second step you see the signs in your personality, that's where you establish some kind of bridge with the archetypes. The next stage, and I hope that you're doing it, instead of just listening to the words, it is -- you remember what I said, instead of just looking at the Universe, think that the Universe is looking at you -- so that would be God looking at you instead of you looking at God, and your having some sense of the way that you look to God. So, according to Ibn Arabi, discovering oneself through the vision that God has of himself in one, as one, I've already mentioned that. Now, that represents a more advanced state. That would be consciousness. One about turns totally, one shifts one's sense of being the subject into the being of God, and one is only the object -- one isn't even the object, one is the means whereby God discovers Him/Herself -- that is God discovering His perfection in our imperfection. A further step is a little more difficult. You discover God in the manner in which God discovers himself through you. That's more advanced. So the further step -- Ibn Arabi says there's a further step, yet, than this, and then there's still a further step then. And that further step corresponds to Jabarut, that stage when your knowledge, your cognizance is not based upon the experience of the world, and that is called Jabarut, the jabarut level. And Ibn Arabi says that you know God by the knowledge that God has of himself, not the knowledge that God has of himself through you. Because that is a secondary knowledge that is added to the first knowledge. At a certain point in his life, Newton said, "I think as God thinks." Actually, if one can have any sense of how the Universe works, it's because one's mind thinks the way the Universe thinks. So that's a further step in one's awakening. But, we're moving upwards, and Pir-o-Murshid is teaching us how to move downwards from upwards, and therefore he says, "Wisdom is born out of the extrapolation -- he doesn't use the word extrapolation, but, anyway -- between the heavenly knowledge and the earthly knowledge. And what he means is, the Jabarut knowledge, that is the knowledge that we have without experience, and the knowledge that we gain by experience, and that wisdom is born by the mingling of these two. So that's not samadhi; it's samadhi with open eyes. Now this is borne out by further words of Murshid, "The human being is the fullness of the divine purpose." That is that what is gained is by existence, instead of thinking that one needs to free oneself from existence, as I find in Buddhism. I might be mistaken, but that is what I see in Buddhism. So, instead of thinking, "The world is Maya", "It is magic." That is in the existential state that God becomes a reality, and beyond existence God is a virtuality. I could be burned at the stake for saying that. God is a virtuality becoming a reality as us. Not to confuse with "virtual reality" in our games. (laughs) OK, well I have to be careful of just communicating thoughts. I hope that these thoughts correspond to a way of looking at things, and that means a realization, ultimate realizations. Because there are several awakenings; there's not just one. But still, logically now, we have missed out on the ultimate state of samadhi. I used to think that one, or let's say that it is difficult to awaken in life unless one has awakened beyond life. So, I admit that I was addicted to samadhi. But, of course it's wonderful, one must ( ) it. Of course there is no way of describing it, but, well to tell you the truth, there is no way of describing it without referring to physics. otherwise there's no way of describing it. So, it is a state described by Precogine called the Unstable Equilibrium, that is nothing is happening, everything is potential. And, really speaking, it is, as I said, a potential situation, for example -- I hope I'm not boring you with physics. A lot of people simply stand up and walk out when they hear me talk about physics. That's not what they came for -- But, I mean, it's the only way of trying to describe this. Perhaps, you would think metaphorically what it means. Like, for example, if there's such a thing as absolute zero degrees, the electrons in an atom would be frozen. There would be no motion. They would be frozen. So, you'd have absolute orderliness. You would have no randomness, but no creativity. Now, if you give a little heat to the atom, then the electrons will be able to move, and eventually, there's enough energy they could skip their orbital to reach the next orbital -- that is what is called the dance of Shiva -- and there you have (light?, life?) And what is gained by that is a certain measure of freedom. And you could think of another metaphor, would be ballet, for example, if all the dancers are given definite briefings as to what they are to do, well, you've got a situation that carries a lot of potentials in it, but if you allow the dancers to have some kind of measure of free will, then the whole thing becomes much more alive and much more meaningful. Then you have randomness. They have free will, you have randomness. So, that state of ultimate samadhi, that is called (asamparatha?) samadhi is the place where indeed you discover a kind of potential state of the Universe where everything is perfectly ordained, and so it's not the chaos theories of physics, or maybe that is what is called chaos. But it is certainly a state described by Precogine, although there's no such a state, its simply a state of near equilibrium, but you never really reach that point, but of course in samadhi you get so close to it that it's a frozen state, and I can understand that, you know I have met some rishis in the Himalayas, sitting in the snow, in the state of samadhi. And I myself sat at the source of the Ganges, and I thought it was rather stupid to sit there and light a fire. How can you get samadhi while you're putting logs on the fire? And so I went out in the cold, and I must have been frozen to death, because I had samadhi. And it took the dawning of the sun to bring me back to life. So you can see that, and that explains the coldness and the remoteness of the ascetic and the warm heart of the person who makes God a reality in their life. So, now perhaps we can come closer to an understanding of what I mean by fate and free will. In that frozen state, there's just fate, there's no free will. That's reasonably easy to understand, that as soon as one has free will, then somehow fate cannot prevail -- well, it can prevail, but things can turn out to be different to what had been preordained, like preestablished harmony according to (Leibnitz?) for example. Though there's no such thing as preordained -- let's say the preordaining doesn't work any more, as soon as you have freedom. It works to some extent, of course. The word, the correct word is, it prevails, but it does not, but it can be overcome by free will. That is not difficult to understand. But what is much more difficult to understand is that our free will changes our fate. That is more difficult to understand. So, the word preordained is not the correct word, because it shifts . . . . . .(pause) . . . Now, I used to be quite happy with these thoughts, until I realized that there was a catch 22 in them. (laughs) And that realization came by reading an article by an unknown person called (Spizer) in a Zurich journal, and he talked about a level beyond causality. Now that, of course, just blows one's mind. There's of course no way of grasping that, but it is something that Ibn Arabi's talking about. And, if you want to understand Buddhism, that's what Buddhism is about, and that's why the last words of Buddha were -- after the moment of illumination, he said, "I have overcome conditioning." So that means, causality as we imagine it (La plagian?) causality, the inputs of the past upon the present and the future, causality in the Newtonian Universe, ( laplasian?) causality, there was, he sees another causality, described in (inaudible Indian word), the chain of becoming -- It's not the chain of becoming, I'm sorry, the chain of let's say a vertical causality instead of a horizontal. So that he does not only overcome -- a how can one say turn the tables on the causality of the past, or conditioning, but he looks right into the chain of causes descending from above to below -- like, it's not a time sequence -- and when you see that, then you understand what the Sufis mean by "the divine intention." You see that your will can show ignorance of the divine intention. And that 's not the divine programming, it's the divine intention; not the same thing. That's when you start understanding the meaning of your life. So, I'd like us to end now with a silent meditation. Just stretch yourselves a little and get yourselves ready for it. Those whose minds wander -- very difficult to remember all that we've been talking about-- What I would suggest is a very simplified form of meditation. Simply identify with your aura and think that it is radiating the light that is hidden behind it, called the living light, just like the sun or the star And by doing this, instead of thinking of yourself as a subject that is experiencing this, concentrating on your body or whatever, your aura, think that your consciousness is like the head lamps of a car -- it's like a searchlight. All you need to (pause) that is cast forward through your eyes (pause) there's a light above your head, like a (crown?) (pause) So, the light that you are radiating is continually emerging from within, so it's not a static meditation, but dynamic. (pause) Make God a reality, and He will make you the truth. Make God a reality in your being. (pause) So we end for the lunch break. APR 07, 1995 Tape 09 Abode Spring Retreat April 7, l995 tape #9 Well, this is a good introduction to what we want to study this afternoon, which is the Sufi zikr. It's a whole different attunement to yoga and Buddhism. It has a warmth and ecstasy about it, and consciousness of God is always coming through very powerfully, so it is here that you find the ways and means of awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life in a state of detachment and indifference. There's a word of the Sufis that says, "Renounce the world, renounce yourself, and then renounce renunciation out of love. That's difficult, of course. Now, this is perhaps one of the most powerful practices that one can do, but just repeating the words, "La illaha illa 'llah ha" with moving your head, that's not going to do it for you. Although, I have done it 22,000 times a day for 40 days. It gives you a good bang on the head and suddenly you just don't recognize yourself after that. So it certainly annihilates any self-image of yourself that you have, but I think there are more sophisticated ways of going about this. But it does require a real study, and that's what I wanted to do this afternoon. I wanted to, if you wish so, to get very deeply into all those different phases in the zikr, rather than doing it in a perfunctory way. That would mean calling on the views of some of the Sufis, which are right on and throw light on all these different phases. There is of course, how can I say it, the underpinning, what it does to your body, what it releases in your body, and that of course is rather easy to talk about and maybe to experience. I would like to introduce this by simply starting with a breathing practice which we've already touched upon, as you know breathing in through the left nostril, holding the breath, breathing out through the right, and then breathing into the right, holding the breath, and out through the left and then breathing into both nostrils and holding the breath and then breathing out of both. But we want to follow the steps as we advance in this practice. So, at first, well, maybe I should draw attention to the fact that, as you probably know, there are three nerve trunks in the -- well, there's one in the center of the spinal cord, and then two right and left, and that the two lateral ones govern the autonomic nervous system and the central one governs the central nervous system, the volitional, the sensorially volitional nervous system, controlled by conscious, and controlled by the will. The autonomic escapes your will and therefore is in some way governed by the unconscious. The contention of yoga is that such functions as are taken over by the autonomous programming of the body can be governed by the conscious will. So, let's say yoga is the way of Mastery, whereas we're living at a time when people are beginning to say you -- you're suppressing aspects of yourself by applying mastery and so you should just let things move -- "stay with it," it's said. Anyway, that's for you to judge which, or perhaps there's a way of combining the two. But the thing is that these functions must re- or then letting nature self-organize itself, you see. Nature has a way of self-organizing itself if you don't interfere. Then, I think that's a first step, and then the second step, you start customizing the will of the Universe in your own personal way. Well, that's mastery. So these yoga practices, as I say, enlist the functions of the body in order to promote the exchange, the coordination, between the autonomic and the central nervous system. Because there are efferent nerves moving from the peripheral nervous system to the central one, from the autonomous to the central nervous system in the trunk of nerves in the middle of the spine. And so, now, this breathing practice is intended to, how can I say, encourage the impulses that are moving from the to the lateral trunks to the central one and from the central one to the lateral ones. And you will see that this gives you some sense of what we are doing with our bodies in the zikr also. There is some similarity between them. So, to start with, place the thumb of your right hand under your chin, middle finger right hand on your nostril, palm of your left hand in back of the right hand, and the thumb of your right hand in the proximity of your left nostril. First breathing out through both nostrils, as we've done before, breathe in through both nostrils, out through both nostrils. Now, press the right finger and breathe in through the left nostril, and think of the current that ascends, the lateral current on the left side of your spinal cord that moves upwards. (pause) Transfer your attention up the spine, hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards, and curl your tongue up and press the bottom of your tongue against the palate. Now exhale and through the right nostril and concentrate on let's say celestial energy descending through the right channel of the spinal cord, say pure spirit, if you like, descending. And now, the opposite, that is you inhale through the right nostril, energy, telluric energy, earth energy rising through the right channel of the spinal cord. Turn your attention upwards, hold your breath, turn your eyeballs upwards, your tongue. Just feel this very fine energy at the top of your head. Exhale through the left nostril, and infuse your body, like the quickening of the holy spirit descending through the left channel. Now breathe in through both nostrils and draw your breath up through, transfer your attention to the middle channel, pass in review the different chakras as you move upwards, hold your breath, and as you descend think that you are descending through the middle channel, but bifurcating right and left all the way down. Now, once more breathe in through both nostrils, concentrating on the central channel, and as you are doing it imagine that the energy of both lateral channels keeps on being drawn into the center, and as you exhale, think that the energy descending through the center is bifurcated in both lateral channels. OK. Now, just relax for a moment. So, our objective then, was to calibrate, let's say, those two energies, left and right, and then when they are nicely balanced, and coordinate them by bringing the energy from the lateral channels into the central ones, that is the takeover of consciousness of will and then the other way around, that which has now been achieved can now be automated and therefore taken over by the unconscious. As I said before, you can make a mistake in playing the piano, and you can, that's exactly what you do, making it conscious, and then automating it again. Now, we are going to do a more advanced practice that you find amongst the Tibetans, and that is that as you inhale through the left nostril, imagine that the energy moves up in a spiral instead of moving up in a left lateral trunk. And you can very well imagine that if energy is, that if your magnetic field, electromagnetic field is like a vortex, there is a vacuum in the center, and that vacuum exercises a kind of a pull, so that the energy that normally would be rising in the lateral trunk will keep on being drawn towards the center, so as it is rising and drawn towards the center at the same time, it will become a spiral. And that applies, of course, to the opposite, breathing in through the right nostril. And when you exhale through the right nostril, the energy descending from above, as I said think of it as the descent of the quickening of the Holy Spirit, is going to veer towards the right, so imagine a spiral descending, and then of course the opposite if you're exhaling through the left nostril. Now, you'll be, if you 've watched this very carefully, you'll notice that it is like two spiral staircases that crisscross, just like the caduceus, but, it's not like the DNA, it's like the caduceus, but you'll find then that -- two things that I want to draw your attention to -- one is that you're going up a spiral staircase, moving clockwise if you look at it from above, and you're descending clockwise, also, but not on the same spiral staircase. And you're breathing in through the left nostril, and when you exhale, you're breathing in through the left nostril and the spiral is moving anticlockwise, and as you exhale, it is also moving anticlockwise, but on the same staircase that you came up on in the first place. Do you see that? OK. And then the other thing you need to see is that the energy -- I mean those two spirals crisscross, let's say, starting from the bottom of your spine will start bifurcating and will crisscross in the second chakra, in the front of the second chakra, at the back of the solar plexus, at the front of the heart chakra, back of the throat center, front of the third eye, and will meet again at the top of the head, or that's in the center of the head in the pituitary gland. If you're clear about that, then we can do the practice. So, once more, place your hands in position, exhale through both nostrils, and now, as you inhale, then think of the spiral that is moving clockwise upwards when you're breathing through the left nostril, hold your breath eyeballs turned upwards, exhale right nostril and the celestial energy is descending spiraling downwards clockwise, inhale through the right nostril, telluric energy rising anti-clockwise in a spiral, hold your breath eyeballs upwards turn, exhale through the left nostril, the energy's now descending anti-clockwise, now breath in both nostrils and see if you can feel those two energies, crisscrossing in front of the second chakra, in back of the solar plexus, front of the heart chakra, back of the throat center, forward third eye, and meeting in the pituitary gland, which is called bindu in the Hindu tradition. OK, so what we are doing, then is -- and then of course you have to exhale, excuse me, I'm moving faster than . . . -- so then, now the energy will tend to descend through the central channel, but then it keeps on bifurcating and forming then these two spirals, moving into those two spirals. So, in other words, what you do have is, as you inhale, there's a motion from the autonomic nervous system toward the central, and then as you exhale, there's a motion from the central nervous system into the autonomic nervous system. The take-over of the conscious will as you inhale, and then handing the controls over to the autonomic nervous system as you exhale. So, perhaps you've noticed, then that one is working with ascending and descending forces as well as with centrifugal and centripetal forces. And now, that's exactly what we're doing in the zikr. So, now, just consider this, now, well, you could just do this. Turn your head toward the left shoulder and imagine that let's say the beam of your third eye faces your left shoulder and then your left knee, and your right knee, and then your right shoulder, and then towards the zenith. And so that's say three-quarters of a circle. And well, keep on, just for the moment, just keep on rotating your head. So, now, imagine that a could you identify with your magnetic field -- if you think of it as a magnet, for example, the field of a magnet, now then it becomes a dynamo, doesn't it, because you're moving it? So, you're generating a tremendous amount of energy, and that accounts for the energy of the dervish. And I hope you can just feel that energy. It's a life-giving energy. Now, maybe you can feel the centrifugal forces that you're generating. Supposing that you've placed some, whatever it is, something in a centrifuge, then you would find that the, anyway, certainly the grosser elements are pushed to the periphery, and the finer elements tend to remain in the center. So, that's a very difficult description of your -- how can I say -- the constitution of your, let's say, certainly your etheric body and your psyche, certainly. The periphery of your being is grosser, the finer, the closer you get to the center the finer it is, like gossamer. Now, can you feel the centripetal forces that you're generating, that is somehow you're, by circumambulating a center, you're strengthening that center. That's why people circumambulate a temple before entering the temple. Now, maybe further thoughts, and that is that somehow by disintegrating at the jagged ends, you are encouraging a rebirthing at the center, ex nhilo, out of nothing, as one says. And, the centripetal force, and as a consequence, one is not only disintegrating at the periphery, but one is being resorbed in the void in the center. So then, for there to be a renewal, there has to be a collapse and rebirth. So there are really two modes of disintegration, and one is like really getting rid of things. The other is a recycling, from the center is a recycling , and in the periphery one is really -- it's like if you had a centrifuge in such a way that you could get rid of the dross in a chemical experiment by simply swirling it, and diverse elements would be simply eliminated, ejected. So, that's a grosser process than the recycling, which is done by distillation. OK, so, if you feel that. Now, can you feel that making this motion you are somehow reiterating a very fundamental process -- your affinity with the galaxies and the planets, the circular motion, you're reestablishing a connection with the most basic, let's say, principles on which the whole universe is established. Just like, you know, in biology, we can discover something of the nature of the past of our evolution in our genes, even in the fish and the reptiles, and the birds and so on, you can actually, there's some remnant of the stardust in our being. And so, by so doing, we are able to reestablish a connection with the universe, with the starry universe, let us say, with the womb out of which our body was born. So, this motion then would open up in you an experience of let's say the cosmic dimension of your being by t its, by the interrelationship between your being and the totality of the universe. And the opposite, turning within, whereby you discover a new relationship with the universe from within instead of from without, and the rebirthing takes place exnhilo, from the center, from the void. Because where there's a circular motion there's always, it's a vortex, like a for example, whirlwind or whirlpool. The center of the whirlpool is a vacuum, and so is the center of a hurricane. Hence the importance of sunyata in Buddhism, for example, because the only way to change is to accept annihilation and rebirthing. In alchemy, solve et coagule, disintegration and reforming recurrently. So that's what you're experiencing. And it's' a good thing because one is not, one gets used to accepting to be dismantled, and consequently one is not afraid of death. It's really an acceptance of death as a means of rebirthing. Now, we, in the Arabic alphabet, "l" is an arc of a circle, the l's of Allah. But now we have another principle, which is the vertical axis, a totally different geometry altogether, and that represents, let's say, instead of a cosmic dimension, what I would call a transcendental dimension. That is, when you think of the Universe, you don't just think of the physical universe, you think of the universe at all levels including the celestial and even beyond existence, and beyond the spheres of what you call all potentials, and even beyond, and afterwards the state of hahut. So, the a in the Arabic alphabet is a vertical line, and it represents the polarity man/God, God/man. Ibn Arabi says, "In contemplating God, he contemplates us, and then His contemplating us we contemplate Him, and so forth. There's a reciprocity there, a polarity, antimony. So, you break the circle, and the movement which is most propitious to break the circle, is that when your head has turned towards the zenith, because that's the point of unstable equilibrium, and that's where the pull of the void in your solar plexus is the strongest. So, after you say 'La, illaha" and do three quarters of a circle, and your head is turned toward the zenith, that is the moment when as I say the pull of the void in the center of your being is the strongest, that's when you say "illa 'lah" and your head descends directly towards the solar plexus. And it rebounds up again, and if you do it on your breath, then it's easier, you don't say the words, but later on you think the words but you don't say them. So, you make the circle, as you exhale, and then your head descends as you inhale and turns towards the solar plexus and then you move your head upwards. So, now do it a few times. (pause) So, incidentally the body is participating in the experience at all levels of your being. (pause) So, perhaps you've noticed that we're going through the four stages that we've been exploring all along in this retreat, as you move in the circle, the cosmic dimension of consciousness, and then as you turn within, as you turn your head descends, then turning within, that is experiencing the world from inside towards outside, and then the transcendental dimension, discovering the spheres, as the head moves upwards, and then the opposite, the head turns downwards again. And that perhaps has not always been made clear. Maybe I should say something further to this, because you can imagine that the center of that circle is your solar plexus, that the void, where the void is to be found, let's say the portal to the void, the center of the vortex, the vacuum. But, when your head rebounds, then imagine that you are shifting the center of your being from the solar plexus to the heart center, because the solar plexus is really like a portal, an inlet, giving access to the inverted space within, and the heart is the albijan, it's a portal that offers a transit between the inner and the outer, radiating, as we said this morning, the all pervading light becomes radiant when you concentrate on your heart center instead of your solar plexus. And the other thing is that when you're doing the circle, well you start identifying with your body -- you're (following? ) your body, but when you turn within, when you say "illa" you turn your head within, then, towards the solar plexus, then, you identify with your etheric body, which is like gossamer, you remember, it intersperses all other bodies, like wave or fields, and now you're moving up through the spheres, and you recognize perhaps the spheres that I tried to describe this morning. So, well, so you, when you're in the circle you think of nazut, that is the sphere that we say that we describe as matter, and then the awareness, I mean the identification with arwah, that means the ether body, or the etheric body as you turn within, and now you are shifting your sense of identity from being this astral body, etheric body, whatever, gossamer, electromagnetic field, what have you, you're moving to identifying yourself with your celestial being as you reach the heart center, radiating light, and at that time you cease to identify with your etheric body and start identifying with your aura. So you, one is, it's almost as though the butterfly had arisen out of the cocoon. All of a sudden the sense of, yes, letting go of the etheric support system of one's aura, if we may say it like that. (pause) With all the features that we ascribe to the celestial world and the celestial body, and then you shift your consciousness, I mean your sense of identity, to a point which has its counterpart in the body, very rarely spoken about, it's called the wheel of fire, and it's a chakra that corresponds to the thymus gland, rather than the cardio-plexus, between the cardio-plexus and the thyroid gland, so it's somewhere between the two. Um, and which Tibetans describe as a wheel of fire, and that the yogis never talk about for some unknown reason. It's not one of the chakras. But maybe the reason for that is because the yogis were actually dissecting dead bodies and they'd identified the plexus of the nervous system, but the thymus gland disappears at an early age, I mean it's spread out throughout the body, so you can hardly detect it at all in that place, you see. That's probably the reason. But if you know the function of the thymus gland in the human system then you realize the importance of it. So, that would correspond with level, jabarut, the level of splendor, and then you get, move into the throat center, which is an extremely important center, ushida chakra in yoga, because it's considered to be the center that translates thought into language. The logos, the word, "In the beginning was the Word" if you remember in the bible, and actually, how can I say, links you with let's say the audiosphere in the universe. I don't know whether that means anything to you. The audiosphere, that is that energy always is, there are all these frequencies of energy, it's not, it's always, how can I say, landscaped, if I may use that word, by frequencies, so let's say everything in the universe has its vibration. For example, if you take a sheet of paper and knock it, it has a certain rate of vibration; if it is a gong, it has several rates of vibration and so on, the back of a cello has different vibrations, and so on, everything, and every organ of your body and so on, everything is in a state of potential vibration or vibrating and in any case has a specific frequency. And that is what Pythagorus meant by the Symphony of the Spheres. So, somehow you are touching upon a very, how can I say, very deep inbred knowledge that's jabarut, a knowledge given by jabarut, that is not based upon experience. But jabarut opens the door to lahut, and it is that, that is the sphere that one is touching upon when one's attention is drawn toward the throat center. Lahut, that is the, if you remember, the sphere of all-possibilities, and that Buddha talked about and that Sufis call incarn, which carry the bounty of all the archetypes, which we call the divine inheritance, or which Murshid call our divine inheritance. The qualities that we invoke in our wasifas, wasaif. And then you reach the, well, point bindu, which is called bindu in Sanskrit, but which corresponds to the pituitary gland, and need I say what is the role of the pituitary gland in our endocrine system. And that is where you touch upon unity. So, that corresponds to the "h" of Allah, and so in that word, and you find the same in the words, "La illaha, illa 'lla , you have always the a and l and the l and the a, the l represents a motion, a transit, and the a always represents a state. So you are moving from one state to another. So, for example, as you are moving from the ( ar?) or malakut to the (ar) or lahut. And jabarut is the transit between them. The "h" is the exception to the rule, let's say. It's the total, it's a total, how can I say, break from all that we've set up so far. It represents the Divine Presence instead of the Divine Nature. So, we're talking about something very different. When you say a person is present, you're not talking about their nature. You're talking about , you're saying they're present. And so, there's a whole philosophy behind this, of course, St. Augustine and Avicena, essay and posse in Latin, in German zein and vezein. A whole background behind this. And so, it is certainly discovering the Divine Presence. That's what the zikr is about. And more so, discovering that you are the divine presence. So, that is the "h" of Allah, which, as I say, corresponds to the state of hahut, which is this point of where you, that's where there's unity with the divine presence. There's no diversity, there. So that's, as I say the state of unstable equilibrium, where everything is, there's no motion, everything is contained in it in potentiality, waiting to be released. But then, you see, the Muslim zikr is "La illaha illa 'llah" and the Sufi zikr is "la illaha illa 'llah hu." And the reason is because when you add the u to the h you are beginning to be human. So, you are awakening in life, rather than awakening beyond life. There's a subtle reversal there, at the end of the zikr, "la illaha illa 'llah hu" h-hu. The h in illa 'llah hu." Now, this is a just very brief and inadequate effort at describing the different stages, but you realize how important it is to be aware of each stage while you are doing the zikr, instead of just speaking the words and moving the head, and, as I say, it doesn't do it for you. Now, my description of all this is extremely inadequate, if you think of what the Sufis say, and so, if you will permit me, I will be referring to some of the words of the Sufis which throw fantastic light upon the whole experience. Incidentally, this is my text of Sufi zikr, and when reading it again, I think to myself, "No, it's got to change it. It won't do the way it is," and so I keep on changing it, and that's why my book never appears. (laugh) First of all, Ibn Arabi says, "If going on a retreat is because you're fed up with life, then forget it." (laugh) But, he didn't use those words exactly. He was not an American, but, so it mustn't be an escape from life. And he said that if you think that getting to know God requires a ceasing of your existence, it is an error, and he said. "For the one who is conscious of God, a retreat is an, doesn't make sense. And that's why I like to think of it as a rehearsal for life, rather than a retreat. Because it is refusing to see God everywhere. You're withdrawing from life, hoping to discover whatever one means by God. So, once you've accepted that, well, then you can go on retreat. Now, the other thing is that instead of thinking that one is being annihilated, and I did say that there was some dispersal at the jagged edge of one's being, but still, it's like, I suppose the water's of a river splashes on the borders, but it doesn't mean that the river gets annihilated. So, there's some disintegration at the jagged edges, as I say, but it doesn't mean a total annihilation of one's being. As I've said, you couldn't annihilate yourself if you tried, as much as you detested yourself, it doesn't work that way. So, it's a good thing to know, because there are some people that would like to get rid of themselves because they don't like themselves. The only way is to change oneself. So, these are anomalies in our thinking that you have to overcome. So, when you say "La", la means, no, so it's a negation, but actually it is really wiping away the imaginary barrier between yourself and the Universe, because there's no boundary between yourself and the Universe. And one of the most elementary ways of doing it is to realize that your body is made out of the star dust. It's all the same; there's just no barrier between them. And therefore I find it very useful to do the zikr at night time looking at the stars, and you see that the Universe is your home, not your little apartment, the Universe. So it gives you a sense of immensity, like "That's me. There's no end to me." Now, this has been said in a way that, that's why I brought this text, because it's so marvelous what he says. Here. There's the word of Jelaludin Rumi, where he says, "A million galaxies are ( inaudible) form on that shoreless sea. We came whirling out of nothing, catching (scattering?) stars like dust. The stars made a circle, and in the middle we danced, turning and turning, asunder all attachments. Every atom turns bewildered and it is only God circling himself." You see, well that says it far better than I could ever say it. (laugh) So, that gives you an idea of how (inaudible). Ballet of the stars. Choreography of the stars. And it's God circling himself, so instead of thinking God is in the center, no, he's circling himself. He's the center of the circle whose periphery is nowhere and whose center is everywhere. So, if you think of that while you're doing "la illaha" , it'll be quite different to just saying "la illaha." So, it's really self-discovery instead of self-annihilation. All that you're annihilating is your false notion of yourself, and if you look at Buddhism, that's what Buddhism is about. Anata, there's no such thing as an individual self. So, now, if you think that your body, the stuff, the fabric of your body is the fabric of the Universe, which it is, of course, and originally, of course, the radiance of the Big Bang. Then, just imagine that you're swirling this star dust, like a galaxy, on the image of a galaxy. So you have a cosmic experience, you see. And that's the reason why Jelaludin Rumi introduced the whirling of the dervishes. But, the extraordinary thing is that by the kneading of and the transmutation of this star dust into very sophisticated forms of matter, like enzymes for example or neurotransmitters, somehow evolution has fostered the awakening of consciousness within matter. And so, it's part of your awakening to realize how the matter of your body is being awakened, not just your mind. And it makes for extraordinary sensitivity of your body as that you recognize as being the temple of God, instead of having contempt of the body as you find in some religious views. Now, when you turn within, as you remember, you're in a totally different mode, so that's when you say "illah ", so you remember then, just think of yourself not as being so much what one imagines the body to be, substantial, but as I said, I like "gossamer", but more like a field, an electromagnetic field, as I said. But, the extraordinary thing is that is the holistic pattern that was announced long before General Smutz (?), and that by a Sufi called Shabistari, who said, "Behold, the world entirely comprised in yourself. These are things that I've been saying, you see, "Discovering the Universe in yourself." This is borne out, of course, by the words of Murshid also, when he says, he says like when I am conscious of, I identify with my personal self, then I am like a bubble in the sea, but when I'm conscious of the divinity of my being, then I discover the sea in that bubble. And then he says, "You discover the plant in the seed, or you discover reality in the very essence. This bears out again an idea that we've already come across in this retreat, if you remember. It's a Buddhist idea, and that is the simile of a tree, that if you fell a tree to its roots, and then it might grow again, it might look very different, but we're talking about that life of our life. Like, the very foundation of our being as compared to that aspect of us which is transient and mortal, and so when you get into that depth then you discover the life of your life, the being of your being, the foundation of your being. And that is being renewed, so instead of thinking, "I've got it," you find yourself continually being reborn again, that's something that we've been saying all the time, of course, and of course you remember that our notion of space collapses as we turn within, because everything is all-pervading, it's light is all pervading, as Murshid says, so that we're not located in space anymore, I mean we don't experience ourselves as being located in space anymore. That doesn't make sense anymore. So, there is a collapse, of not of notions, which might lead to a very strange state which has been described by St. John of the Cross as the Dark Night of the Soul. He talks about several dark nights. The first one is the dark night of understanding, when all your normal way of thinking avers itself to be delusive. And that's what happens of course, because as I've said, for each mode of identification is a mode of thinking, so if you think that you are your body, if you identify with your body and you think the way that most people think. If you identify with the essence of your being, then of course your thinking is going to be different. And so, the thinking that you were into prior to that collapses totally, so that you can't rely upon it anymore, and so it's like a dark night. But then you go through a still deeper dark night, and of course a dark night of the soul, in which your notion of yourself collapses, not just your understanding, and it's, you're not being annihilated. What's being annihilated is your self image, is your notion of yourself. And that's why the zikr does emphasize fana, which means a collapse or an annihilation. But, it's never left like that. It's always accompanied with baka, which means a reinstatement or rebirthing. So, in the case of St. John, he stayed in that state of the dark night for quite a while, and it was only later in his life when he wrote the book "Living Flame of Love" that he came out of this state and all of a sudden he says the most extraordinary things like, "I am the (inaudible) of God. I am the Universe. I am the stars" and so on. That's God consciousness in life, you see, it's an awakening in life. He made that whole curve through that whole thing. But this is some thing that can happen in one instant, if we experience this rebounding of our head, like we've reached the rock bottom, like we've touched the vacuum, where there is as I say a resorption of our being into the void. But it is followed immediately by what the Sufis call being reborn recurrently and, as I said, it is our imagination gives some, projects into a form the qualities that are emerging ex nihlo from the depths of the void, and so it is our imagination that pulls us out of the void, out of the dark night. And that imagination is of course our representation of our ideal. It's because the Universe is present within us, but holistically it is latent, virtual. It's because it is present within us that we can project it in the form of what we imagine God to be, and actually it is, It's the way that we conceive of God on the strength of the intuition of this fullness in our being. But of course it is an effigy, and that is why Murshid said, "Break your ideal on the rock of truth." But it serves a purpose because we project as God the perfection of what we discover in our idiosyncrasies. So if we think of our idiosyncrasies as the exemplars, then somehow our minds are able to try and reach into the archetype of which the exemplars are known to us in our idiosyncrasies. So it is lahut, in other words, that the archetype level of reality, that even though we cannot actually experience it, but somehow the intuition of it, the sense that there is as I say splendor behind the Universe lures us beyond our, the place where we are, and consequently it resorbs the shadow, as I said. So, think of that as a very deep transforming experience as you turn within, and you are -- instead of thinking you are reborn, the Sufi way of thinking would be the Universe or God keeps being reborn as me. Not in me, through me, but as me. So, let us just do that for the time being, and then we'll have to, because it's too much to do, to think of all those things while saying the zikr. So let's do this part so far. (pause) Now, perhaps you've noticed that when you think "La illaha," as you go into the circle, there is an h there, and so you are not just experiencing, let's say the erasing of the artificial boundary between your body and the fabric of the stars, but at all levels of your being, including the celestial level of your being, at all levels of your being, you're absolute, how can I say, apartenance to the Universe at all levels including the ultimate level, hahut, the unity. Then you notice that of course to turn within one has to downplay, as I said, the pull of the environment in order to highlight a different perspective when everything is seen from within. So, it is a measure of freedom from dependence from circumstances that enables us to turn within. (pause) OK, now we're going to transfer our attention from the heart center to the solar plexus. I've said, your sense of identity is going to change dramatically. Instead of thinking of yourself as a force field, or an etheric body, all the thing's we've been saying, you discover yourself as being a being of light. And that is rebirth. That is when you start having some sense of your celestial counterpart. As I said, it's just like the butterfly arising out of the cocoon. All of a sudden, it's like the dawning of a realization that had been withheld, and it is one's aspiration, as Pir-o-Murshid says, "a passion is awakened, at a certain moment in one's evolution a passion is awakened for the unattainable, so somehow our ideal is unattainable. It keeps on luring us further, and so somehow it is those, our ideal is represented really by a scale of values, and so it is those things that we value that make all the difference in whether we can discover, we can how shall I say cleave to our celestial counterpart. It's like, for example, if you value beauty and splendor beyond personal satisfaction, for example. As Pir-o-Murshid said, one is paying pearls, one is trading pearls for pebbles. So it just depends upon what one's values are. That will make all the difference in whether on can make that transit from one's identification with one's etheric body and one's identification with one's celestial, how can I say, shroud -- I don't think that's the correct word -- effigy, perhaps, one's celestial effigy. Now, as we already said, the only way in which this can be done, well, the first thing of course is to remind you of what Murshid say, the breakthrough, no, yes you break through the ties linking you to the world. So he didn't say sever the ties, or even loosen the ties, he said work through. So, you're very clear as to what those ties are, and dependence, our involvement, our addiction and so on. And you see that pulling you in opposite direction to your aspiration. I said this morning you have to choose between your cocktail party and your illumination. So, it just depends what you want. That's the aspiration towards the sublime. So, now let us just see what the Sufis say about the celestial realm. Ibn Arabi says some really very wonderful things. Yes, I remind you of the words of Murshid that, I don't quote the exact words, that one gets an insight in to the essence of the whole being as one turns within. (pause, paper rustling) Yes. These are words of Ibn Arabi. "God acquaints them," so, you cannot attain it yourself, but if you're in a state of readiness, then something is revealed to you, that you don't see, but it's revealed to you, you can't grasp it yourself by your own efforts. That's what's meant by revealed knowledge, corresponding to the level of malakut. So, the words of Ibn Arabi, "God acquaints them with what corresponds in them in each world by passing with them through the different worlds." So, it's in you, but you God acquaints you with what is within you, and so it seems as if you are passing from one world into another. There's a process of revelation. Then he goes on to say, "Then the spiritual traveler leaves behind in each world that part of himself that corresponds to it." So, it is as though you were dropping your body to identify with your soul and so on, now, though I, that is, well, I hope you don't mind my saying that I don't agree with that. Now, that would be like astral travel. No. You schlep the bodies upwards, but you transform them. You distill them as you move upwards. I hope you will excuse me, Ibn Arabi. Now, Murshid says something very important here. The clue is to touch upon that part of life in yourself which is not subject to death. And you cleave to that. So this needs a little more clarity. The body is also not subjected to death. It's being transformed after death, through the process of death, but it is not, one doesn't drop one's body. No. For those of you who are afraid of death. This is not the place to go into scientific (inaudible). But more important still, is the word of Murshid when he says that you realize that you can exist without a body. And, again, that is saying things in an exaggerated way. But, it's the kind of experience that you have in astral travel, as I've already said, like you can displace yourself without having wings or feet, and you can see without having eyes, and hear without having ears, and you can think without a brain. And so, it's that sense of being able, well, to do without the physical underpinning, yes, but there still is an underpinning there, the astral body, and so it's the body has been transmuted, and it serves, in its transmuted form as an underpinning. Yet, if you remember what I said this morning, it's like Pegasus. At a certain moment Belaphon was not able, Pegasus could not fly any higher, and therefore, Belaphon had to proceed on his own. But still there was a motion that was imprinted upon him by Belaphon ( meant Pegasus??) So, at the edge, I suppose, there's a state where you have confidence that you can dispense with that underpinning because it has given you a momentum which you can ride upon. But of course that's a fantastic sense of freedom from the underpinning, which as you take wing after that is how you are able to identify with your celestial body. Because if you keep on hanging onto your identity with your physical body, then of course it's very difficult. At some point, in the descent then you are able to extrapolate between the two, but in the ascent, it's true that one has to, at least downplay, that, one's identification with one's body, one's arwah body, that is one's subtle body. But my, what I propose is, that you never lose altogether your sense of the physical world. It's remote, but your memory of the world serves as an anchor, pulls you back. otherwise you might get yourself lost. That's not Yoga. In yoga you're supposed to let go altogether any sense of the physical, and also in Buddhism. In fact, there are theories about it. The world is like a mirage, an illusion. Well, that's not philosophy, that's a method, that helps you to free yourself from your dependence upon it. That's not the Sufi way. Now, there's that transit from malakut the celestial level to lahut, the archetypal level, that's called divinity. So, there's a transit from, when you, at the celestial level, you still have some sense of your individuality, the diversity and multiplicity of people, and so on. 'n the lahut level, you have lost any sense of your individuality, but there still is a sense of the diversity of qualities. But now, as I said, if you remember this morning I said, instead of going right up into samadhi, into sampratha samadhi, I stopped, and I said, well, this is where we have to try to match the archetypes with the features of our personality, our idiosyncrasies. And then we go into this whole thing about the divine in Sufism. The key to this is these words that of Ibn Arabi, "Know that there is no form in the lower world without a likeness in the higher world. The forms in the higher world preserve the existence of their likeness in the lower worlds. Between the two worlds there are tenuities [(look up in your dictionary) which, that means resemblances,] which extend from each form to its likeness." Now that is a very, very significant text. That is, as I said, the clue to, let's say, functioning at the celestial level, is to discover your celestial face, which is not quite a form, but is a countenance hidden behind that mask which is your physical face. And so you see a likeness, you see that there is some resemblance, but still it's not the same. There is some correspondence. And what's more you see that this semblance of a countenance, this countenance which is a semblance of a face, changes according to your attunement much quicker than your face could ever change, much more malleable. And this is one of the practices that I'm recommending to the mureeds is that, when you are doing the wazifa, think of the expression on your face corresponding to each wazifa. So, now you're really establishing the tenuities, that is the matching between lahut and nazut, or between malakut and arwah. You're establishing a connection there, so that now, you know that this is, when you have recognized your own countenance, you know that that's what you are, you know it and it's like a whole breakthrough in your identity. You think to yourself, "I'm wearing a mask in the world, and well, there is or course the fabric of my ancestors, there's one's how can I say (stain over?) from the environment. There's several things, one's actions in the past and so on. There are a lot of things that have defiled ones angelic being, and yet as I said this morning, that the purity of our being remains unscathed and can be retrieved within its distortion. So that's the angelic in you, that which is indelible and can never be, although apparently defiled, can never be in it's essence defiled. And so, only if you can see that, that is the key to discovering your celestial counterpart. otherwise you can't possibly do it because you keep on identifying with the defilement. And Pir-o-Murshid describes this as a mirror. He says the core of our being is like a mirror. It can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. (pause) So, these are the thoughts that you entertain when you say -- you don't say it, you see -- it's the first a of Allah, you say "La illaha illa'lla" . You just say the two l's, but you think the first a, as you concentrate on the heart center. And then you establish a link between the first a that you don't say and the second a that represents the plane of lahut, the archetypal level of your being. And that's where the tenuities are, that you can see that somehow that those qualities are beyond form and are trying to manifest as a countenance and eventually assume a form in the physical world. And so that all art, for example, it's the way that a quality is able to gel as a form. Therefore, the, how can I say, the beginnings of the configuration of your being descending from lahut downwards, that is very important, because meditation is not just an experience. It is a transforming experience. And so, as I said this morning, it's a fashioning the subtle bodies on account, in the measure of your realization, let's say, transcribing conditions attained in your meditation into the formative processes of your being. I have a feeling that we've gone way past the time. So, we'll just have a little break now. And if you don't mind, we'll continue afterwards with (inaudible) as this is extremely important. END OF TAPE APR 07, 1995 Tape 10 April 7, 1995, Abode of the Message tape #10 So it is that passion for the unattainable that lifts us beyond the common place, low key emotional condition that tethers us to the world plane, the plane of the world. Do you remember some of the thoughts we came across yesterday, when at the end of his play Murshid said I'm seeking for another kingdom. In the words of Christ (they are not in the world, they are not of the world,) they are in the world, they are not of the world. So it is that passion and only that passion that is able to uplift us from our, how could I say, earthly condition, and help us to discover levels of our being which we might have suspected were there but we never really experienced them. That passion is the power of love. And I said yesterday the best model of it is, of course, being in love with a human being. What is it one is loving, something that is so meaningful and so beautiful and so uplifting that one is carried beyond one's self? And perhaps one doesn't realize that really the being one is loving is God exemplified in his being. So, in other words, that is somehow, it highlights certain attunement that is pending in one's being and is inspired by the, how can we say, the (antimony) between love and the act of seeking outside oneself that which is really inside oneself. That is which, which is draws one upwards, and then one discovers, as I say, one's ability to be able to ride on, more, how can you say, more sublimated flying horse than Pegasus, very much more subtle than one's subtle body. That's what one means by one's celestial counterpart. But then, I say, there's a kind of something that lures one, a kind of intuition, that even beyond this, beyond this, as I say it's the power of imagination that enables us to project the beauty in our being into, into, what imagined to be another being and which lures us, as I say, beyond our commonplace attunement. So that we become like an artist or musician; we are really creating our3selves, inspired by our ideal. That's how we make our reality. And as I say, that there's somehow, the key is to be found in these words, that there are (tenuaties), if you remember that word, between, well there is nothing on earth that does not have it's (tenuaties) in heaven that matching of an archetype with an exemplar, establishing that connection. So it's not something you grasp, the archetype, it's just a sense that, as I say within us is always the possibility of imagining something in larger numbers than one can imagine so far. And so is the possibility of imagining the greater perfection than one can imagine (said that before). The word that is used by the Sufis is, and to denote the Lahut level is the treasury, the treasuries. There word of Ibn Arabi, uh, (Nifaria) "I can't give you key to the treasury because it will be given to you when are ready for it". So let's (inaudible) some of the Sufis. If you remember what we got to that point when we discovered a kind of perduration, let's say a continuity in our celestial that is less transient than our body of course, physical body, perhaps not absolutely eternal; and that we can just like an artist creates it by the power of imagination inspired by our ideal. That's why Pir-o-Murshid said this very strange thing (several seconds missing on tape[*]) he also confirms and that is very surprising for those used to the old metaphysics, and that is that God created earth first and then afterwards the heavens. (The heavens) are created by our glorification. There's an extraordinary saying by the Prophet Mohammed it's in Arabic. It's (ahluk al mahluk fil da kadat) which means 'God creates himself through your prayers'. God creates himself. You are reciprocating the divine love by glorifying God's soul. I said love, but you see as I said love for a human model of what ultimately lies behind it is the glorification of our ideal. And by thus doing we are being created, we are being shaped, we are being confectioned by our act of glorification. Hence the importance of prayer. Then another word of the Koran "I emanated on the force of so that you might be fashioned according to my glance". Now you've read the Koran, have you ever seen that there? Yes, (that's the word of Murshid) the real place the heavens are made is within man. I remember there was a philosopher at the time when Murshid said it was Mr.(Hoyake) it was a Dutch philosopher, he interrupted Murshid and said 'Did you mean that?', Murshid said 'yes'. 'But then that's the opposite of we always believed'. 'Yes', Murshid said, 'that's true it's the opposite'. Yes, now, the l's of the word Allah you know the in Arabic two arcs of a circle. They figure as wings, lifting from the first arc to the second and those wings are very close. This is all metaphor but it is delightful as it just sparks something in our minds and because if you read the Koranic description of Mohammed's, how can I say, odyssey in higher spheres, then there is a word He was as close to the lotus of limit (inaudible) the lotus of limit within two bows. Actually what, the actual word is between then is the measure of a bow. So if you know the whole tradition then the measure of a bow is not the measure of a bow but is the proximity between your hand as you are holding, as you are pulling the bow and the string of the bow. So it gets very close, you see. And so it was that close, you see. So the two l's of the word Allah link the plane of Malakut, the celestial sphere with the plane of Lahut which is the plane of the treasuries. So you're angelic state gets you very close to the treasuries. Now you remember at the state of (inaudible) Malakut there's still, you see we are creating ourselves by our imagining, but you must understand that of course our imagination is an extension of the divine creative imagination whereby everything is created. And that's the meaning of the word magi and the word magic and the word maya. But at the next level which is Jabarut one has to forego the active imagination because there are no, at the angelic point, level there is still some semblance of form of a person, a form with a profile, but at the level of Jabarut there is no remnant of any sense of form whatsoever, and that's why it's a breakthrough in realization without the support of form that (rings of) experience (or) anything remains of the existential state. So what Ibn 'Arabi says is 'absorb yourself in the Dhikr until the imaginary world escapes you and the abstract thoughts manifest to view,eventually the one who is invoked will read himself." Because your imagination stood in the way. It was, it was how can you say, a springboard but you have to give it up and you can let the divine action act upon you because you are acting and to give up (inaudible) your action. (This is random) is a word of Ibn 'Arabi that I've often (meditated) upon. It's a wonderful (inaudible) meditation actually you can just meditate on that just one thing and there is (inaudible) being manifests the form of the eternal. It is by the contemplation of the eternal that God communicates to us the knowledge of himself. So, up to the present we saw signs as we said, or then we tried to see the signs not in the outer world but in ourselves; and then we started to try to get into the consciousness of God has of himself through us. So we were reversing our subject, our sense of being the subject. It is God who is the subject and we are the means whereby he discovers himself. And now we realize that what is being revealed is the archetype, is the eternal. So it only when we touch upon the eternal dimension of our being that we have any sense of what is meant by Lahut, by the archetypal level of reality, that level that Buddha spoke about when he said the level of all possibility, the treasuries in other words. And so that which specifies this level is to be found in his words, of Ibn Arabi, '(you know) the essence never reveals itself to you as it is in itself, only through the agency of a causal quality.' Now, I don't know if this has happened to you but it's meant a lot to me. To understand the meaning of the way the wazifas work; it was Martin Luther who was, you know the, one of the foundations, founders of Protestant. He was meditating on the word of (Towler), who was a Christian church father, who said 'in thy justice may thy attribute of justice liberate me.' And he thought to himself, "How can the divine attribute of justice liberate me?" I can't see the connection. And then all of a sudden he realized that it was thy justice whereby we are made into just men. So he saw the connection. And that is in the parlance of the church called (significatsio pasiva), passive significance. So we think that we can understand by trying to grasp something. But this is an understanding that is passive rather than active and that is the essence of Sufism. For example, instead of thinking 'I think God', or 'I love God'; I am thought of by God. I am a thought in the mind of God. So (is) thinking passively instead of actively. And so this is a kind of thinking that will help you reach the Lahut level, because at the Lahut level there is no sense of being individual anymore. So there can't be any sense of being the one who is experiencing, or who is knowing. Now, if you look at it from the anti polar point of view to your personal point of view, and that is what Sufism is saying, is that basically the human being is related to God, as the Lord; just like a vassal is related to the lord by what I call, we call the covenant of fielty. So that we see our purpose in life in actualizing the divine qualities of the Lord in our being because by so doing we are serving the order of the universe. So the essence of, the impact, the very meaning of initiation in the Sufi Order is called Bayat, which means establishing a covenant, a covenant of a pledge to fulfill the purpose of creation which is to make God a reality. So there is a wonderful word by (Saltustani) who was a great Sufi who said "The divinity seeks for a being whose God it is; that the divine sovereignty has a secret, and that is thou." For example, if you don't recognize a king then he isn't a king, it's your recognition that makes him a king. So there's something that you have to do, and that's the vassal declaring the sovereignty of the king. That's the connection. All right, now we come to the level of Hahut, the ultimate level. Which I (try) describe as the frozen state (steak?) (Pir chuckles). Everything is in a pending state and I'm (sure there are very heated) discussions of physics on the subject; whether the origin of the universe is orderly or whether it is chaotic. But, we won't go into that (inaudible). But now there's a word that really, I don't know whether it strikes you the way it strikes me. But really it threw me for a time, a word of Ibn 'Arabi. . . "every time you consider a thing, he will have already escaped you". And if you think, (short pause) because you've seen the thing itself, the reality behind it that's a secret of Hahut. Now, you know the 'h' in the word Allah is the same 'h' in that you find in the Jewish tradition. It's a (harris) name of God that the priests were not supposed to pronounce, and it is to be found in the word Yahweh; and of course, Yahweh is Ya Hu of course. And, and so it represents the very pinnacle. And what it does seem, you see for the Sufis, the level of Lahut represents there's still diversity there. The seeds, the seeds, (salamija), the seeds. But beyond that, the reality beyond that is not diversified, it is one. And what is then that is one that you could call one, it's presence. That's the only thing that there's one. You can't say separate presence, just deep presence. And that's the secret of Hahut. Well there's a story about that, it's a story of (Falidinanata) the Conference of the Birds. Perhaps you know the story. It was a very bright bird (Wohufo) but it was a lady bird actually who convened a conference of birds. And they decided to go on a big trek in order to visit the king of the universe. And there were thousands of them but eventually, I forget now how many, it was about twenty remained. And because they were drowned and dried in the desert and so on and that most of them came to grief. But so then they knocked at the door of the palace and a chamberlain answered and said 'What do you want?' They said, "We've come to visit the king". He said, "Ha, if you think it's time for you motley lot'. So, they said 'If you knew what we've gone through to come and see the king I'm sure the king wouldn't refuse." And he said, "Come and sit down then." So they sat there and of course the king never appeared. And so one bright bird thought, had a very bright idea, and that was to sit on the throne. And when they sat on the throne they realized that they were the being they were looking for. That's the different presence. We're not talking about qualities. The wazifas are talking about qualities. The dhikr is ultimately talking about the divine presence. And if you're in love, you really love, you don't care whether that person has defects. What you want is for that person to be present. Until you realize that you yourself are that presence. So we don't need the other person. That was just a stepping stone. But you get to realize that as you get older in life. (Pir laughs) So what the Sufis call this is the state of non-manifestation of the pure essence. So that when you're in a samadhi state you see that the whole existential condition is the manifestation of the non-manifest; and that whatever is manifest is very little in comparison with what is not manifest. So it's like a trip. You're involved in a trip and you've got the reality behind it. It's like a device. There's a good story of course, if you've seen the film E.T. I hope you cried and you laughed and at some point you were really very worried. And actually E.T. was, actually it had, it was a picture of imagination of course. It was a face of a turtle and the voice of an old woman. So you were worried about that. Why were you so worried about that? It was just, is just a shadows on the screen. Ah yes, but then E.T. was a reality because you got into the mind of that beautiful child. Yes, but all the time, what's his name, the producer was, (listener says Spielberg) yes, was trying to, he was using devices in order to communicate his meaning. So they were just devices. And you got into those devices, and you captured the meaning. So that's the universe, they are (this) devices in which the divine intention is made known. That's God manifesting himself through the existential state. So when you get in a state of samadhi you see that. Now you understand the words of Pir-o-Murshid when he said, "when the unreality of life fades away the reality appears to view." It's like a game. And when you are involved in a game you may take it really seriously, and if you knew what was behind it we would, we could only, as the Chinese say, we could only laugh (short pause) and cry (short pause) at the same time. So now we have (re- a) word of Ibn 'Arabi [**) 'knowledge is the veil upon the known'. They are very strong thoughts. So, the best definition I've ever seen of Hahut is again Ibn 'Arabi, one of the most brilliant minds amongst the Sufis. 'In the station of unity touching upon the unity one accesses the supreme knowledge whereby the grasp of the qualities falls away.' Because imagination was unfurling the qualities. So there is no more awareness of those qualities we described, the wazifas. Indeed the qualities cannot add anything to the essence. They are just means whereby the essence gets known. If the names disappear, that is the words we are using in our wazifa, the names disappeared, the named one would appear. (Pir laughs) (***) * several seconds of tape were erased in transcription at this point ** Pir's voice subjectively appears to the transcriber as emotional at this point *** it is not clear to the transcriber which of this definition of Ibn 'Arabi is a direct quote and which is Pir's comments. The one who is immersed in the vision of multiplicity is in the world, in the aspect of the divine names, and the names of the world. And the one who is immersed in the unity is with God in the grasp of this unity irrespective of the worlds. (pause) Now this is something which, well, it makes you think when you are repeating the dhikir because what the dhikir says is there is only one, one being. It's all one being. But if you are conscious of being the one who is saying it then there is a contradiction. (Pir laughs) And so you could only say it if you are not conscious of being the one whose saying it. So we never say the Dhikir. (Pir laughs) Unless you feel that you are on the way to an infinite regress, to a be able to reverse your consciousness and be aware it is God who is repeating the Dhikir through you, or as you. And those were the last words of Al Halaj when he was crucified . And he said, "It suffices if God alone unifies the mystic in his unity." (Pause) And there one thinks of the words of Murshid that's right on when he says " I see myself when thou art not before me. When I see thee myself is lost to you. I consider it good fortune when thou art alone with me, but when I am not there at all I think it is the greatest blessing." Well now we come to the verse which is awakening in life and I say that is the essence of sufism and particularly of the message of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan. And so, I, of course I can't repeat all the things we said, I said about the meaning of God and projections and the infinity as it compared with the unity and so on. The stages which Pir-o-Murshid describes are first of all conceptualizing, that's projecting that which is inside us in to an ideal, that we have to keep on destroying and replacing. And that the second one is what he calls the experience of God. That is grasping those, first of all grasping the pug marks as I said or signs in the universe in one's self. And then the third one is the awakening of the God within. And so that is what the Dhikir is about. It's a, a, as we turn within we discover, when I said we're recurrently reborn it is, one is awakening faculties that are dormant by one's ideal; which is one's imaginary representation of God, but it's a, like a replication of that reality which is beyond our grasp. And then he says "and there comes a time when you realize that any concept that you have of God or any sense of discovering God in yourself is nothing in comparison with the reality of what God is". That's a sense of divine transcendence. Now how does one, um, reverse things and awaken in life? Here's a word of Murshid that is really, it's really a key. I'm choosing words that are really very, I would say very meaningful if you want, in your spiritual path. "True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has come on earth, or come to earth and realized there it's spiritual existence." That would be the key to awakening in life instead of awakening beyond life. Instead of samadhi, you think that in samadhi you would discover your spiritual existence; the other way round, you come on earth and it is there that you realize your spiritual existence. So it's the reverse, umhmm. Now we've already said imagination causes archetypal notions to descend into perceptible forms. But Ibn'Arabi says something further. He says, thoughts shift from the perception of the senses, right, to the imaginary ones, those are the things we've been following, then the intelligible forms, that's Jabarut, beyond imagination will descend upon you in the form of perception. (Pir laughs) So you've done the opposite, right? You've made the circle, so now you perceive God instead of, in your perception, instead of laying your perceptions aside, you know, to reach the reality beyond form; but the opposite, that's awakening in life. And another word is you will observe the (exchanging ) of the possibilities lying in the spiritual plane into the corporeal world. And here we have those key words of Murshid that explain the whole being of the message, and the whole, I would say, the whole orientation of the spirituality in our time; which is not for the ascetic but to bring spirituality to real life, that's the message. "In Man is awakened that spirit by which the whole universe was created." (Pause) How is higher consciousness attained? By closing our eyes to our limited self; and by opening our hearts to the God who is all perfection. Who is in Heaven and on Earth, within and without, visible and audible, perceptible, intelligible and yet beyond man's comprehension. The key to spiritual attainment is to be conscious of the perfect one who's formed in the heart. Divinity resides in humanity. It also is the outcome of humanity. 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 the Master that is God himself. It is in Man that the divine perfection can be seen. God knows himself through this, his manifestation. Manifestation is the self of God; but a self that is limited, a self which, that makes his perfection known to himself when he compares himself with the limited self we call Nature. Therefore the purpose of the whole manifestation is the realization that God gains by discovering his own perfection through our imperfection.. (Transcriber uncertain if above passage is a continuation of HIK quote) So these are the thoughts which would help you to do the dhikr. (Pir laughs) Of course it's impossible to remember all those thoughts when you are saying the Dhikr. Yes but, there is a way to doing it, and I have been doing it, and that is that you take one of these thoughts for each of the stages, each of the, the, stages you go through in doing it; and then it becomes very present in your mind. And then you take another thought out of this series of thoughts for each stage in the dhikr and that opens, all of a sudden, new insights while you are saying the dhikr all of a sudden uh it's like a, a, all of a sudden a door open and you see something that you hadn't seen before. And you go on doing that, hmm. And eventually you don't have to, a, call upon these thoughts because they're so much part of your being, your realization that you can do without them. Well that would be a far better way of repeating the dhikr than just saying the words (inaudible) repeating the words. You see, so this represents a whole new phase in our work, in our training in the Sufi Order. Hmmm. (Pir laughs) Well I'm, I'm allowed to go until six, is that right? Because were running out of time now we just have tomorrow morning. So what I suggest is that we repeat the dhikr together. But I must beg you to not force the pace, because if you say it too fast it just becomes what Christ called "vain repetition". You have, don't have a chance of experiencing the different stages. So I will say it very slowly, but sometimes I feel impatient as some people want to say it faster and then we just lose the handle altogether. La illaha illa 'llah hu (practice repeats) Now, we're not going to say it aloud anymore but um, but just a think of the words but on your, a, a, don't say them aloud and you just a, do the motion with your breath that (means) that you ext, exhale in a circle, and then inhale when your head comes down, and continue to inhale as your head rises, and then hold your breath when you say the "hu". That's the simple way of doing it. The more advanced way is that um, you divide your exhaling and your inhaling into two halves so "La illaha" it is in the second half of your exhaling, going to the circle. And as I say, there is a sense of vastness, of expansion, (If you note) at all levels, hmm. And then when the head comes down you inhale the first inhaling as you hit your solar plexus, and the second half of the inhaling as you, as your head rises. So your inhaling is divided in two halves; which correspond with the inhalation) and the prayer. ( the instatement) And then remember you're going through the, through the, levels as you, the second half of the inhaling "'llha". So you can't do that fast you have to just identify with your celestial being, all it takes and then reach into the Lahut level, and then (ride) up to Hahut with the "h" of the "'llah". And then you hold your breath when you, you, actually you hold your breath, thinking of the "h" of Allah. And so this is new, this is not something I've been (taught), I've been teaching so far. And you think the "hu" in the first half of the exhaling. See it's different than what I've been teaching so far. Hmm. So the "h", you're in a state of suspense, you're holding the breath. That is the divine presence. And now as you are saying "hu" you are bringing this presence down, into your heart. And a, it is predicated by the qualities and so on. So there is a sense of awakening in life. So with the "h" you are awakening beyond life, and with the "h,u" you are awakening in life. Hmhmm. So see if you can do it, if you would. I'm sure some of these thoughts have stayed with you. And so, if you get familiar with these thoughts, of course, then they will be more present while you are saying the dhikr. And do it on you breath (Long Pause) Maybe there is still another way of doing it, a,. and that is a, you hold your breath with the "h" and continue holding the breath with the "hu". And then you start the exhale. It's another way of doing it. And that might be easier. Because then, let's say, the "h" represents the samadhi state and the "hu" awakening in life, that is seeing things from the divine point of view. (Long Pause) As long as you see how the "hu" leads you into the "La illaha" (Long Pause) As with the "hu" you turn your head towards your heart center, "h" your head is turned upwards, and then with the "hu" your head is turned toward your heart center. (Long Pause) OK, so something you can do, try it out on your own. But a, now I have a bomb for you. And that is you could say the Dhikr with "Hallelujah","La Illaha, Hallelujah" (Pir laughs) Try it out and see (what). It's, it's not a fantasy it's a, the etymologically it's the same, the same (root). It's just very difficult, (you see) "La Illaha Hallelujah", or do you say "La illaha Hallelujah" ( with different emphasis) "La Illaha Hallelujah" (pir laughs). And then, last joke actually, now, because a, I was accused um, by a, a, very a, straightforward Muslim that we were not pronouncing the wazifas correctly in Arabic. Although in, in Egypt they speak Arabic differently than in Turkey, and in India they speak in differently. But um, a, that was even more seriously with the dhikr because a, It's very difficult to say "La Illaha Illa[uh (glottal stop)] 'Llah". (In effect) It's very difficult. So then the story is um, (the) story taught me by Sharif. There was a man who is on an island, um, was repeating "(Willawatuwillawattawoohooo)." (pir laughs) So there is a sheihk on a boat going towards the island and saying (to him), "you're not saying the dhikr correctly, you should say La Illaha Illa 'Llah Hu". And he said, "What, Allah what, how do you say it?, La what, what hah? 'h, I don't know how to say it. Can you tell me again? "La Illaha Illa 'Llah Hu" "You've got to say it that way." "Well, I'll try, I'll try sheihk, I'll try." And then the sheihk left on the boat, and then he heard some strange kind of sound on the water behind him, and here was that man from the island who was walking on the water. (Pir laughs) So you may be excused if you don't say it in, in high Arabic. APR 07, 1995 Tape 11 April 7, 1995 Tape #11 The Abode SUMMARY How does one be in the world but not of the world Building an inner temple Drawing light, sound and energy from within Yoni Mudra (Shagal) Dhikr of light- use of color The light that can be seen and the light that sees Dhikr- building a hologram of sound '1La"- reaching outward, "Illa" converging into the void Attuning to the universe Attuning to other beings and masters Sound- the way we interpret vibration and energy Attuning by sympathetic resonance Different levels of resonance, physical, ethereal Side Two Wazifa and sound frequencies Wazifa, Dhikr and overtones Hoisting your consciousness Magnetic fields, energy and vibration Emotional attunement Attunement with other beings Murshid's description of levels of consciousness Feeding on Buddha's energy, Holy Communion Murshid's description of inner senses and organs (Gap in Tape) Practice of Shagal (possible earlier recording session fragment) Side 1 If one is a sensitive person one has a very great need for the sacred. One needs to protect one's very fragile soul against the turbulence and grossness and vulgarity and ruthlessness that one finds in the world. And a, so how does one be in the world but not of the world, huh? How does one be an ascetic in the middle of married life for example, with children? How does one preserve one's attunement where one's soul is being pummeled all the time in all directions? Well, of course, in the course of history our societies had built temples and churches in order to seek refuge, so that one is able to find one's soul again, in favorable circumstances. But of course the nomads, whether they were the Jews or the Arabs have found that since they were always on the move they could not rely upon a place where they could find peace and find the sacred attunement of their being. And so they realized they had to create their own, they had to create their own temple. And so this is what, it's true that living in our modern societies, you might be able to benefit by a room in your apartment you should be able to dedicate to your meditation that would be your temple, but not all of us can afford even that in our crowded lives. And anyway that doesn't do it. So the answer is to build an inner temple oneself out of one's own being. The thing about the temple is that it provides one with a threshold marking the transit from the profane to the sacred, a very definite transit; and marking a kind of protection so that one is able to find peace within one's self without being subjected to the impressions coming on all sides. And a, one can all seek refuge in that temple, even when one is right in the middle of activity, because one has built that temple from within, it's always there. Maybe a good model is Buddha sitting in the middle of a storm. But as you know the center of a whirlpool or of a whirlwind is a vacuum. So the sense of being able to touch upon that inner peace that suffuses one's being from within. And, so, the Buddhist conception of peace is not escape but is a kind of active, all-pervading peace that gains ground and, how can I say, pushes away the turbulence accruing from outside. Now, how do you create this temple out of your fabric as it were? Well, one needs to draw light from within, instead of from without. And one needs to (absorb it.) Your temple could be a temple of light. Or then, or in addition to that one needs to be able to draw) that, make a temple of sound out of one's wazifas or the dhikr. And, of course it could be a temple of the mind, of one's realization. There are different ways in which, a temple of energy, different ways in which this can be done. The secret is, in a practice that I would say it's the very heart of yoga practices and also Sufi practices, call it Yoni Mudra. And that is that, if a, consciousness, consciousness is always interfacing experience from without. Now if you find the doors closed, then consciousness is able to discover the world from within. So that's the whole point about the threshold is that, it builds a, it's not exactly a wall but a kind of membrane, protective membrane. And when I say membrane it's just like the cathedral there, there are windows, so this is not a total separation from the outside world but still a, one communicates from inside. Well how do you build this temple of light first of all? Umm, you could perform the dhikr of light. So that for example, instead of just building spirals of light with say your third eye as you're whirling your head around your solar plexus, think of it as not two dimensional spirals but three dimensional spirals. Well then you could think of (zone solar) the rotary, there's a rotary light that is a, that moves in a rotary fashion. And you think of zones of light. So the temple has several zones, until you get to the (semto centaurum) in the center at the precincts of the temple. You could think of colors. For example the more, the lower frequency colors are red for example on the outside and violet in the inside. You start of course with thinking of just one wall of light (inaudible) the very beautiful temple (inaudible) build and out of the fabric of the light of your own being. And there it is, what it means is that, a, not only as I said before when a consciousness finds the door closed then it turns within. But then a, instead of one of the, you know, one of the practices we've been doing is to absorb light from the environment, well, now this is the other way around. One is drawing light from inside. And (two things), don't you think, one is, upon on one hand one is, is forming a protective membrane by whirling that light. 'n the other hand one is radiating that light so that it's not just a protective mechanism but it is a, it has a radiating force and that radiation does act as protection. So as radiation comes, it radiates from the heart, from the (semto centaurum), from the alter in the temple. And then there's another factor you have to take into account, and that is, the levels that we've come across all the time. And so if your, let's say your aura is now the temple, then you may be aware of the flame in the center of your aura, and a, it is that which will give you a sense of being able to hoist your consciousness into the abstract planes, within the temple. So the (inaudible) offers you a protection in order to be able to hoist yourself, and a, sometimes you can think of an aperture at the top of the temple. And there is a concept of the descent of the holy spirit. But then there is also the opposite, the ability to hoist your being. At any moment to be able to let your consciousness enter the higher planes within the temple and beyond the temple. You could think of it then as a hologram of light. With several slices, several levels in the hologram. You're building a hologram of light and you are beaming a laser beam. That's the laser beam of your, of your consciousness, which is ultimately your intelligent. Upon it the Sufis speak about the light can be seen a light that sees. And so the light that could be seen light of your aura which is the temple you're building. But then the light that sees is not your aura. It way that your intelligence beams upon all things; laser beam in a hologram. And that is what is meant Koran by a light upon a light. So you've got this temple of light and then you're beaming the light of your awakened intelligence upon this hologram of light; which then begins to burst into a tremendous outbreak of light. And you're exalted in the ecstasy of light. Now with the dhikr one is also building a hologram of sound. So after you have, you have to of course, realize that you are building a sound vibrations into some kind of a pattern by your, the dhikr. And you recognize the "Lat' the, that is the outgoing sound which is reaching outwards, the "Il", "Illa" which is again just the opposite the sound that is, sound vibrations that are getting converged into and (inaudible) essentially absorbed in the void. So again you have two things that in parallel on one hand temple of sound now, the hologram sound is a, is not so clearly like a defined membrane anymore. As you would create a temple of sound, of light but it acts as a buffer against the, how can you say, shrieking unseemly sounds of our civilization; because you're able to scramble out the sounds that you, that are unwanted by producing your own vibrations. And a, when you turn within and not, as I say, have been able to place some kind of a buffer to ward off the sounds from outside then you become you're beginning to tune in to what Pythagoras called the "symphony of the spheres". And it is a language. It's a language of the universe. And it's telling you something that is difficult to interpret of course, from the commonplace mind. But the that way Pir-o- Murshid sees it is, you're in touch with a, the working of the universe, he calls it the working of the machine, or even the machine behind the machine, like a holy mechanism that is set up like a clockwork and which you can tune into just like one could tune in with one's wireless, just like a radio receiver to certain frequencies. And now one has the ability, if one gives vent to one's desire to tune to a very high pitch, what Pir-o-Murshid calls the abstract; that is those higher planes that we tried to explore yesterday. And then you can really establish like a kind of spiritual on-line whereby, you're in contact with the thoughts and the attunements kindred beings, beings whom you can't reach in your ordinary consciousness like some of the masters that we think (out) of the past but are still there of course, (inaudible) in fact all the beings whom you love and have died and they're still there. So (inaudible) we find it difficult. We're out of communication with them. But, the ability to tune in to beings, you had to isolate yourself to tune to them. Because to isolate yourself you are able to, as I say, scramble out those impressions that blurred the, that fine tuning. And somehow there's a kind of resonance takes place so that, well of course you delight in finding an affinity with those beings whom you hold in high regard. But this can go, extend further and eventually you find that all beings have all kinds of attunements and can reach beings at that level, at that high level much easier than by having to take a plane and visit them. otherwise one would find one's self very lonely in one's spiritual quest; particularly when one finds absolute miscomprehension on the part of one's, the person one is living with or working with. And one suffers in ones soul by the defilement and the attunement around one. And it's a real need for one's soul to, eventually of course for forming self-esteem but one's sense of one's spiritual status. So we talk about the flame that, in the temple of light acts as a kind of lift that hoists your consciousness into higher levels. In the realm of sound, of course, have the higher frequencies of sound. The beauty of sound is that there are no particles, there's no mass, it's pure vibration. And, that somehow, as I say, if it is a language then, because every object has its own signature tune; that means a certain composition of frequencies, so it's a language each, not only objects but, let's say the whole software in the universe is like a, very composite language, like a symphony of sounds that, the word sound is not quite the right one because sound is the way we interpret vibration. And it could be, it could be not just vibration of the air it could be the waves on a, on a cornfield for example. It really, vibrations of energy, of energy. So, to tune in, you cannot be the subject who is listening to something other than yourself. You have entered into sympathetic resonance with that which you are trying to tune in with. It's like two gongs that have some frequencies in common. So if you play one gong the other one starts resonating. So it is not a one sided experience it is a interactive experience. So you may feel a, if you, even, of course, if you identify with your physical body you can feel some kind of vibration there, certainly the pulsing of your bloodstream and your heartbeat. But there are many more pulses, of course. If you are very fine tuned you can even recognize the rhythm of alpha waves, for example, delta waves, theta waves and beta waves. Certain rhythm, almost like a waltz, three beats per second, or then eight beats or you can just feel that. If you're very, especially if you are musically minded you can just feel those vibrations. But if you a, if you identify with your etheric body then of course a, you can feel many different frequencies. Many, most of them are so far that you could never, you could never a, experience each beat. But as you know our mind's, our consciousness, a, at a certain point where it cannot distinguish the separate beats interprets what it hears as a pitch. And so in the very high frequencies a, we interpret them as a very high pitch. Well when you' re Side Two Well when you're saying a wazifa, if you stop and you listen in that you can hear like an echo because you have been bombarding, well just simply the air around you and the walls, and the whole environment, you've been bombarding it with sound frequencies which are going to revert back to you like radar for example, and they tell you something about themselves they're not just sending back the message you sent out but sending it back in a way that has been manipulated by the, nature. So it becomes like a dialog. And so if you send out very, well just the right frequency of waves then you get a, response of beings that are tuned to that frequency, that high frequency. And, that's one of the reasons why, it's good to try and produce overtones when you are saying the wazifa and also, or the dhikr and earmark these overtones, just there's a way of being able to train your auditive faculty to just, grasping those very high notes that represent the overtones. And then by the fact that you're trying to earmark the next one and higher up this has the effect of hoisting your consciousness into higher levels. So the overtones act as a kind of a ladder. Now one can repeat a wazifa internally and the dhikr also of course. It's called fikr. It does not mean just thinking of the meaning. It means, I suppose it means, you see that we have to be very clear about the fact that we confuse sound and vibration and sound is just the way we perceive vibration. But the reality is vibration, and the reality is vibration of energy. So that if you identify yourself with your magnetic field, for example, which is an energy field, body of energy, then of course you realize that this energy keeps a vibrating at many different frequencies, just like a gong. And you can feel that, you can feel that vibration, and you can even spot, spot say a certain level of frequency highlighted above another one and that becomes very refined, and it forces your consciousness to shift its perfume. (There so) it becomes clearer to you living in a many tiered universe, and somehow, I don't know how to say this, you (said) we have a scale of values and a, these are not necessarily values we can assess with our minds. Now one could say that maybe the only measuring scale would be a, our measuring rod would be attunement, emotional attunement. For example, emotional attunements are people that jar us, and emotional attunements that inspire us, and so you can literally tune your own being like a musician were to tune a harpsichord for example, or a harp. When you get into the higher frequencies the communication is easier like in radio waves you get, you can reach much further. And all of a sudden you find yourself in synch with a being whom you, as I say, for whom you have high regard. And you can find that being, but only at that level of attunement. In other words, that being remains a kind of memory or representation that one has of that person, but this is really getting into synch with that being and discovering an aspect of your being through your sympathetic resonance with that being. Pir-o-Murshid said imagine that you're standing on the first floor of a building and you, you think, yeah, it would be nice if I could be floating on the ceiling there. And then you find that you are on the next floor and you think of the next ceiling, and so on. It's just a metaphor, but, the way you can literally hoist your consciousness up from the gravity pull of the world. It's also a feeding on a level of energy that, because that's what we are feeding on, Buddha's energy. It's all energy. Light is energy. So it's feeding on a, but one (likes) to call the energy of the soul, but the Holy Spirit, Holy Communion. And so one of the aspects of this is not only thinking of the organs of sight or the organs of hearing, but also the organs of tasting and of smelling. Pir-o-Murshid once said it's, for example, we had this kind of gross ability to taste sour or bitter or sweet or whatever, pungent or whatever. And we're u...aware of this kind of a, how can you say, perfunctory taste. But then there is a deeper sense of taste that most of us are not aware of, for example, how our pancreas tastes the food that is then processed by the enzyme, or how our liver tastes the food. And deeper down of course how the cells of our body are tasting the amino acid chains. And it is this ability that governs the replication of the RNA and DNA RNA. So it's a very deep sense of the ability to distinguish what one is absorbing. Now that is of course we are thinking of absorbing food from outside. But you can absorb food from inside, energy so feeding your energy body. I think that's the meaning of the wazifa Quddus. So, you could feel your energy body, feed your energy body with Haay for example, but is not as quite as fine as Quddus. And then there's that sense of smell which is related of course to (quintesensation) to the ability to grasp that quintessence of the distillation of the whole life process. A, in fact that is, carries within it the promise of resurrection. It is for example, the ability flowers to have a very precarious existence on the planet, foothold on the planet let's say. And their ability to transmute their body into perfume, because as perfume they live forever. And so in the same way a, we do have the ability to transmute, even our body does in or to be able to survive the disintegration of the cells of the body. (5 second gap on tape-recording at this point has different recording quality, suggesting to transcriber different recording- perhaps which the earlier text was recorded over) levels of subtlety. The final illustration thereof of course what we understand by being pure spirit. That's what Pir-o-Murshid means by dis, discovering and even identifying oneself with one's, the eternity of one's being. And that eschews the perishability of the contingent parts of our being. It's like the Muslim said they never got Christ, they thought they got him but all that they got was his body. That's, you can do what you want with my body, you can't touch my soul. That's the sense that you get. So that is a practice, so you place the indexes of your fingers on your eyes, but you must turn your eyeballs upwards so you don't exercise pressure on your retina, that is on the cornea which would press the retina. And then the fourth and fifth finger on your lips but, so pressing them together, so that is like giving a sense that you cannot get the breath from outside so it's turned within, then the middle fingers on your nostril but don't press them yet but eventually you'll just be breathing in through the right nostril and holding the breath and exhaling through the right nostril, not through the left. I could explain why but we don't have the time now. But then place you place your thumbs in your ears, but now wait a moment (before) you do that. So you breathe in through your right nostril, hold your breath, exhale through your right nostril, start again, three breaths and then breath normally. And take your fingers away from your nostrils. In fact, you take away your fingers altogether from your face. Keep your eyes closed. And see, how you are. (tape seems to change subject slightly with no time gap) Picking up light from inside, and sound from inside, and smell from inside, and taste from inside; an inner kinesthetic feeling. OK, let's do that. All right now, start breathing heavily as you exhale, and wiggle your fingers, and shoulders, and head, and stretching. END OF SIDE TWO APR 07, 1995 Tape 12 TAPE DATE/DESCRIPTI'N: AB'DE/SPRING RETREAT APRIL 95 Tape 12 Training the unconscious - Relationship w/God - Divine Inheritance/domain,area of responsibility/vice-regeants of God - Divine Sovereignty on earth/life as battle/upholding against disorder,chaos,anarchy - Distinguishing: intuition, wishful thinking, fantasy, imagination - Meaning of Pir's name - Dealing with difficult personalities/nature of ego/antidote - Dark Night of the Soul as avenue to free ourselves - Power of Love through Light of Glance - Everywhere and Always actualizing in the Here and Now (Sufi): Here & Now (Zen)/difference between moment and instant - Basic mistakes in meditation - Child Rearing/balancing mastery and compassion The following is a list of quotes that Pir used on this tape, the waziaf he discusses and a list of the stories he used to help our understanding of his subject: QUOTES: "The Pir is the destroyer of the idol. . ." Jelalledin Rumi "Be Ye Perfect as Your Father. . ." Christ "Man is fulfillment of Divine Purpose. . ." Hazrat Inayat Khan "I wish for nothing less than the impossible possibility" American Poet "Glory to the one who conceals himself by the same veil that reveals him and reveals himself by the same . . ." Atar WAZAIF: (No way of describing, but this is a hint toward the direction of meaning) Batin Veiled Zahir Radiance Qahr Divine Power/Purpose Mawjud God Manifest Basit Expansion Qabi Contraction or conversion Wazi Encompass wider and wider areas Wali Mastery Hadi Being receptive to guidance Wali/Hadi Way the Divine Will customized within each of us Nur Light/Glance/Light that sees Manawr Lamp/Aura/Light that can be seen Alim Wisdom = Knowledge of Heavens and Knowledge of Earth Habir Being very aware. Qaddum Entire past Qadr Bringing into Present Qayyum Resurrection ST'RIES: Al Hallaj crucifixion Zeuz/Zacharus/Titans and Birth of Humans St. Francis acknowledging his true Father Parcival Legends Christ picture of lamp/light in a storm Hazrat Inayat Khan's Saturday evening silent meditations Pir Vilayat's perception of people walking out on lectures (Pir) I did not choose this music. (Hearty laughter by all). Since I'm always held responsible for everything, a. . .A... Well very little has been a. . . spoken of the wazaif, the wazifas. a. . . of course, a. . . I've already said this many times, a. . . one is a. . . somehow associating a thought with a sound, which is what we do with our language. But a. . . the beauty is that it's another language to Americans because then you have different associations. (pause) And it's not just an ordinary thought but it's an archetypal thought and a. . your training the unconscious and a. . . a. . . the unconscious a. . . a. . . responds to repetition and so you're building a kind of a. . . bastion of a. . . let's say s-s-self-esteem a. . . within yourself which will (revolt?) you against a. . . the precariousness that we feel when we are a. . . feel very inadequate in our self image. So of course psychologically it's of the greatest importance and it's also because a. . . we're working way down in the personality instead of just reaching into samadhi and I've already said yesterday we're matching two levels of one's being, in fact several levels of one's being. a. . . For me the clue is a. . . to try and a. . . well by the power of imagination to a. . . repeating wazifa to represent to oneself the kind of countenance of one's inner (inter?) face. It could be a. . . actually ultimately of course a. . . the face of one's celestial being when the countenance of one's celestial being when which responds a. . . much a. . .quicker and better to one's attunement one's physical face but anyway that a. . . it's a feedback you see or you've got something there that is more tangible than just an idea and the whole danger of the wazifa is the is conceptualization and so of course one would like to know what they mean and that meaning stands in the way. So of course I would rather a. . . think in terms of attunement rather than concepts (pause) and a. . . I think that one is really needs to a. . . match the a. . . well one is matching one's personality with one's problem and therefore match the qualities with the particular problem that one is facing. That's, of course, the job of the person that gives you the wazifa but a. . . we are living at a time when a. . .you see wazifa's used to be confidential and a. . . the reason is because a. . . ultimately the best training is the training individual training at the individual scale teacher to disciple that kind of relationship and a. . . in view of the large numbers that's not always possible. In fact, it's not possible in the Sufi Order at least I can't do it myself because of the amount of all the people. a. . . I think it's also true well anyway we're living at a time when one can't keep things confidential a. . . everything's up front and a. . . so many of the secrets of the (Arcain?) have been published and a. . . a lot of the wazifas (slight pause) there have been a lot of books a. . . publishing the wazifas and a. . . describing them and a. . . some of those descriptions a. . . seem to be totally off. So I wouldn't go by them in the least. Well some of them give some indication but a. . . I'm not that a. . . totally, not satisfied. Anyway a. . . I realize a. . . there is no way of describing them anyway a. . .so if I use a. . . if I refer to words now (ummm) think of these words as just like an index a. . . but a. . . the content is much more important than the word so what I'm going to try to do and this is really an experiment is seeing what relevance these wazifa have to our problems. In other words how do we apply meditation to every day problems? So in the course of this retreat we have encountered two spaces let's say an external space and an internal space; explicate condition and implicate condition in the terms of the psyche or thinking that which we explain and that which we imply or the explicit and the implicit and of course there's no doubt that a lot of those who are drawn to spiritual groups, lot of them not all but a lot of them less now than before, are people who find it difficult to relate totally to the social environment and have a need to find their being within (ummm) and a. . . we want to balance that. We recognize the need in everyone not just a few people but everyone to be able to get in touch with their inner being and that means in terms of the psyche. For example, what one can't explain in words that's the reason for silence because then one doesn't try to feel that one needs to a. . . to a. . . translate one's thoughts into the limitation of their usual language semantics. So what we want to do then is to balance a. . . turning within with reaching out a. . . and really building a bridge between the two and that's the reason for these wazifa 'Ya Batin' 'Ya Qahr' and so its important for people to ka knowledge (acknowledge?) even in just in the realm of their thoughts. There are thoughts that they have difficulty in expressing and if they do express them it would be inadequate anyway so there's nothing to feel inadequate about. There's no doubt about that, but a. . . there's a great secret in esoteric a. . .the esoteric tradition that is. a. . . Well let's say it's illustrated at best by the the crucifixion of Al Hallaj, but a. . . he was crucified a. . . for having actually a. . . he was accused by his closest friend, if you believe, of having revealed his secret of his love relationship with God and in that sense one could say that a. . . the reason why one is wary of speaking one's truth let's say is that maybe one was derided at school or one has attempted some times to open one's heart to someone and one realizes that they didn't get what one was trying to say and a. . . ( ) a sense of isolation in one's real being but a. . . the experience of Al Hallaj was like there are people out there who need to know this secret because that secret is important for them and so who reveals the secret of God gets crucified. That's what happened to Christ. So it's something that you accept. That's what my sister did during the second world war. She was beaten to death in a concentration camp and her last words were (viva la liberte?). That's what she gave her life for what she believes in. So there's something very deep here and a. . .perhaps you know that a. . .there was a tremendous a. . . flowering of Sufism in Egypt in the 14th century in the in the Jewish communities and a. . . so it's a. . . Jewish Sufism let's say and a. . . the, the . . ('bada) for example was a son of ( ) was a Sufi, was initiated in the Sufi Order, and a. . . and what was being said then that a you find amongst the Dervishes the old tradition of the of the prophets of the desert (quiet chuckle) those who have left the cities to live in the desert (uhmmm) but still living amongst the Sufis but a. . . to continue what I was going to say the Kabala the Kabalists are hard pressed to reveal the secret of their realization it was kept very secret and the Sufis a. . . speak it out and it's the same secret it's just a. . . said in different words. So if you want to learn about the Kabbala, study Sufism. (chuckle) And anyway so it is we're talking about a. . . an inner journey . . . an inner journey a. . . which means that one is moving from one state of realization to the next. They call it Makum. One station to the next and a one does not always realize one's self what one is realizing and if one expresses it in words one a. . . one distorts it one a. . . is a traitor to one's deeper being, and one feels that one is not doing justice to one's inner being. So that's Batin and one represents it as a. . . the Mother of the world who is veiled and a. . . as we did so this morning. If you are veiled then you, you start turning within and you discover the world within. And that's where Murshid said was consciousness meets an obstacle from without and then it turns within. 'n the other hand, as I said, out of love one wants to share what one is revealed whatever the cost and therefore a. . . Zahir is really a message for the introverted to reach out, out of Love even though they expect not to be understood. So Zahir is what it . . . of course the word Zahir a. . . means a. . .Radiance the real word is the Epiphany which is a. . . the manifestation of light and of course for the Sufis the whole universe is the manifestation of light and that a. . . fact is true with the big bang was an outbreak of light but this manifestation is gradual and it's not just light of course it's a. . . meaningfulness and well a bounty and as one is being revealed now a. . . we it's good to be very clear a. . . sometimes these words will give you insight into a. . . meaningfulness that your mind is grappling with the difference between Zahir and Mawjud. Now there is a doctrine behind that, that you have to be very clear about. The difference between the orthodoxy of Islam and then Sufism the esotericism. Well I'll illustrate it. I was giving a talk and (humm), I forget now where it was - it doesn't matter, and a. . . there was a Muslim chap there and a. . .who was also Sufi and afterwards he said to me, '. . . the learned lecture spoke very well about the tenants of Sufism BUT . . .'(suppressed laughter) and that but was that a. . . God reveals himself but does not become a reality in existence (laughter) and that's the rub. That's THE critical point. Fortunately I knew my Islam and I was able to answer by saying that there's such a wazifa as Ya Mawjud, which means God having become actualized. But if you don't know it then you are stuck. Then you ( ? ) and that's also the reason why one says La illa ha the Muslim La illa ha 'ilallah with an 'H' at the end the Sufis add a 'U' to the 'H' because God becomes a reality as man and the reason for that is purely dogmatic. It's a. . . because a. . . a. . . Islam, and that's also true of a. . . Judaism of course, a. . . cannot accept that God should become man. You know a. . .the whole myth of Christianity and yet that is the ultimate truth. (chuckle) a. . .And, in fact, I was saying of the Sufis why do you look for God up there? He is here. So a. . . well it's very simple. I mean it comes out of the fact that a. . . a. . . the Prophet Mohammed a. . . had a. . . rabbi as a tutor (school) and a. . .lived at a time when there were terrible orgies of all kinds amongst the tribes and vendettas and they worshipped, they were fighting about who is the good God and who is the bad God. You know the good guys and the bad guys and a. . . he was very impressed by the religion of the one God, the religion of Abraham. And that comes right through in the Koran and so these a. . . Gods were represented as idols and a. . . so there were many of them so the only way to affirm the unity was to destroy those idols. And, of course, destroying the idols doesn't do it. Of course it's really the idol in your mind. And a. . . so the problem was idolizing a human being, because one ascribes divinity to that being. But remember that what Christ said, is a. . . "Be ye perfect as your Father. . ." so he said that we all carry within us the Divine Inheritance. (inaudible) I'm very tempted to tell you a story. a. . .It's a wonderful story. It's a story of, perhaps you've already heard it before, a. . . the son of (Zeus Zios Zeus) (Juddah) right and the son's called (Zacharus) and a. . . when God evacuated his throne a. . . for a moment a. . . (Zacharus) sat on the throne and the Titans a. . . a. . . presented him with a mirror. It was a very interesting mirror that the speculative knowledge a. . . and he was so flabbergasted to dis. . . to recognize the features of his father his own face that a. . . he was kind of a. . . bewildered and a. . . the Titans took advantage of him that to catapult him in the Abyss and start to devour him and when Zeus came back he was so furious that he shattered the Titans with his a. . . thunderbolt and humans were born out of the cinders of the Titans who had devoured the son of Christ the son of God. (laughter) So you see the holy communion church and the whole thing is there. That means that we carry within us the Divine Inheritance and also the inheritance of those ghastly monsters that we call the Titans. (considerable subdued laughter by Pir) So that's a. . . the whole struggle of Sufism in Islam was to affirm the Divine Inheritance in one's being without saying, claiming to be the son of God. There's another story perhaps you know it. a. . . (chuckle) There's a time for telling stories. a. . . perhaps you know a. . . St. Francis a. . . left his .. his father was a very rich a. . . milliner who was making a. . . cloth selling cloth and a. . . fabric and his a. . . son left and a. . . was helping the poor and squandered some of the money of his father's to help the poor and a. . . started to build a temp. . a church or rebuild a church and his father got really very angry with him and a. . . arraigned him before the court and a. . . he said a. . . all of this my son has it, it belonged to me. The clothes he wears. He took off his clothes and he said a. . . he said, "You're not my father. I have another Father". Same words as Christ and a. . . as a (Sufi?) yes I have another Father. There's a word of St. (Anthony?) which says a. . . it's very striking but of course it's would be really shocking for Islam it's saying "God became man so that man may become God". So two things that are unacceptable in Islam "God became man so that man may become God". And that's something one must never say, but a. . . if you look into the teaching of the Sufis then you'll realize that a. . .as Pir-o-Murshid says, 'it is in man that you'll find the fulfillment of the Divine Purpose'. So that is Mawjud as compared with Zahir. So Zahir is really revealing and a. . . if a. . . it a. . . you really have to tie it up with these words, which are very fundamental in Sufism. They have their origin in the Koran. (inaudible) It is a. . . the words in the Koran are a. . . "God shows his signs" so what you see is what they call 'ayat' you see the signs. As I say, 'You haven't seen the bear, you've seen the (paw?) marks of the bear'. a. . . What is revealed is the signs. It's signals that give some sense of what it is being revealed and that is the meaning of that which is transpired behind that which appears. Well actually through that which appears and so we have this wonderful saying of ( ) Atar who says "Glory to the one who conceals himself by the same avail that reveals him and is reveals him by the same veil that conceals him". There you have Batin/Zahir the two together. And a. . .,of course, he was referring to the veil of the Muslim lady that a covers her face but at the same time espouses the contours of the face. So it gives some indication of, of the traits of the face and so the same veil that reveals, that conceals also reveals and the same veil that reveals also conceals. So that's a. . . a very wonderful thought because then you feel that you could never really reveal the secret of your heart but still something gets conveyed beyond the words by that kind of deep communion between beings that take place. Like, for example, you could sit in a room talking to a person and really it's not your words that are important but there's some sense of resonance between you. You are communicating at the soul level. So that's Batin/Zahir. So you see how very significant it is and I would say basically to start with that a. . . practice a. . . It has all kinds of implications a. . . because say one is making an external journey and although one doesn't quiet know what happens at moments. When there's a real break through it's called an initiation and all of a sudden one sees things differently and one is a different person and then it's necessary for other people to know that one is another different person especially the person who is closest to you. So a. . . generally people who are very close don't communicate a. . . like ships passing in the night. So a. . . the secret of relationship is of course to be able to communicate and a. . . be honest and up front and say how you feel a. . . irrespective of the way that a. . ., no matter how the other person reacts. That's your truth. So that's it. And a. . . in the end that's a. . . a person feels that one is under estimating their strength from wants to spare them one's truth. So you have to say, "Yes I've gone through a change in myself. I'm not the same person you married. I'm changed. I'm different so we'll have to woo each other all over again, because we are two different people now. But then you have to know who I am because otherwise we don't know each other. So then a. . . can be a very painful encounter but a. . . a. . . some beauty and truth comes out of it. So that's breaking the barrier between Batin and Zahir. the truth barrier.(brief soft laughter) (pause) So one says the difference between being an overt and being an invert, inverted person - and you know that the secret of psycho-therapy is, of course, to be able to speak with a person who is inverted and help them become overt. Help them relate and open up the lines of communication. otherwise the person turns in a circle, in a vicious circle in their own mind. Now a. . . many of the . . . most of the practices that we've have done a. . . could very well be a. . ., how can I say a. . ., be a . . . indexed by some of the wazifa., wazaif a. . . patterning. You noticed we started by expanding our consciousness and eventually our sense of identity and a. . . perhaps even our emotions become more and more encompassing. The, it started by expanding our glance or the outreach of our consciousness. For example, looking into the starry sky those are practices that help one eschew being encapsulated in one's psyche and therefore extremely helpful for people who are tend to be too introverted, including oneself naturally a. . . The let's say the danger of it maybe that it's true there is a hazard in it and that's a. . . that one looses one's self consciousness, one's consciousness the center one has got right out there and has lost site of the center. And a. . . for psychotherapists that is a very dangerous, because a. . . then one gets spaced out one needs to have a strong center. a. . . And what is more it is very possible that one seeks to, seeks as an escape from one's self a. . . if one has self hate or a. . . and a. . . maybe one is hoping to extinguish oneself and as I said yesterday, 'I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you can't get rid of yourself anyway. So don't try. (pause) So the word for that is Basit. a. . . Expansion (pause), which is the opposite of (Qabi?), which is contraction or conversion a. . . know there's some correspondent with the manic-depressive expansion manic and the depressive. Mystics sometimes alternate between these two conditions (uhumm), until they get to balance. And a. . . (pause), sometimes I say for example, when you are breathing for example, you expand and contract or then a. . . sometimes I say you radiate or you converge. You radiate the light of your aura. You converge the light of the universe. So those are two centrifugal forces, centipedial forces. They are two things. We come across a lot in our meditations now it's true that if you sitting in a cave in the Himalayas and a. . . you have a you sit outside the cave and go on watches wonderful panorama and then you have this wonderful sense of expansion which is quite euphoric and it's a nice change from being enclosed in our little apartments and rooms and offices but a. . . as I say the danger is that one does loose the sense of oneself which I would say Pir Murshid would promote rather than Basit. He never gave Basit anyway it's a. . .and consequently there is another wazifa, Wazi. And it means to encompass, like encompass wider and wider a. . . areas a. . . It gives you a sense of 'that is my domain, that is the area for which I am responsible'. So the greater you are the greater the outreach of your being. That's Wazi. So it's not like loosing yourself at the jagged ends in Basit but some sense of containment. Although that containment is not definite. It's like more like a membrane that there's some some transparency that goes beyond the membrane and a. . . so the a. . . Pir-o-Murshid's advice is to (recondite?) your domain every morning in your meditation. Like you ask yourself, 'what are the things that I'm responsible for or the people for whom I assume a responsibility or the situations that need my care and my attention and so on'. So I don't know whether you, you do this. I guess older one looses one's memory so I make a list of things to do on my computer my home work and a. . . it gets enormous of course and so it's like that's the main thing and of course the more responsibility one takes the more is cast upon one's shoulders. So the more one's homework. So that's a very good concept a. . . the area of which I have responsibility because that makes you into a responsible person. So that's Ya Wazi and a. . . now we came across this problem that I already mentioned and I think that it has been brought up also a. . . a. . . outside myself a. . . I'll mention it again. I already mentioned it but I want to draw your attention to it. I said, for example: a little .boy at school a. . . or it can be your little boy ( inaudible ) infatuated by a little girl and a. . . she dropped him and is interested in another boy and the little boy comes to you crying and saying ( um ) so what do you do? Do you say a. . ."pull yourself together and become a man" or do you embrace the child and say "here, yes, I know how you feel. I've felt that way myself and I know how you feel and a. . . well life is not easy and so on and so forth. So you console the child. So what do you do? Do you do one or the other? I belong to an ancestry when, when a boy is 12 or 13 is put on a horse and they shoot a cannon and if the horse jumps and if he is able to hold on he's a man and if he doesn't he, he a. . . doesn't make it in life. It's hard. It's tough, but a. . . that's what they call survival of the fittest. (laughter) So the basic law now in our civilized world. We don't like that, but a. . . we have to be careful of becoming too soft also. So where's the measure between mastery and a. . . what shall we say compassion? And is it one or the other or how can you combine them? I'm not giving you the answer. I don't think I have all the answers. a. . . I want you to just work it out in your own mind, souls. I would like to say that one has to start with embracing the child and then, in these protected circumstances, when child feels secure then remind him that he is going to face far greater hardships in his life than that little tussle in his childhood. And a. . . so a. . . he has got to prepare himself for a very tough battle in life. That's what my Father did to me. He said, a. . . because I was very mercurial as a child - being a Gemini and a. . . my father said, "It takes a heavy ship to cross the ocean". Now he didn't think that I would ever cross the ocean to America perhaps, but it takes a heavy ship. And for me a heavy ship is not desirable at all, (laughter) hang gliding. (all laughter) So that . . . I see some connection with mastery. a. . . a. . . One doesn't like mastery because well one doesn't like a. . . people who are pressing one with their will and one doesn't want to do the same and also as I said a. . . nature has a way of self-organizing itself. If you don't interfere and so you're not using all the faculties within you if your trying to take control or there's something to say to let things get into their stride but then alter the course by your free will because there must be some place for free will in life. So, as Pir-o-Murshid said, 'It's like a yachtsperson who uses the wind a. . .by giving it direction by manipulating the sails'. So the will comes in, I suppose, as a second step and also it's not the personal will. It's really the way that the Divine will is customized in each one of us in a very special way. So if you that would be a. . . the meaning of the word Ya Wali mastery. But a. . . if you know a. . . Ya Wali is always a. . . always a. . balanced with Ya Hadi which is a. . . being receptive to one's guidance to avoid "hat one should become stubborn and pig headed. One is always listening, trying to be sensitive to one's guidance and that is of course what we mean by intuition. There . . . that means of course (was all ? )turning within. There's a word of the Pir-o-Murshid of Hazrat Inayat Khan who said, "a. . . intuition is a. . . the ability to get in touch with the sensitivity of your own spirit because one is reflecting that which one experiences outside one is reflecting that inside'. a. . .For example, well I've told that story too many times, but a. . . let's say that a. . . someone is lying to you but a. . . looks at you with open eyes right in your face and you'd never suspect that, that person lying to you. Lovely person, but somehow. So you don't a. . .you know that person is lying but somehow if an a. . . in your deeper feeling you feel dishonest that's intuition. A kind of resonance. Something in you resonates with something in the other person. So that's a way to sense a. . . ones intuition, one's guidance by referring to intuition. The trouble with intuition is, of course, that a. . . there's wishful thinking, (pause) fantasy. The difference between imagination and fantasy, imagination is like customizing the condition of the universe in a form a. . . where as fantasy would be alienating oneself from the from the overall a. . . a. . . orderliness of the universe. Like, as I said yesterday, like a tumor for example that alienated itself from the DNA of the body not something like that. So fantasy is a. . . you see it in the art and you see it in music randomness. Let's say you know it's a famous artist so it's worth ten thousand dollars, but it's just a few little brushes of paint here and there and a. . . but you've got that name you know and so a. . . where as a. . . you can't change one note in most of the music of Bach without noticing there is something wrong a. . . see that's the difference between imagination and fantasy? So if you are very a. . . observant of a (pause) END OF SIDE 'NE OF TAPE 12 (inaudible) your intuition is reliable if you, you tend to fantasize. That is to a. . . get out of touch with the reality behind your being. Then if you are on your own let's say then a. . . the danger is that a. . .you are fantasizing and a so a lot of people a. . . a. . . induce a. . . are deluding themselves by a. . . saying "God told me to do this and that God told me to kill this person" or whatever you know. It's very dangerous. So that's why it's really very important to balance Ya Wali with Ya Hadi. But there's another sense of the word Wali and that's so interesting, it's something in the Arabic language a. . . gosh I hope I'm - it's my own name you see, but I had some . . . so a. . . it depends on whether you have the accent on the first "a" or the second "i" or the "a" or the "i" and either it means mastery or it means friendship that combine, that balance or combination or whatever reconciliation between mastery and friendship is something really extraordinary. (pause) So the (Mosolic?) person ideally is not imposing his or her will upon you, but sees a. . . him/herself as your friend and helps you then to exercise mastery in your own life. That is something that comes through in Sufism I would say. Maybe I'm being biased. I would say it comes through amongst the Sufis a.. . . a. . . sense of a. . . friendship as Pir-o-Murshid says, "a friendship on the spiritual path is the most wonderful friendship that there is in the world. Sharing the same, the same precious bread at the same table whereas of course in the traditional Hindu tradition for example you have the definite the clift. . . the cleft between teacher disciple a. . . which could if blown to it's extreme lead to idolatry. . . The teacher as a. . . were God or semi-God or an incarnation of a God or so on that's the whole reason for the, in Islam, for the destruction of the idol and the very concerned about saying that God cannot have a son and idolatry that's the breaking of the idols as Jellaladin Rumi says a. . . "The Pir is the destroyer of the idol that people might make of him or her and then becomes friendship". Quite different from the concept of the Swami as a superman or superhuman so that's the reason why the word Wali is two fold you see. (pause) Now how would this apply like a think of a. . . situation in your life when you have a boss who is a. . . bullying you and putting you down. And a. . . is it possible to bring about any difference? a. . . Sometimes I say, of course, that a. . . you see they will take advantage of your weakness so a. . . to see how far they can go you see and a. . . that's the nature of the ego. So a. . if they know a. . . so far and no farther, then a. . you know as I say if you if you were Abraham, then your boss wouldn't bully you. (laughter) So it is true that we need to develop an inner power. So a. . . perhaps not for ourselves but in order to affirm the Divine sovereignty on the earth. That we are the vice-regents of God and as such we are pledged by the very fact of our birth to uphold the orderliness against chaos a. . . against a. . . disorder/ anarchy/disorder and so in a certain sense life is a battle. (inaudible) it's a battle and we don't like to be aggressive and so on but somehow we're involved in battle whether we like it or not or then it's a cop-out and then we can say well a. . . we'll leave it to others. Now there's the a.. . .elementary form of the battle killing and that's not an answer and then there's the, the legends of a. . . Parcival Parci-val Parci means purity val/Wali master mastery of purity Parcival the legends come from Iran actually during the crusades and the crusaders a. . . the Christian Crusaders returned by the a. . . they passed through the ( ? ) of ( ? )the second of (H???) a. . . was the King of a. . . German king of Italy who incidentally was a great Falconer and a very wonderful being and a so that's how those legends were carried through to the south of France and a. . . question of ( ) wrote the Parcival legends. So the a. . . the lance of Parcival was the lance of Light in other words, it's the power of truth because the enemy always works under cover of darkness. Now there's a whole philosophy about darkness and light. St. John of the Cross "The Dark Night of the Soul" a. . . a. . . perhaps you know that St. John of the Cross was a. . . imprisoned and he was managed to escape by making a cord out of his a rope out of his sheets and hoisting himself down from the window. When he said, "I was able to free myself by the protection of the night" and so in the same way it is the ones realization of the inadequacy of one's understanding that is going to liberate oneself from one's prison. (pauses) But then this dark night was leading into the bright flame of love. So it was leading in to the light of the dawn and there was always that sense of the dawn. . . somewhere at the edge of the horizon. (pause) So that will give you some sense of the importance of the word Ya Nur, light, but we have to be very clear about what exactly it means. There are two words actually Ya Nur and Ya Manawr. Manawr is the lamp and Nur is the Light and a. . . as often referred to a. . . in the Koran ( ? ) the two the light upon the light. You see. So it's what the Sufis call the light that sees and the light that is seen and so your aura is the light that can be seen but think of your glance as the light that sees and so Nur represents the light that light that sees and Manawr is the light that can be seen. There is this concept that a. . . instead of a. . . functioning from your consciousness which is receptive to experience you are casting the light of intelligence upon things that light up things that a. . . would not be known until you lit them up. You cannot perceive them or you have to light them up yourself that's the meaning of Aladdin's lamp. a. . . You remember I quoted the Koran a. . . "there, there is no thing in the world that does not have it's (tenuity) (actually the word here is it's treasuries no it's (tenuities)) in the divine treasury". Yes, so correspondence, so Aladdin more thrusting the light of intelligence upon the treasures. That's the meaning of Ya Nur. (hmmm) Now Manawr a. . . I often think that when you're working with the (hmmm) a. . . with the aura that's a. . . the lamp and then at a certain point I say, 'now identify with your luminous intelligence' and that's Nur. Manawr, a. . . I often think that a. . . when working with a. . . with the aura that's the lamp and then at a certain point I say ". . . now identify with your (illuminessence?) intelligence, that's Nur. The I often think of an illustration of this a. . . I don't know whether you've ever seen that a picture of Christ a. . . his heart is a.. . . is a lamp and he is walking he's protecting this lamp from the storm from the wind with his hands. Now that's a wonderful thought that you may have when meditating on light and that a. . . that light needs to be protected and it radiates from the heart (pause) but a. . . if you look at that picture well then you see that it's not just light a. . . reaching from the heart. There's also light from the third eye and that is the lance of light (short pause). So it's the power of confronting someone with the truth. (pause) That's the ultimate battle, (hmmm) which is what we're looking for in our, in our course. Justice confronting a person with the light of truth. So we see the importance of Ya Nur and of a. . . this whole concept that you find in Sufism of the glance a. . . the glance a. . . there's a. . . you remember there was a, a. . . thing in the Koran that I quoted a. . ."I have emminated towards you a power of love and have fashioned you by the a. . . by the light of my glance. (short pause) Now this is something I would advise you to do this a. . . it's a very simple practice and it's really very pleasant, require much sophistication. Every morning you just a. . . just concentrate on the light in your eyes. It's very simple, just concentrate on the light in your eyes. (short pause) There's a sense of clearing the mist, the ambiguity a. . . that comes from a. . . well dishonesty. The glance becomes very a. . . straight like a. . . like a searchlight. (pause) I know because a. . . once when I was in the Himalayas, Rishikesh, there was a very famous swami, at the time, and a lot of Americans and foreigners going to that ashram and next to them there was a ashram. A very old man unknown, nobody went to him, but of course, I went to him and a. . . he never spoke. He was in silence. He never spoke. All that one did was to sit there and look into his eyes and I never thought I would do it, I could do that (inaudible), but those eyes were so pure so absolutely devoid of any kind of person. It was just like your going to heaven. I remember the same in a. . . when the mureeds of my father used to go to a silence, silent meditation of the evening of Saturday evening. We used to sit in the hall and he would sit behind the screen he had been sitting meditating on the roof of Fazl Manzil for the whole day, since 5 o'clock in the morning. I was in a state of samadhi and then he had to have two people to escort him on both sides, holding his arms to get him him to the hall and then a. . . a. . . people would come and sit there for just two minutes and then leave and another person would come and sit there. And all he did was to open his eyes again and to close his eyes. To close his eyes was a sign that one had to leave a. . . a German leader then at the time said to me many years later "It was just like looking into heaven". So that's what Nur is about. (pause) So working with the aura is one thing, but this is of course much more important. (pause) And that is the meaning of a light upon a light. And this morning, I spoke about the beam upon the hologram of light, laser beam upon the hologram of light, something like that. (short pause) Now a. . . a. . . the notion of Nur and Manawr is always somehow associated with a. . . with a. . . a. . .realization, awakening. That's why one says, one says awakening, one says illumination. Those two words are very close. Don't mean exactly the same thing, but are very close. What does that actually mean? (pause) I think it is because, I think the very notion of that we ascribe to light that meaning of light a. . . calls upon a. . . the thought of making things known because when they light it up it gets known. So somehow some relationship between illumination and awakening or realization and so simply working with light in you own with your aura or glance or whatever it's all very brief kind of awaken your realization (pause) and that's why we often associate Ya Nur with Ya Alim but a. . . Alim, 'Alim, apostrophe a. . . you see the trouble is that these words often are given different meanings in Arabic in (inaudible) by the Sufis, by different Sufis a. . . that's why it's so difficult to a. . . make a real translation of the names of God (Asma? Alahid?) Divine Names a. . . because you have this word Habir and Habir means to be aware and so what is the difference of accent between being aware and . . . I think the word Alim could be translated by wisdom 'l' ,'l' wisdom and if you remember what Pir-o-Murshid said wisdom is the result of the extrapolation between the a. . . between the knowledge of the heavens and the knowledge of the earth. Those two forms of knowledge, which I've already described yesterday. a. . . (Jabarut) the kind of inborn knowledge that we have and then (inaudible) the knowledge that we acquire in our experience of life. So wisdom would be like the result of the interfacing between those two or the interrelation between these two, as Habir is just being very aware. So these are the meanings that we, that I read into those words how you use them is, is important and of course you could use both words Ya Habir and Ya Alim and a. . . experience what their meanings, what meaning is revealed to you in your meditation rather than figuring this out intellectually with your mind but a. . . Habir is a very interesting word. a. . . a. . . Again I'll tell you a story and demonstrate it. a. . . It was in New York (inaudible) and I was being introduced by a. . . Dr. Stephen (inaudible) to a psychotherapist and I couldn't believe the eyes of that therapist a. . . psychotherapist. He was looking at me (Pir demonstrates followed by laughter). Well that's how my eagle looks. So I recognize that look (laughter) and that's why I like eagles (laughter). So that's an illustration of Habir. Just being very aware and I keep on reminding you during your retreat to be very aware because otherwise you tend to go to sleep. So that would be the condition of awakening. The only trouble is that a. . . there is this concept . . . well I don't want to enter into a controversy, because I'm probably ignorant of Zen, but a. . . there's this accent on the here and now and for me what is important is the way that everywhere and always actualizes itself in the here and now. Just the here and now seems to be a, a. . . a. . . cross section of reality. But maybe I'm not understanding Zen, of course. (pause) And then a. . . I don't know whether you're clear about a. . . the difference between the moment and the instant and the eternal the external dimension? There's a difference, because a. . . what we understand by the moment, the present when we say the present we mean the moment. Where now, of course, we're, we're not clear what it means of course but a. . . there's some kind of overlap between the past and the future like a. . . you a. . . while your listening to music the sound that you heard before continues to resonate in your ears while you're listening to the next sound. There's an overlap and even you could even for (inaudible) what would be the next note but the instant of time is like an apostrophe that breaks the continuity. I've said that before in the course of this retreat. There's such a thing in music a. . . an apostrophe in music, the deadbeat in a. . . particularly in Indian music. The ability to stop freeze a. . . irrespective of the duration. It has no duration, has no more meaning than, time has stopped. And it is then that a new dispensation can arise in us and that is how one touches upon the void (sonowtu?) in Buddhism out of which something new emerges. In a. . . Sufism it's called (Al Amad?) the void (ha lah al amad?) (pause) and then eternity. So now we have a. . . a practice that opened up a lot of new perspectives to me that I didn't a. . . (adjmir) of India on retreat a. . . Ya Qaddum, Ya Qadr, Ya Qayyum are three Qs it's not a 'k' it's a 'q' and so it's a sense of the whole evolutionary advance like "I am" the continuation of the whole past it continues to live in me and then there's that passing over that threshold of the present into the future and the future instead of being let's say at the end of the horizontal line it's like an (essestauldt?) which is moving upwards while moving forward and that's a mini Qayyum which means resurrection so ans. . . so the whole idea is to continue to live that only for having been transmuted or transfigured transformed resurrected which is a very usual practice for those who are afraid of a. . . death kind of a being able to turn a. . .the tables on transiency by affirming one's eternity but anyway to come back to this notion of a. . . the here and now a. . . I think I'll (pause) the words of a poet, an American poet, I'm just I know the name I've just forgotten it again (Preston. . .) anyway he said these remarkable words a. . .he's an American poet he said a. . . "I wish for nothing less than the impossible possibility" infinity in a finite fact and eternity in a temporal act that's what I mean by the here and now by the everywhere and always in the here and now It was William Blake who always said a. . . what was it he said "Eternity in a grain of sand" or something like that but of course a. . . this is a way it goes much farther so that is to think of yourself as being at that point of juncture where the whole universe meets instead of just imagining that point of juncture there's no (inaudible) to that point of juncture perhaps you've noticed a. . . if you've read (Ta ? de Charlan ) the (F ? ) of man perhaps you noticed that he said "It is as if threads were converging of all the (azamuth) of the universe a. . . to converge as your person and at first nothing could have allowed us to guess that you were the person who was aimed at. (chuckle) So that's a kind of thought that a. . . that blows your mind and that teaches and a. . . helps you to get over the one thing that stands in the way of your meditation which is asking yourself "What am I doing here?" there are two basic mistakes in it one is 'I' and the other is "here" and one could even add what am I doing here now? (laughter) (pause) Well I was trying to see how the wazifas can help us in our problems, but I got very philosophical. a. . . It would be a. . . I don't know how a psychotherapist could use this a. . . in helping there patients but then that's their job to see how it can be done, but a. . . I do think that if psychotherapists, as they are beginning to do now, would incorporate this dimension into their skills, then I think that psychotherapist will be the guru's of the future. If they include the psychological, the Divine perspective. otherwise they're just bringing you into your little middle range rather puny self a. . . self-image and making you feel sorry for yourself for all the terrible abuse you've suffered in your life and a. . . you feel that you've been damaged forever and you're really ill and a. . . confirms you in your illness and that's very dangerous. a. . . Well, I admire your patience. a. . . I would have walked out a long time ago. (laughter) (then more laughter) ( and the transcriber was still laughing after taped audience had quit). a. . . Yes a. . . I think I gave you the signal, but a. . . I could tell you a story, another story. a. . . When I was younger, of course, I used to be very a. . ., very a. . . sensitive, very unsure of myself. I still am now. You wouldn't think so, but a. . . (he laughs) a. . . feed off the lime light and a. . . a. . . someday, well it's happened all the time, because people walk out of my lectures, especially in the public, but in those days, of course, a. . . well there was a man who walked out and I noticed he walked out just at a time when what I was saying was rather boring. (laughter) So . . but a. . . then many years later I gave a lecture again in Los Angeles and he came up to me and said a. . . "Pir Vilayat a. . . I want to apologize. I'm the man who walked out (inaudible) of your lecture three years ago" and he said, a. . . "you see I had a hunch that my wife was committing suicide and when I got there she was indeed. She had a, was a. . ., had the gas pipe in her nose. . ", and so whenever people walk out on my lecture I think, '. . .their wife must be committing suicide. . .'. (laughter by all ) So, so as you see laughter is a part of the retreat process. You know, the monks and nuns force themselves to laugh at break a. . . time and during their daily routine, but a. . . here a. . . where it's better not to force oneself but just to laugh because it's really funny. So, I think we'll end on this now. Don't try so a. . . it's not 10:20 (pause) well a. . . I know something a. . . you're supposed to break your silence at twelve a. . . why not break your silence now? (laughter) No time like the present. a. . . So a. . ., you know I'm rather deaf. So it's difficult to converse with me, but a. . . still let's open it up for a free for all. So you can perhaps shoot questions at me, if you want. a. . . I'm not very good at answering, but still a. . . a. . . I will try. It's not my style generally because I, I think is that one find oneself caught up in one's mind. I try to get out of it by saying jokes a. . . (laughter) END OF SIDE TW' TAPE 12 AUG 04, 1995 Tape 02 Abode Leaders Retreat Tape 2 August 4, 1995 In the previous session we have been trying to correct our assessment of our problems mainly and also self image by two things. One was extending our consciousness in a cosmic dimension stage by stage getting into the consciousness of people. And then looking from things from a divine point of view instead of a personal point of view. Now in this next step now we are going to try to consider the way which we ingest, the way that we digest the Universe. We are continually being enriched by the impressions of the environment. And probably that's why most people find it very difficult to meditate, because as soon as they start sitting in silence without being active, then all kinds of random thoughts start invading their mind. And one tries to master it with one's will. But there is no way. One is fighting a loosing battle. That's not the best way of doing it. Those thoughts are the way that the psyche is digesting the impressions of the environment. Because as you know we are continually enriching ourselves by the environment. But we have to make some selection. From the Sufi point of view it is God who is enriching Him/Herself by projecting His/Her being into existence and the fragmentation of this being and the interface between those beings, those fragments of Him/Herself. So that if you look at it from that point of view, that will help you from being confined to your personal vantage point which is a step leading towards illumination, realization, awakening. But as you see, one, unless one knows how to deal with these random thoughts one gets submerged altogether and it's very discouraging. One feels one can't meditate. So the way to do it is of course to, two things. One is to shift into an inner state which contrasts with the outer state and protect oneself from the impressions of the outer world. Let's put it a little more clearly. The first thing to do consists in surrounding oneself with a zone of silence. You realize how the environment is a pull upon your attention. And now we are trying to eschew that compulsion exercised by the environment by placing a buffer between the challenge of the environment and ourselves. And that buffer is a zone of silence. So I find that the best way of doing it for example after coming back after a day of stressful challenges in life, and then sitting back and trying to relax, and then realizing that one cannot relax because the thoughts, not just the thoughts, but the emotional upheavals connected with the thoughts. I find that the best way to deal with this, or at least what's helpful is to try and imagine a contemplative, a hermit, sitting in nature having found some kind of solace away from the world. It's the opposite attunement to the hustle bustle of every day life. And we all have a need for that. It's difficult to find it. That's where trying to get into the consciousness of an ascetic, I find very helpful. And of course you know that the clue to this is indifference and detachment which is the way of the ascetic of course, and is not the way of the Sufis. But still Pir 'Murshid does refer to it sometimes. When he says that the whole of life is built upon interest and by achieving something you gain more power, then you can achieve something more. He said the power of detachment is even greater because your objective for your achievement does limit your power. And if you are totally detached, that is totally free from success or failure of whatever you are undertaking then your power is infinite. And of course there is not doubt that our dependence upon circumstances, upon people emotional dependence, upon artificial things, like drugs of course, need I say cigarettes, just watching TV. Those things that we are accustomed to in our lives. Those are all addictions, different degrees of addiction of course. But there is not doubt that addiction takes away one's freedom. It's always at the cost of one's freedom. Now of course the Hindu way the way of the Yogi is to cut the relations with the environment and with people of course. The word of Murshid is Loosen the ties. Let there be as Callet de Prins says a fresh air, a fresh breeze in our relationships with propel. There is of course the story of the Gordian Knot that there was a legend that anyone who was able to untie, to unravel this knot would conquer the world, and Alexander tried to do it but he got impatient and cut it. And therefore he never conquered the world. So it's unraveling rather than cutting. So that we find a balance between involvement and freedom. These, there are two wasifas here, Wahab - involvement and Wajid - freedom, yes freedom and detachment, indifference. So anyway what I'm saying is detachment has a role to play. Because if you want to reach into another perspective to the one you're caught into, you have to let go of the one you're caught into. otherwise you won't be able to access another perspective. So letting go. There's always two things. One is enthusiasm for the next perspective, then letting go in detachment or indifference with regard to the perspective in which one is caught. So the consequence of that is that one finds that non emotion, called vairagya by the yogis gives one a kind of perspective whereby one can look at conditions in the physical world in the circumstantial world with a certain distance and perspective one can see instead of being caught right into it, being bogged into it. So you could say it is looking at things backstage. Of course that's the meaning of Batin as compared with Zahir. So first of all one surrounds oneself with a zone of silence. And the word for that is Ya salam, means peace. And as you know peace is something that you can get by letting go, letting go your grip. You exhale, relax as you exhale. And this is where of course you let the Universe self organize itself instead of interfering with your will. The next thing to do is to place sentinels at the doors of perception is the word of Buddha. I would say, you see, unless one protects oneself against disruptive perseptions, one's psyche becomes very badly disturbed, over stressed and disturbed. One looses one's self esteem and so on so forth. One gets lost in life. So we need to build a defense mechanism, and I would say lines of defense. Not just at the doors of perception, not accessing perceptions by rejecting them right at the start when there at the threshold of one's consciousness, one's outreach. But I would say sentinels also in one's psyche, so you could consider the psyche to have an external shell and an internal core or something in between the two, so that the outer aspect of your psyche dovetails with the environment. So there's not much selection there. In the outer shell of ones psyche one is really subjected to the environment and that is a feature of our adaptation to the environment. But then as you turn within , as you breath within you find subtler and subtler, how can I say, shells, tiers of your psyche. And the word for that is Latif. Latif means subtle as compared with the grosser. So these are subtle tiers of your being, we're a many tiered being, need protection. So this happens as you inhale. The first, what we did in the first section was favored as we exhaled. This as we inhale. And the psyche is very much like the body, the body is provided with the immune system. So is the psyche. The immune system of the body is based upon me or not me. The body doesn't allow one to incorporate an organ that doesn't have the same DNA as one own organs. It rejects it. But there is a second immune system whereby one adapts oneself to the environment . And so the organ is accepted. Work with the first system first. That is you reject impressions that are out of sync with your being. Not out of contempt, but simply because they are difficult to digest. You are not quite up to being able to incorporate all these elements in your, so you make a selection. So as you see the immune system is based upon me or not me,that is a very strong sense of your uniqueness. Whereas what psychologists, phychotherapists deplore in spiritual groups is that one tends to lose one's personal idiosyncrasies, one's personality. You become cosmic. So you more cosmic as you exhale, but as you inhale, that is where you honor and affirm your uniqueness. And it is that which gives you a sense that this is me and this is not me. This is in keeping with me and this is not. And that's where you operate selectivity, your selectivity. And that settlement of you own idiosyncrasies, your own uniqueness, your own peculiarities is basically a scale of values. This is a practice of the Sufis called Muhasibi. And you can do it in a retreat. Ask yourself ,What are the things that I value most in life? And what are the things that I value less? And even what are the things that I really dislike, really despise? And you could really make a list. Priorities are lists of those values. Write them down and then ask yourself,Why am I doing what I'm doing in life? Am I trying to pursue those values that I esteem greatly, or am I just caught in the turmoil of life and have forgotten what was my original motivation? So that's the beauty of being able to turn within and to find yourself. Then you'll realize that one is normally playing a role in life. Because one is adapting oneself to the environment, one is required to adapt them self to the environment and therefore one is playing a role. And one is wearing a mask and one has forgotten who one is. As you turn within, you do not at that moment, while you're on retreat, have to adapt to the environment. Therefore you do not have to play a role. And consequently it's easier to discover who you really are. And that will help you with your self esteem. And now there is something that is even more concrete and works very powerful and that is to discover your celestial face behind your physical face or let's say the countenance rather than the features of your face. And the way to do it is to think that it is fashioned in the fabric of light. So think of your aura, identify with your aura. And so far we've been thinking of the aura as radiating light or picking up light from the environment, picking up light and so on. The aura has, it doesn't have contours, it doesn't have a profile, but it does have some kind of likeness with the human being and but as I say without contours. So if you can just feel, discover your identity in terms of a configuration. It's not a form. It's a configuration. It will strike you, This is me. And you'll never forget it. You're back in life again you can easily remember, I'm doing something that's not me. I know is me. So why do I do it? It's some kind of incongruity. So the wazifa that I would suggest here is Ya Halik, Ya Nur. Halik means creative, creative, to be creative. And Nur light of course. Or even Halik/Munawwir. A wonderful combination of practices is Ya Munawwir/ Ya Musawwir. Munawwir means the lamp and musawwir, you are molding, you're fashioning this light. So when I say you discover your own countenance, that countenance is dynamic. It's not static. It is continually being changed, changed according to your attunement and even to your wish. So as you see there are several wasifas we could use. Latif means subtle. You could have Latif / Munawwir and then you could have munawwir / musawwir. But it's very difficult for one to assess one's values if one is in one's ordinary attunement and figuring it out with one's mind. And that's the advantage of writing it down. For example whereas to really have a sense of what you value you have to be in a high state. Consequently what I would suggest is Ya Aliy a l i y which is God most high. That's a sense of loftiness. And it will give you a sense of priority in your values. And even there is a superlative which is muta'ali. Beyond the highest of the high because there is no limit of course. So it's to avoid thinking that there is some point that one can reach. Muta'ali is in infinite regress. And that will give a sense of well The word is which is used is badi which is incomparable. So there is no common measure between our qualities and those we ascribe to God, the perfect models of what are simply the exemplars. So it's very difficult with our limited mind to really make a catalog of the values because they are limited to the measure of our understanding. That's why it is good sometimes to feel well I have to just let go of my understanding of my assessment. We have wasifas of course for one's assessment. Ya Hasib, for example means the assessor. Or Ya Raffi. There is a difference between hasib and raffi. Hasib is like making an assessment of the value of a thing. What is the value of a cello, an assessment. And then so that takes into account our judgment. And that is fallible. And then you have the sense of a value that is inestimable, that you cannot assess. And therefore you cannot make a priority list of it. And so it is at the edge of your ability to assess. And that's the meaning of Ya Raffi. And this gives you access into Ya Badi which means like it's incomparable, it's beyond all that I could possibly imagine. Somehow it is this passion for the unattainable that Murshid talks about that gives us a sense of our values. And it is that kind, well it's not just assessment. It's that kind of attunement that will have the effect of repelling impressions of the environment that cannot, that one cannot incorporate in one's scale of values. That would be detrimental and that are detrimental. Some of them really just simply detrimental. The kind of mentality of a person who tortures other people, for example, well it's unacceptable. Hatred. Now as I said we do have a second, the trouble is if you do this you will become very judgmental. And rather unadapted to the world as a lot of ascetics are. For example in Mount Athos those ascetics would never be able to sit on the Champs Elyse. They are just too sensitive. They couldn't do it. Or work in a factory, impossible. That's what psychotherapists object to in spiritual groups, the spiritual bypass, not dealing with, making people unable to deal with the nitty gritty of life. And therefore we do have a second immune system which adapts itself to the environment. otherwise we would never be able to eat. But that is only possible if... So rather than just placing a sentinel at the doors of perception or the doors of you psyche to protect yourself, what you do is to transmute the impressions of the environment so that they can be digested. And sometimes there is something very valuable in a gross impression as long as it's transmuted. So the word, I find that the word latif is not only subtle, but also stands for transmutation. So there are several practices here. But for example Ya Maujud / Ya Latif - the outer world, the actuated world and then latif - transmuted as you ingest it. But you see this second immune system is the opposite of the first in that the first is defensive, protecting oneself. In the second one is loving. One is opening one's heart to people instead of protecting. And so the wasifas are Ya Wadud, which is love and Ya Rachman which is compassion. The power of love and also compassion of course. One is put off by it being misconstrued or by being manipulated. And so that restricts one's the power of love unless one is able to exalt in unconditional love. It's not impersonal but it is unconditional, that is one doesn't expect anything out of it. So it's giving instead of receiving. And of course it's the power that moves the Universe. The divine love. And I think that maybe the answer is to be in love with love. And one tries to direct, well to illustrate it, to actuate it in one's relationship with another person, but there is some constriction there, restriction. Where as being in love with love there's no limitation. All the contemplatives one says they are in love with God. Well be careful of the word, Murshid says be careful if you use the word God. You don't always realize what you're talking about is your concept of God. So be very careful. But it's easy to way,Well one is just in love with love. And that will just unleash ecstasy. And it is your ecstasy will not only give you a sense of values, as we already said, but also help you to love a person who is obnoxious, or who you resent for having let you down or hurt you and so on. It's a very powerful thing, it's the most powerful thing in the world. To love a person who is nice is just too easy. But to love a person who is really objectionable and keeps on being objectionable, that is very powerful. And it's a word of Pir o Murshid, his teaching to the representatives. It is he said, We are tested in our love. He doesn't say we are tested in our realization. He says, We are tested in our love. So you see how we have two different things. 'n the one hand being on the defensive, which is the way of the ascetic, and then of course the way of love which is the way of the Sufis. And there is a Sufi saying which is,Renounce the world, renounce yourself and then renounce renunciation out of love. So it starts by renouncing the world, one's attachment, one's dependence. And then one's self image, one's attachment to oneself. And then it ends by giving up renunciation out of love. And that doesn't mean slipping back into the common place point of view. That's what we think is awakening in life is slipping back. It's not slipping back. It's being able to see things from all points of view at the same time. So once more I'll leave you to work on this. So your problems, the theme of your meditation is your problems. But new perspectives new objectives new emotional attitudes and awakening something in you. Awakening as Pir o Murshid says, Awakening God in you. So those are the instructions for the next hour. 1 AUG 04, 1995 Tape 03 Leader's Retreat Abode 8/4/95 Tape 3 So let us start with the practices of light once more. So every time we can do it a little bit differently. So I think that the emotion is much more important than the visualization. Or let's say that the visualization is the consequence of the emotion. So the emotion is, I would call it the ecstasy of light. There is something about light that causes the heart to beat faster and exalts our soul. And to think that we are made of light ourselves. Our body is like a crystallization of light is something that certainly does boost one's self esteem. And as such one is really participating in the ocean of light, one is really part of the ocean of light in the Universe, the starry sky. And the thunder bespeaks of the lightening. Although we can't see it but it's all part of the show. I don't how it affects you. It does enhance my sense of mastery. (thunder - laughter) So sometimes we need a support for something inside us in the Universe. Actually what we are really doing is awakening. These are the words of Murshid of course, We're awakening God within. Remember his, there is three stages. The first one is a belief in God, well a conceptualization of God. And then a belief in God. That is in one's conceptualization. And then the experience of God. That's were mysticism starts. Really experiencing, but then one is experiencing is the ayat, the signs the clues. But they will conduct one to their origin. And then awakening God within. Awakening. And so what we're doing in our practices in our practices is exactly that. We are awakening various aspects of God in us simply by drawing attention to one aspect and then another. So the one that we're working with now is light. And you may be sure that the con sequence is that you would be radiating much more light than you would be ordinarily. So you remember one is, I would say one is absorbing the light of the stars. That's why it's wonderful to meditate at night time under the starry sky. And the extraordinary thought that one is actually radiating light that travels the speed of 186,000 miles a second and that is, well forms with the light of the Universe, a wave interference pattern. So this kind of exchange between the light of the Universe and the light that we emerge from within. It's quite extraordinary , matching those two forms of light. And so you could simply identify with your aura that is fluctuating, rather than thinking that your body is radiating light. And so you have this picture of your aura. You envision your aura. If you do, particularly if you concentrate on the spine and on the different chakras, you will have an impression of something absolutely magnificent, like you are really a temple of light. There's three pillars in the center reaching up into a kind of a corona, a crown at the top. And then light radiating allot from the heart center, and then reaching inward at the solar plexus, and then the two beams of the eyes, the glance, plus the third beam of the third eye. And all this together with being aware of the, it's not the profile, but still somehow one's aura does have to something, espouses to some extent the profile of the body. But it's dynamic. It's sparkling. It's changing all the time. Now you could also think of it as a vortex of life. There is this picture. And I often use it in retreat. That is Buddha is sitting in nature in the middle of a storm. And where he is everything is perfectly peaceful, where as turbulence all around. It's a wonderful picture that will help you also in your daily life. When you get back from your day's work and you want to meditate. You're surrounded with turbulence but somehow, as you probably know the center of a hurricane is a vacuum. (Long silence then sound of rain with interrupted speech) So you've got the image of Buddha now in the middle of the storm. The whole of nature is contributing towards our retreat just at the right moment. I hope you haven't left your sleeping bags out of your tents. If so it's too late anyway. So as I said our random thoughts evidence the fact that we are ingesting the Universe. That is we are not closed in. There's a word of the Prophet Mohammed. That says, God reveals Himself to you in your experience of the world. So do not cut out that experience. But interpret it, correct it, and transmute it. So we are not just contemplating the Universe but we are ingesting the Universe. And the wazifa for that is Ya Jami. Like the Jamiat means collecting. So your experiences are the means whereby you are collecting, flowers or fruit, you are collecting goodies from the Universe. But now you have to digest them. You have to make a selection. So the word, wazifa Ya Muquit, Muquit means sustenance. So you're collecting the sustenance of the Universe. There are two ways you could react., or three ways. One would be fear. Let's discount that. The second one would be anger. Well if you have some, then perhaps it's just as well to release it. But the best one is mastery. Let us just sit in silence and enjoy the storm. So I think the storm is past. If you don't resist it, but you go along with it. Then it will give you a lot of energy. Especially saying the zikre. So let us do the zikre of light first. That is building a temple of light. As you go into the circle you think of your aura as a temple of light, being a temple of light as you go into the circle. At the same time you are evacuating the center to have a space for the presence of God, to invite the presence of God. So and this presence of course is to be found of course. But somehow one is encouraging light, light from within, the all pervading light from within. So you can imagine that it is like the candles on the alter. And then there is light descending from above. But that's the light of intelligence, so it's not physical light unless you like to think of it is lightening. So here you have a wonderful representation, imaginary representation that is going to enhance the light of our being, light of our aura. And which will help you to have a sense of the sacred, protecting the sacred by the power of your aura from the profanity of the world. That's the purpose of the temple, is to provide a safe place for worship. That is to give expression to the nostalgia of one's soul. So as you do the circle then, you could do it without saying it aloud, so it's the fikr of the zikre. You know you do that as you exhale. You consciously build a kind of temple of light. And as a consequence since the light is extending outward, there is a kind of vacuum in the center. And when your head comes downward you, somehow your consciousness comes down to your solar plexus, which is the portal that leads into the vacuum and the emergence of the all pervading light from within. So you do that as you inhale. And while that light does radiate through the heart center, it also is transmuted as it moves up the spinal cord. And so you transfer your attention from the solar plexus, through the heart center, throat center, the third eye and crown center. And you continue to inhale. So your inhaling is divided in two, reaching into the solar plexus and then moving upward. So turning within and reaching upwards. And toward the end of the ascent you turn your eyeballs upwards. And therefore you are being receptive to the light of intelligence that you imagine descending down in the center of the, there is a skylight in the center of the temple, light from the heavens descends. And of course we have already seen, it meets the light the emerges from inside and there are two lights somehow congregated on the alter. And now as you hold your breath, that is where the light of pure intelligence descends upon the alter in your heart. Now if you are familiar with the names of the planes in Sufism. As you touch upon the plane of the solar plexus, that is the plane of arwha which means is the plural of ru which means, it really means the subtle body. And then you move, you turn your attention on your heart center. And that is where you'll feel you are being recurrently recreated again. As I already said, The whole Universe contributes toward your recurrent birth. And you can assist that birth by your creative imagination. One is touching upon the world of metaphor, that is collective conscious not collective unconscious. Then you have freedom to prioritize any aspect of yourself with your will, that is your personal creativity. But it's like giving you a direction to a yacht which is led by the wind, but you can give it direction. I mean it's pushed by the wind. And now the next level, the next chakre is actually the what the Tibetans call the wheel of fire, which is between the throat center and the heart center. And it is, if you concentrate upon that spot as you move upwards, you have a kind of recollection of your celestial condition. Then we move up to the throat center. And that corresponds to a whole new mode of thinking that the Sufis call Jabarut, which is, as I said this morning thinking that's not based on experience. The thinking that's based on the celestial spheres prior to experience. That's why says , Your are, it is your heavenly counterpart that is now the shahid, the witness. So from this angle everything looks very different because you can see the splendor that is trying to come through, not only in the physical world but in circumstances in the drama of life. And of course the opposition to it. And as you move up in the third eye. That is where you have access into Lahut, that is the plane of all possibilities. That is the level at which we represent to yourselves divine perfection, qualities in perfection. Lahutayat. And that's why you turn your eyeballs upwards to enhance the activity of the third eye. And that's the plane of all possibilities, as I said of the divine perfection. That is the plane from which we derive the legacy of our divine inheritance as Pir o Murshid calls it. Then if you move up further, then as you reach beyond multiplicity, that is multiplicity of qualities of the seeds. Bija in Yoga. And you reach into the sense of the divine essence which can never be fragmented and not multiple, not manifold. It's the heart of the unity. And then when you hold your breath, that is where you experience the investment of the holy spirit which is the essence. In your heart. So that it is not Samadhi. You're moving upwards, and now it is the other way around. It is you are being passive toward the holy spirit on the alter. And we call it the quickening of the holy spirit. Quddus. So let us do that now. So you think of your celestial being as fashioned in celestial light. And it triggers off a new mode of understanding that Suhrawardhi talks about. Then you reach seeds of divine perfection, divine qualities, and then unity. Then as you hold your breath, the descent of the holy spirit in the temple, the space, the holy space that you have secured. 'ut of the fabric of your own being, a temple. So it is really God who is reborn in each one of us and you instead of thinking of yourself as being reborn, let us say the whole Universe emerges recurrently as each of us. And this is ex nilo, that is not determined, not subject to causality, purely spontaneous.(pause) The wheel of fire, is called, well it corresponds with the thymus gland. It's very important in Tibetan Yoga. The heart corresponds to your aura, it's the center of your aura. But the thymus, the wheel of fire, is the center of celestial light rather than physical light of the aura. So your aura already does espouse the contours of your body, particularly your face. But your celestial body is even less of a form. It's very difficult, it's just at the edge of what we may still call a configuration rather than a form. And for each identity there is a certain way of thinking. So if you identify with your celestial being, your thought is not based upon the experience of the earth. That's when you concentrate on the throat center. The Sufis talk about the plane of all possibilities imkan, all possibilities. And they call it the divine treasury. And there's nothing in the existential realm that does not have its correspondence in the treasury. And Ibn Arabi says that there are ladders linking the treasury to the celestial sphere. So if you identify with your celestial being then you have some kind of (skip spot) and including of course the images we make of the physical world, and the images we make of the interpretation we make of our problems. All those things we've encountered this morning. But the curious thing is that in Sufism one never considers the negative aspect without the positive counterpart. So while one is experiencing the disintegration of one's being one's consciousness is encompassing the bounty of the Universe. The bounty that is coming through the body of God. The Universe is the body of God. It's always two sides in Sufism. And it is thanks to the disbanding of the notion of the physical world or ourselves or of our problems that we can grasp the value of what is coming through in the Universe and in ourselves and in our problems. Now Pir o Murshid says that there are two forms annihilation one external, the other internal. So that there is a kind of disintegration at the jagged ends as it were. But there is also resorption in the center, in the vacuum of the center, as one's head comes down because one makes a fresh start. That means that one is needs, to be born again one has at least momentarily to discard all that one was imbibing from the Universe and also all the fantasies of one's imagination so that one's slate is clear. We call it tabla erasa. And something totally uncalled for, ex nilo as one says, totally unexpected emerges. You have not, cannot prefigure nor can you determine. And the word is illa which means except. There is a saying in the Koran that everything disintegrates except the face of God. But it's not really the face of God. It's the countenance behind the face. All faces are His face, you see. But it's not the physical face. It's what is coming through, or trying to come through. So one has to let go of one's self image in order to be reborn, and of course one has to let go of one's identification with one's face that one sees in the mirror, for example, or one's body, one's personality. So that again is detachment, indifference, letting go. And then somehow in these conditions one invites the self organizing faculty of the Universe because one has put one's will aside. As one says illa. And when one says 'llha then one is getting to take over some responsibility in one's creativity. And that is Mithal, the creative realm. The Sufis call it the level, an intermiderary level between the physical world and the level of pure spirit. The level where thoughts are a reality independent of whether they are actuated in the physical world, the world in suspense, like the pictures in the mirror. And in that world you are free to create the way you want. All creativity starts there. So that's when you are concentrating on your heart center. I said you are discovering your, let's say the effigy of your aura. But you see that you can alter it at will. You just have to think of a beautiful thought and it becomes very beautiful. And if you think of hatred and resentment, then it becomes ugly. You have a direct feedback. Where as at the celestial level it doesn't alter that much. It's immaculate. It's like a child, a baby. It doesn't have much personality yet. But it's beautiful. And that which strengthens this level of our being is our glorification. It's not our imagination any more is not our realization. It's our glorification. So instead of just thinking of the temple. You could think that you're the priest in the temple. And you're performing a cosmic celebration service at the alter. And you're in ecstasy. You're so deeply moved by the miracle of what's happening. And the influence from above is being felt in anticipation of that moment when we hold our breath. So could you do this now again and think of the things that we have been mentioning, especially what happens in the circle. The holy spirit takes place. But it's not samadhi. ...say Hu the head is in the normal position, the glance horizontal. Breath. So imagine the circle, in fact it's not a circle. It's a spiral as you exhale. And then the convergence of the center. And then the upward motion, and then the descending motion. The sequence of thought and simply staying in a state of suspense without thought because you have triggered off thoughts at higher levels of your being of which you may not be aware in your ordinary mind, but it is happening. But thinking of the mind and thinking of the heart and thinking of the soul. So let us say that there are different levels of thinking. And at the soul level it's not formulated in categories of thoughts broken up into fragments. And therefore we're not used to considering that way of thinking at all. It's more realization than thinking. So, perhaps you'd like to do now whatever you can do. I don't know whether you'd like to go back to your tents or sit under a shed, or then just walk in the rain and dry your clothes. Just wonderful. AUG 04, 1995 Tape 05 Leader's Retreat '95 Tape 5 ...to link them up with lower echelons. And also I think it's important to include our bodiness instead of making that clear distinction between the aura and the body. So the practice consists of envisioning a flame rising in your spinal cord. It's both a Sufi and also a Tibetan practice. Of course there it's useful to think of the different colors, but colors are psychological interpretations of frequencies of light. But this represents a whole different dimension of light, which in our body is called phosphorescence instead of fluorescence. Fluorescence one is absorbing and remitting light, but phosphorescence one's body is burning in order to produce light, infrared generally, just like fireflies and certain bats, deep sea fish and so on are able to produce light out of the simply combustion of the flesh. And we are producing heat which is light of course, infrared. But the beauty of this practice is that the body is transmuting this infrared into all the visible frequencies of light then right up into the ultraviolet. So it's a wonderful model for resurrection, for transportation, for transfiguration, and of course acts as a ladder that helps us to hoist our consciousness into samadhi. So it's a very useful practice. So you do it as you inhale, and you imagine those colors that you must be familiar with, concentrating on each chakra on the way up. But the important thing is that you really not just visualize but really are aware of that process of combustion. Of course one feels it in one's whole body because one has temperature, but the relay behind it is of course an off trunk in the center of the spinal cord. I think of the word of Jelaluddin Rumi, Enough of metaphor, I want burning. Traditionally it's called transmutation of fire into light. So what you could do is if you can be, first of all you have to be able to breath in very slowly which is only possible only if you extend your exhaling as long as you can, and then you can take in much more oxygen as you inhale. And if you could well replenish your lungs in one go as you shift your attention from one chakra to the next. Then when you hold your breath you can hold your breath longer if you've been able to take in more oxygen. Then you could do what we did this morning, reaching into higher spheres of light as you hold your breath. Then as you know, as you exhale then you think of the light of intelligence acts as a trigger, acts as a catalyst, that unleashes the light of the aura, the radiance of the aura.(pause for practice) As you know all the cells of the body, and especially chakras correspond to the plexi of the autonomic nervous system, or the central nervous system, carry within them latent light. And this light can then be unleashed by our creative imagination, by our concentration. And as you know light is energy. And just imagine, I suppose like a Christmas tree where you have all the different lamps are hooked up to a wire but imagine that they don't light up all at the same time, but one after the other. And then as you pass the threshold above the head then we're not talking about physical light any more. That corresponds to (inkaballa it's called insofar, the aura of light above the head. Now if you can only visualize if and can't really experience this kind of light rising in the spinal cord, perhaps you can call into action another dimension of our being which is sound. So you can do that, you can cause any part of the body to vibrate intensely. It's not really the body but I suppose the magnetic field, it's not really around the body but I suppose interspersed with the body, which is always vibrating but you can enhance it's vibration by concentration. You concentrate on the spine and you think of it like the tube of an organ. The key releases an onrush of air that causes the tube to vibrate, and another tube and another tube. But don't just concentrate on sound. See the relationship between the sound and the vibration and the light, the phenomena of light. And I dare say that you might feel a flush in you body. I'm sure that it does have an effect on the, alter the temperature of the body, slightly perhaps maybe even intentionally. And then you pass a threshold and now it's just pure light, higher levels of light without aspect of heat. In fact it almost feels rather cool or even cold. Now if you could make a further step. That is that you know according to physics light is matter. So in our minds we make a distinction between our body and our aura. But what I'm trying to get at is the effect of these practices upon the body. And the effect of any transformation that takes place in the body upon the psyche as a reciprocity here. So, well to put it in a simplistic way, one schleps one's body upward in one's uprise, but that's not quite saying it. It's actually, if one does this consciously, one can transmute grosser physiological functions into finer ones, and grosser energy into subtler energy . There's a conversion. It's not just like two different things. There's what I would call an esoteric chemistry in the body, for example the enzymes, particularly the enzymes that regulate the transcription of the DNA in RNA. Those are very very fine neurotransmitters. There's a very fine an elaborate, they represent a very elaborate very advanced state of matter as compared with the nails for example, or the hair. Somehow these very high, the hormones of course, this esoteric chemistry, well of course it is built up out of the transmutation of the grosser matter. Somehow by our identifying with the subtler levels of our being, we encourage that transmutation at the physical level. And as I say we are arousing latent or slumbering faculties, or awakening these faculties which make for realization and illumination. This is what the Sufis mean by experiencing resurrection before dying. It could be illustrated as extracting the perfume out of the flowers. Well perfume is part of the flowers. So one is really letting go or rejecting the contingent dross let's say aspect of the flower and simply just extracting the quintessence. That would be a clue to the experience of resurrection. It's called byeth. the wazifa for that is Ya Byeth, resurrection. So that to start with you feel like body, you're aware of your body and body functions. Then eventually you experience yourself as gossamer, subtle body. And then eventually pure essence and even as quintessence. So that transit between the subtle body and essence, being pure essence, is that threshold above the head. I think it's probably right, I'm not sure of course, I think it's at the fontanel. And the clue to this in your practice is to think of Bellerophon riding Pegasus. So Pegasus, well you could interpret it several ways. That could be the body. And Bellerophon our mind or whatever, consciousness or whatever. And at a certain point Pegasus can't reach any higher, because of the high altitude he can't reach the Olympus, so Bellerophon has to proceed on his own. So that's where you think that you body and the infrared and is all the process of phosphorescence, it's all the infrastructure. But a dynamic infrastructure like Pegasus. It keeps on being hoisted upwards. And at a certain moment Pegasus, the impulse or the momentum that Pegasus has imprinted upon Bellerophon is carried by Bellerophon further. So it looks as though he is proceeding on his own but it's really thanks to the momentum that was imparted to him by the body, the infrastructure, that enabled him to reach the Olympus. So that's a good thought as you're doing this practice. (pause for practice) So it's (Tape turns) ...limited by the Guru then you're being connected up with the hierarchy masters saints and prophets that form the spiritual government of the world. That's the difference between having a Guru or then the message of Hazarat Inayat Khan which includes all the masters saints and prophets. It's a whole new breakthrough in the advance of spirituality in our time, that's the message of our time. But then these are words. In reality we get into the attunement of Buddha, of Christ, of Mohammed, of Abraham, of Melchezedek, of Shiva. I remember when I was a child asking Murshid, Since you're most of the time not there, how can I find out whether I'm doing right or not? And he said all you have to do is to ask your self, Would Baba be happy with me or not? So if you do that you're opening the doors of communication. It's very subtle how somehow one's conscience rather than one's consciousness is the operative factor here. It makes one very sensitive to receive a communication without of course wishful thinking, so be careful. But that can only take place if one really gets into the consciousness of a master. That is why in my training in India with the Sufis I was told always to get into the consciousness of my teacher who was Murshid, rather than imagine Murshid, but really get into his consciousness. Of course we have to understand that this is all connected. Somehow there's some complementarity between the teachers. They are in fact not different teachers. That's a human concept, Buddha, Christ totally different people and so on. But they still think of them as they were before. You know that if you fragment a magnet, every fragment of that magnet has a negative pole and a positive pole. So everything is connected. You can't fragment totality with, totality is present in every fragment. So one teacher is somehow connected with other teachers. But for us it's easier because we have more affinity with one teacher than with another. Exactly as you can enter into the conscious of another person, you can enter into the consciousness of a teacher and you can enter into the consciousness of an angel, and an archangel. What would it be like to be an archangel of light? Well the sky is the limit. One mustn't think, 'h this is too much for me, I can't do it. We're offered the divine bounty, nothing less than the best. It's just a question of our resolve, if we're prepared to do what it takes. You know that people are present in you and you're present in them. And it's not just your impressions of the past, of your encounter with them. There is a communication, it's not a communication really, it's really a resonance. So that when you're doing hour breathing practices for example, a picture of a person snaps in front of the screen of your mind, a person in distress. And you feel that somehow that connection that you have with that person is now calling for help. Thanks to that connection you can send help. That you do with your mureeds in particular. You always think of your mureeds in your morning meditation. And really get into their consciousness, not just imagining their form, but really get into their consciousness and their attunement. And if you do that, they will never leave you. It's if you're not giving them that food they look for that they'll leave you. And that food is at the spiritual levels. They think its in advising them, but that's I doubt very helpful. So maybe you could do that now. 'h I've gone beyond the time. Could you just think of, well work with your breath of course and the vibration, and all that we've been doing. And think of a person, well of one of your mureeds, and see how that thought has some impact on your breath. It might make it faster, slower, I don't know, some impact. And the mureed feels, maybe unconsciously that you are thinking of him/her. And it establishes a very deep link. God bless you now. AUG 04, 1995 Tape 06 Abode Leader's Retreat Tape 6 August 1995 ...smile. I don't have to ask you to smile cause you are already. Just the thought of "Aha" makes one smile. It's like the child whose mother says, Can you see that pixie in the tree? Child says, No Mummie. Look again. No Mummie, I can't see it. Look again. Yes! That is the "Aha"moment actually. That is awakening, actually. That's awakening. So if you're awake, well never a dull moment if you're awake. Now I say that because you know in meditation sometimes one can take oneself so seriously. So that's good, it releases a lot of tension. Now if you're a guide, a representative, then of course people will expect you to give them wasifas. This is not the time to do that. We're going to work with that at the leader's, representatives training which starts the day after tomorrow. One cannot or should not give a practice unless one has experienced it oneself. That means not perfunctorily, but really experienced what it means to one. And in fact one cannot understand other people's problems unless one has gone through those problems oneself. So part of awakening is of course being able to scan the past and prefigure the future, a kind of overview. Of course we've done it several times in my seminars. But for the representatives I would say, can you see how you've evolved of course in the course of time? And what are the qualities that have been been engendered, have risen in the course of your evolution? This is what is called Mukum. Mukum means a station. We go through different stages in our unfoldment. And Sufis have tried to of course find some kind of general criteria but it varies from person to person. So all those efforts are only approximate. But can you remember, there was a time, for example, what was important to you was for be of service, and there was a time when what was important for you was to understand, and there was a time when what was important to you was to be high, and there was a time when what was important was purity, there was a time when what was important was mastery, and so on so forth. There was a time when what was important for you was try to develop your intuition and be therefore passive with regard to the action the Universe upon you, and so on. So we've gone through different phases and each one of us, our path is different. But it is good to acknowledge that one has gone through stages looking at the past in retrospect. One of the criteria for me, and I think for many people is how people progress since they were initiated. That's the proof of the pudding is in the eating as one says. And I must say that looking at these wonderful faces, I realize that yes indeed people have made fantastic bounds, progress in the course of the years. But it's good for you to realize in which way. What are the hurtles that you've passed and what are the attunements or the standpoints that you've come to in the course of your evolution. And of course there are always two, how can I say, two forward marches. One is the transformation of your being. The other is events in your life and the interaction between these two, how the events in life have altered your personality, and how the changes in your personality have altered the situations in your life. The first one is easy, relatively easy. You can account for a change that took place irrespective of an event that triggered off a quality in you that was latent with you and did not come through before. If you do that. Of course there are many cases like that in your life. If you do that, then you can see where a person is at, where you're mureed's are at, and how their personality reacts to the situations in which they find themselves. And you could translate this in terms of wasifas, wasaif. Like a certain quality has come through. And you know there are three questions, I think these are the questions that I've asked the leaders for the leader's training. What is a quality you need to meet your problems? What is a quality that is coming through you irrespective of your problems? And what is the quality that you would like to develop irrespective of the Mukum, that is the way in which qualities are coming through in your case? So that is part of the insight. If you've developed it in your own life, then you can apply it to the mureeds you guide. So if one is continually thinking in terms of the language of, it's like a very special language which is different from the ordinary language. So perhaps you can do that when you're sitting in the woods. Now, the impact of your personality upon the events is much more difficult to assess. You can only ascertain it if you look back and you think, Well if I'd been the way I am now, this wouldn't have happened. So now you see somehow our manner of being seems to call for situations. Not always, but sometimes. By some law of synchronisity of which Jung speaks. OK so those are two things that would give one clarity as to the development of qualities in one's personality and the course of events. Now, there's a very important teaching given by Murshid. And that is the cycles, Jelal, Kemal, Jemal, or then (uruge and nasul). Those are terms. So what Murshid is saying is that a project is kind of nurtured in a kind of subliminal state where it's not yet very clearly defined. And so we have a lot of projects are stillborn because we haven't followed them up by sufficient energy. And then if we will really believe in them, in that project, and do what it takes to make it really happen, then you'll find that your energy increases. And that's what is called uruge, the jelali state energy is on the uprise. And then you'll find that you reach a threshold state in which the Jelal power has reached it's very maximum and it can only start decreasing unless you are able to cast yourself forward in another wave. For example those things for which one was prepared to put in a lot of energy now do not appear any more appear that important because one has make a Mukum. One has moved forward, and in one's assessment of values. So one is in the pursuit of value which hopefully is a greater one than one was pursuing before. So the threshold state, you see. Then of course the energy then is on the decrease and unless one counters it by a new wave then one gradually recedes into a kind of negative state. So, can you see those cycles in your life? Then you can see them in the lives of other people. Now a kemal state always corresponds with a crisis situation, when you're faced with a decision. So up to that point you were in pursuit of something and you were putting all the energy in that you needed. Or then perhaps you got discouraged. If you got discouraged then you passed through a crisis situation where you've lost your confidence in a project and of course in yourself. And as I say the only way to regain confidence, if you have enough energy, is to make a fresh start. Now for the Sufis, as I've already said, we're continually recurrently reborn, so that the fresh start is always there knocking on the door. Now you can see the same thing of course in other people. Now the Kemal state, Jelal state is of course positive and the Kemal state is receptive. Kemal is a quality of the threshold state which could be illustrated by an airplane that has gone so slow that it starts stalling. That's one description of it. Another one would be a bicycle that slows down so it could fall right away. Or then of course water in a pale, pale upside down and so on. If you do it fast enough the water will not fall. The threshold state is where the water would start falling. A threshold state is a state in which one can bring about change, is let's say the best state, the most favorable state for change of tack, because for example a plane if it has slowed down, it gets much more vulnerable to the wind. And so the slightest motion is going to, of the wind for example is going to shift it's position. Whereas if it's moving then it resists that change. So that's the reason why when we are at a Kemal state we are very vulnerable. But the positive side of it is that those are the situations in which we can more easily take a decision or plan a chapter in our life than when everything is hunky dory. So it's is a very desirable situation to find oneself in a crisis situation because the possibilities at hand are infinite. That is the situations, it is called imkan by the Sufis, all possibilities. For example you fail in your game of chess, so you throw the thing out and then start again, you see, so a new start. If you have a new start, you have all the pawns in your hand. Now I think that we assume that what we did in the past has consequences in the present, that's what one calls conditioning or causality, which is of course the opposite of freedom. And spirituality is not just awakening and illumination but also a liberation, and therefore the acquisition of freedom. If we continue doing the things that we are conditioned to do in life then there is no possibility of change in our lives. We just follow a kind of routine. So the whole program of the Universe offers us an opportunity to open a new leaf or new chapter in our life. And that is something that is highlighted by the Sufis, particularly Hujwiri in that wonderful book called Kashf al- Mahjub, which really was a Sufi who visited India prior to Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, his tomb is in La Hore. And he was quoting the dervishes when he said that the vuct, which is the instant of time which cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future. Well that's saying a lot of course. But what it amounts to and what it implies is that there is another factor coming into our lives other than just conditioning, (laplacien), determinism in physics. This is illustrated, Dr. David Boehm shows, by if you see the waves in the sea you think the wave is the product of the previous wave. That is causality. There is another factor that is simultaneous with this one and that is the whole ocean rises as each wave. So this other factor which is impromptu, spontaneous, undetermined is Kemal, is a Kemal state. And it's in that state that one can be creative. That is if one emerges, you see the Kemal state was very beautifully illustrated by Prigogine, state of unstable equilibrium, or near unstable equilibrium. That is nothing happens. In a Kemal state nothing happens. All possibilities are latent, like plastima of a baby, the cell of a baby. There are all possibilities are there. Now what comes through, of course depends upon your free will, that's where you find your free will, your choice. And your choice is determined by a vow or promise. And that makes a knight of course, a promise. So the great breakthrough in your life is when you make a promise and then never come back on it. That changes your life. otherwise the past continues to live. So Sufism affirms the incentive of the individual, that is our creativity. The more drastic the decision is the more one is able to compensate let's say, not overcome but compensate the influence of the past. And consequently there is a sense of liberation from conditioning. And that's all that Buddhism is about of course is acquisition of freedom, liberation from conditioning. Your freedom is in your free will. But the free will has to be sustained by a very definite promise, a covenant. That's very central in Sufism, covenant, mithal. Initiation is again a reiteration of the promise, the covenant that one made in pre eternity as illiad whereby one decided to affirm the divine sovereignty. But you see in chivalry to affirm divine sovereignty does not mean towing the line, but taking on the qualities of the Lord otherwise those you can serve. That's God consciousness. So here we have something of the greatest importance. A kind of realization that cuts right through our lives and can bring about the most utter change. Kemal means perfection you see, it means the state of equilibrium of which Prigogine speaks where everything is possible. Buddha speaks about it, the level of all possibilities. And that is really the meaning of the void. We have to be careful because we generally interpret the void as being a vacuum in space or a state of nothingness. It's not a state of nothingness. It's the other way around. It's Kemal. A state where everything is possible depending upon your decision. In physics there is an experiment by Boehm, (Arichnof) if I remember, where he eliminated the electromagnetic field in order to get to a deeper level of reality. And you could compare it like, for example a tug of war, if you have two groups of people pulling at either side of a rope. And if there forces equalize themselves, then that's a Kemal state. It's state of very precarious equilibrium. And it takes just the slightest movement to bring the whole thing over on one side or the other you see. That's a Kemal state. And so it's freedom from conditioning. I think it's very important because if in our mind we assume that we are conditioned, we loose our sense of freedom and of initiative. And if you look at people around you, you see to what extent people are conditioned, are caught in a certain way of thinking. Like I can't do that because I've always done it this way, so I can't do it otherwise. So if you see a mureed caught in that situation, then your job is to, you see the wazifa will only work if the wazifa is accompanied by a decision. otherwise it doesn't work. It's no use just repeating a word. For example Ya Haqq, well Ya Haqq and one keeps on telling lies, well it's dishonest to say Ya Haqq. And it you say Ya Wali and you feel you can't overcome addiction to cigarettes, then don't say Ya Wali. So that's a whole different perspective on the wazifa now. The wazifa is relevant to our lives, not just we want to develop a certain quality. We can develop that quality by applying it in our lives. OK now can we follow this up with a practice? The practice of Kasab. Inhaling through the left nostril, holding one's breath, exhaling through the right nostril. It's like a pendulum. So when the pendulum has reached the extent of it's swing to the left, it stands still. That is what the Sufis call the instant of time before it swings to the other side. Actually time is landscaped. We can't use the word landscaped, but still. Just like gravity is a landscaping of space, so time is landscaped. It moves faster or slower and even stops. So when you inhale through the left nostril, you think that the pendulum is moving now. And when you hold your breath, the motion of the pendulum, the pendulum stands still. In fact you're in a state of suspense. It's a very good thought, in a state of suspense. That is you're not involved in the process of becoming. You're not progressing. You're not moving. You're in a state of suspense. And that also means time and space are totally irrelevant. Now then the pendulum moves to the other side and again there is another state of suspense. There are actually three points of suspense in the pendulum. I mean points where it does not move. Both sides of the swing and then the place where it's being suspended. So let's say that the first state of suspense is like an apostrophe that you free yourself from the conditioning of the past so that something new can come into your life, or new quality. And it's very good a that moment, at the end of inhaling through the left nostril, to think of the quality that is coming through you at that moment. So think of yourself as reborn. There is a quality now that is coming through you that is not conditioned, that is ex nilo, spontaneous. (tape turns) So the left always signifies the past. Now when you're inhaling through the right nostril and then exhaling through the right nostril and between the two you're holding your breath, there is a very important thought here. It's a thought that is found in physics. Well it was Euler who said it. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. Don't ever forget that word. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past.. In fact it liberates one from the conditioning of the past. Your projects, your prefiguration of the future, your hope in what the future will bring, frees you from the conditioning of the past, in the measure of the power of your belief in your resolve. So that happens as you inhale through the right nostril. And when you hold your breath after inhaling, before you exhale, then something you see the phases in our breath can signal different types of realization. So as you start exhaling, after... no as you hold your breath first of all, in a state of suspense, you free yourself from your projects for the future. So you free yourself from the conditioning of the past and the projects of the future. That is if they don't turn out the way you hoped, it's OK. In fact it might just be as well. Emerson said be careful what you wish because it might happen. So one is in the pursuit of liberation in this practice, liberation from conditioning, and liberation even from one's own incentive. And then of course as you exhale, then you're looking into the past again because it's on the left. And you see that the future really does transform the past. The past is not the same as it was. We think that it is but it is not any more. So shall we do that practice? After that we'll breathe through both nostrils but let's start with this. (pause for practice) Niffari says, I can't give you the key to the treasury, you have to deserve it. So we have a problem now because I don' t think that you can sit out in the rain, unless you like that. Nor can you que up for the initiations. So I suppose the thing about rules is there is such a thing as an exception to the rule. So perhaps we could just do our meditating together. So that each each one of you does the practices that you want to do, but we do it in the same room like the dervishes do in Iran. They are all doing their practices in the same room. But I would advise you to start with this practice of breathing left and right. Then you see I think a good thing to do is to do a practice, then stop doing the practice and experience the relevance of the practice. And then start doing it again. (meditating) End this afternoon just with a chanting together. (Chant Kyrie Elison, Christi Elison.) Looks as though we are surrounded by a temple, and it's a temple of rain. And it's a kind of protection as though we were in a temple. It's very different meditating together instead of singly. We're helping each other, sharing, inspiring each other. We're in this together. As Pir o Murshid says the bond that's on the spiritual path is the most precious there is in the world. Perhaps you feel the message coming through. It's really a new dispensation. It's got all the threads of the past, behind, but we're moving towards a new spirituality based on experience rather than belief, or rather than ritual. I remember when Pir o Murshid initiated a few people in ( ) fraternity, myself as a child at ten. I don't remember when it was that he said this, but I do remember what he said, and that is that the real temple is the human being and that together we build a composite temple. So that's why I think of the Sufi order not as an organization but as a temple, an organism built out of the beings who are all sharing a sense of community. I don't really want to leave. I don't know whether you want to. I don't know what I'm saying, but it doesn't matter. I'm searching for words, but they seem so inadequate. Well of course I remember Murshid. I'm one of the few people who is left who knew Murshid in a very privileged way. So I was able to pull his beard from time to time and sit in his lap, and be punished by him when I was naughty. I had to sit in a corner, stand in a corner . I felt like an exile. Then, but it wasn't long. Maybe it seemed to me it was long. Then he would make one feel so welcome. And we had a little court. It was at the bottom of the steps of ( Fasil-Musil ). So when any of the children was naughty, then we had a meeting with the court and Pir o Murshid was the judge. And he asked the child to own up. And of course if one didn't own up, one felt really ostracized by the other children. So one really had to do it. Then Murshid used to say, Well what kind of punishment do you think you should have? So one decided on one's own punishment. One didn't always know what kind of punishment one could conceive of, so he made a few proposals like run around the garden 10 times, or stay silent for half an hour, very difficult for a child. And Nur was our little mother, looking after us. She was 13 years old when my father died, passed away. My mother was so fragile, so etheric, so beautiful, always in the background. We loved her so much. We we're so very close to her. She suffered so much particularly after father's passing, then Nur's. She didn't want to live any longer. So she became like my daughter instead of my mother. And we didn't quite understand the whole situation. Because when we went to school, children were talking about their dad. I didn't think I had a dad. He seemed to be the grandfather of all of us, always. But that particular atmosphere of those days. It was quite incredible. You have no idea what that was like. He was like, the words of my uncle was he was a spiritual giant. Anybody who met him was ever likely to forget. There was no one like him in the world. He was very different. Such power and at the same time so gentle, so loving. You felt like he would just hold you under his robes and protect you. Of course boys have to be boys, so we were naughty. And all we had to do was to listen to Murshid saying, Bay Jon, dear brother. And that was enough. There was no anger in it, there was just an alarm. Sometimes one felt as though, well now when I think of it of course, of course naturally I spoke with quite a few of the mureeds and particularly the murshidas and shekes of the time, Murshid after his passing. They all confirmed of course the same thing. He seemed to be out of this world. It was like reliving the time of the great prophets, it's was happening again in our time. And he would walk up the path. And when we were children we used to lie in the grass, waiting for the moment he would walk down the steps. He'd open the gate and cross the road and walk up the field. And we were all in awe, like, it's like a king. Like seeing a king, a real king. We don't see that kind of patriarch any more these days, and the sense of sacredness and holiness. Yes it was unique. Sometimes I think we're trying to retrieve something of that attunement. Sometimes it comes through a little bit. Sometimes Murshid didn't speak. People waited for years for an interview. They thought they would have to bow before this guru. He opened the door and said, Come in. He shook their hand with both hands and said, Come and sit next to me on the sofa. Mureeds were kind of embarrassed. It was not what they expected. Sometimes he would speak, well very simple things like, How's your mother? How's your husband? and so on. Sometimes he wouldn't speak. The meeting was so beautiful that one spoils it by words. But of course mureeds had one thing in mind, that was to get a wazifa. And then when they left they'd forgotten to ask for a wazifa. 'h I've lost my chance, one chance. And also they wanted to ask about their problems, and they were so awed by Murshid that they forgot their problems altogether. And one of the leaders afterwards said to me, You see that was Murshid's great art. He never proposed a solution to a problem. What he did was to attune you to a certain pitch, and in that attunement you saw the answer to your problem. I remember Surdeal, was a leader in Germany that I met after the war. He said to me, You see on Saturday evening Pir o Murshid used to sit and give what one calls darsham. He used to sit the whole day on the terrace of ( ) in a state of samadhi, so that by the evening, and he didn't eat that day, by the evening people had to be two strong men on either arm to carry him, well to guide him towards the hall. And then he would sit behind the screen, and each mureed would come in turn, and just sit there for a very short, perhaps a few seconds. And Shirdeal said, you see what he did was he would just open his eyes and then close them again. When he closed his eyes, it was a sign that one was to move on ( ). Then Shirdeal said, It was just like looking into heaven. And I remember Nur, my sister, telling me. I was in the kitchen she said, Bay Jon, have you seen Baba's eyes this morning? I said, No I don't know what you mean. 'h just come and watch, wait until he opens the door of the anti room. And so of course we did, and I must say that the light of his eyes was just unbelievable. The light flashing through his eyes. There was a day when he, you know how children like to climb in the bed of their parents in the morning. Well my mother said, No not this morning. So as children, we peeped through the door to see what on earth was happening. And here was Murshid sitting like a king in such a state. You can't imagine the power of his being. And later I found out that he had just founded the Universal Worship. It had come as a kind of an of inspiration. He said in very strong words, This was the wish of all the great prophets of the past and the time has come when it can be fulfilled. Do you think that the prophets wanted to separate us? And then he used that word, well I suppose it really is the definition of Murshid. That is he said It is the path of the king of kings. Today I would say the king of kings and the queen of queens. Murshid once said the mureeds were the embodiment of the message, and I think now the embodiment of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan. They wanted to put the message before the person. But still we've come to a point where we realize the importance of a person. So somehow I think that through our meditations we can get to that point when we are getting into that attunement that I saw in Murshid. And that is when one can claim to be the embodiment. As Pir o Murshid said, You can't claim to be the son of God or the daughter of God if you are not aware of your father or your mother, unless you are aware of the features of your father and your mother in your being, the features God. It was God consciousness all the time. Whether he was laughing, or whatever he was doing, it was God consciousness, all the time, always God conscious. Very powerful. So we have such a great inheritance. I remember the mureeds like were, there was a feeling like they had a kind of mission to represent what this was. You can't formulate it in words. Somebody asked Murshid and he said it's the awakening of humanity to the divinity in man which is a very extraordinary statement. Because the divinity in man you see. It's not the awakening of one person or a people. Like in Yoga one is seeking for illumination for oneself. And it's true that here I present that as our objective, personal awakening. But now as we move on we begin to realize that it is like a joint awakening. Realize the importance of what happens to us together. So sometimes one when we try to imagine the way of thinking of the disciples of Christ. Like they had come across something so very extraordinary. And they felt a kind of mission to carry it further. You can't just share that, I mean receive that without wanting to share it with others. I think that's the meaning of the message. AUG 04, 1995 Tape 07 Abode Leaders Retreat tape 7, August 1995 If one keeps on doing practices, one develops a kind of power, spiritual power. The more you do it the more that power comes through. And it is that power that lifts your consciousness into the higher spheres. And then there is a kind of inspiration that seems to emerge from the depth of one's being, like a call from the heavens. There is that contact between the depth of one's being and the call from the heavens. Actually the retreat really only starts after three days. That's when one's ready to make a retreat. I find if one pauses between the practices to rest, one tends to lose some of the momentum. So in my own experiences I kept going all the time, and even resting, still remaining in one's higher consciousness while resting, never allowing oneself to slip back down into one's personal vantage point. Well now I'd like us to start once more with the practices of light. The light of the beams of your eyes again because that is something very tangible. And of course you know that if one opens one's eyes, one's eyelids of course, then of course the impact of the environment is going force one's glance into focus. Unless one has a lot of strength to keep one's concentration, but then you can't see anything. It seems like a blur. But eventually then you start being able to concentrate, focus your glance upon a flower for example, then eventually a person. And we have to avoid just slipping back into the usual way of looking at the person. Then you begin to see the eternal face of the person. It's offset, your consciousness is offset and it's very beautiful. That's why Jelaluddin Rumi says, If you could only see yourself through my eyes, you'd realize how beautiful you are. So the whole world looks beautiful whereas ordinarily it doesn't look that beautiful. So consequently one is in ecstasy. You can't force yourself to be in ecstasy. But when God reveals Him/Herself to you with such beauty, then you are moved to the depth of your being. Through sensory perception, so this is not samadhi, there is a word of Ibn Arabi that I quoted, perhaps in that handout where he says, It was through the senses that I experienced God. Now there is a further aspect of this practice. As you do it you do not identify with your aura. We started with the aura then the glance. Now you identify yourself with pure luminous intelligence. That's a word. I know it's a word but I think just having a feeling of being very highly aware and being that awareness. It might be useful simply to think of your body as an infrastructure, although it isn't, since it does carry something of a hallmark of your being. But still the, you highlight yourself as luminous intelligence. There are certain moments when there is a breakthrough of that sense of being intelligence, not consciousness but intelligence, because consciousness is always in a dual situation, always a subject of an object. It needs a combustible whereas intelligence is just maybe the reality behind the whole Universe. Not intellect, intelligence. That is Kabir instead of Alim. Alim is wisdom but Kabir is just being highly aware. And then you find that your glance is much sharper than ever before. And your thoughts are crystal clear. And your emotions are purified. Now in a further practice you could become aware of the third eye, the beam of the third eye. I always think of it is a locomotive that is following two rails. Somehow it is directed by your glance. It rides those rails, those beams of your glance. And the thing about it is that it has a penetrating effect. So then when you're looking at a flower, you're x-raying it. And if you're looking at a face, then you're x-raying the face and seeing the reality behind the face. And then you do the same thing but without your glance. As Pir o Murshid says, Beyond your sight, or you're looking without your eyes, beyond the range of your eyes or he says even without your eyes. So you apply it to a situation for example. So you're x-raying a situation instead of simply being receptive to the appearance of the situation. That again in keeping with that saying of Ibn Arabi, Grasping that which transpires behind that which appears. Now this is the second mode of cognizance according to the Sufis. The first one being the way we interpret experience. And this one, the second one, is a mode of cognizance which is revealed rather than acquired. And it can only be revealed if one downplays one's interpretation of the situation, one cautions them. In fact that is very much in line with Yoga. But still the situation serves as a trigger to unleash that inner revelation. So we must always remember this principle. And that's the difference between Sufism and Buddhism and Yoga. And that is that while Yoga and Buddhism emphasizes the deceptive nature of the world as illusory and therefore one has to eschew any kind of reliance upon it, Sufism considers that it is in the physical world and also in all the existential condition that God becomes a reality. So there is some paradox here, of course there is complementarity. But you know these are signs, but those signs, those clues, as we already said, in which God reveals Him/Herself to us. But these clues, for one thing they are transparent, so one sees what transpires behind what appears. And secondly there is a Sufi procedure which is called (tawill) which means conducting one's experience back to one's origin. That is moving from the perceived to the abstract and then reversing things and moving from the abstract back to the tangible. That's awakening beyond life and awakening in life. And therefore it's true that at first one has to downplay one's interpretation, at least caution oneself against it, against it's unreliability. And then eventually one's insight is going to, the insight that's revealed to one from inside is going to alter one's interpretation of the situations. So you are aware of your interpretation again, but now it is corrected. Now all of this is very beautifully put into words by Shahabaddin Surawardi. Let's try and follow this in our meditation. The shahid, that means the witness, at his level, and that's the malakut level, the celestial level, is you celestial being. So we have many tiered beings. We have several identities. So if you identify with your body or your psyche, then you're going to interpret things the way that everybody does. But if you identify yourself with your celestial counterpart, and that comes by, you can't do it with your will, but simply by a very high attunement, by the power of ecstasy. And then you look at the world, and you see it from a totally different angle. I say there is a question of identity there. And it's identity that determines one's way of thinking and one's realization. You can't just attain realization like that. It always has to do with one's change of one's sense of identity or discovering levels of identity that one was not aware of. Now that is, these are words of course, and I would like us to really experience it. And there are several ways of doing it, as we have already seen. One is to think that one is a visitor on planet earth, a tourist. And one forgot who one was. And a kind of memory of one's prior existence is covered over, is buried in the unconscious and can be awakened of course, if conditions are favorable to it's awakening. And those are of course situations in the world in which the heavenly condition transpires most effectively, for example, as I say, the light in the eyes of a baby, or the beauty of a cathedral, or the beauty of some of the music, or beautiful gestures of people. Something that moves us very deeply in our soul, is going to awaken the celestial in us. Then as Pir o Murshid says it requires several things. It requires loosening the ties of the physical world. We have to understand what that means because people often jump to conclusions and think it means one has to loosen the ties in one's personal relationship with people. It's really freeing yourself from your dependence from people and circumstances, addiction in general. So those are the ties. You remember there are two things which Murshid said are the clues to lifting one's consciousness up. One is passion is awakened, he says awakened because that's the whole thing is these things are in us and they can be awakened. God awakened in us, awakening God in us. So passion. He used that word. It's very strong. A passion for the unattainable. If he said for the divine perfection, you say well divine perfection, I have some idea about that. But the unattainable, it's always further. It's like the horizon, it moves further. And there is a word that, a wazifa for that and it's badi. It means the incomparable. Because otherwise we like to believe that God is the perfection of our imperfection, as Murshid says, the archetype or the exemplar. And that we are ascribing to Lahut, that level, ideas which of course evidence the limitation of our mind. And so the thought that you can never say this is the archetype of a wazifa. No because it's always further. For example, perfect mastery, or perfect joy, or perfect truth and so on. It's always further, badi. It's always further. And so that thought does draw one upward, pull one upwards. The passion and then the incomparable nature of what is unattainable will keep on luring one upwards. And at the same time loosening the ties. He doesn't say cut the ties. So it isn't the way of the sanyasin or the dervish. Well it is the way of the dervish but not of the sanyasin. And I think this is formulated in the words of Christ, They are in the world but not of the world. So in a sense one finds some sort of independence from one's dependence of worldly conditions. And otherwise there is no way of reaching into the heavens. And so this is what will make one. .. because normally we identify with the infrastructure, the body, the mind, the psyche and so on. And so at this point we have to identify ourself with the subject rather than the object. That's Jabarut, the subject. Shahid, the spectator. God is the spectator of His/Her own body, the Universe. So that is one of the clues of awakening beyond life is downplaying the infrastructure. Then eventually awakening in life and revalidating the infrastructure and seeing the hallmark of the divinity of God in the infrastructure. Now Pir o Murshid gives a further clue. And he says it is discovering your eternity or your immortality. Because one normally does identify oneself with the transiency of one's being. And whether one does believe in life after death or not, it's just a matter of belief. There is no assurance and so on. So it's not in the realm of belief. If you can actually identify the perinity in the course of the transiency of your being. Like, as I say, it's never the same water that flows under the bridge. But yet they say it's the same river. So there is continuity in change. So what you do is you turn your consciousness away from your transiency and highlight your perinity. And of course it gives one a greater sense of what one means by God as permanent as compared with the transiency of the world. These are ideas. But just having a sense of, together with this idea of one's immortality, there is also a sense of the impersonal dimension of one's being. That's highly emphasized by Buddha, of course, Tatar Gata. But it's true that one understands the word of Ibn Arabi, Know whereby you're God and where you're not God. So it's paradoxical in one's mind. So the emphasis is on, like in your immortality and in your impersonality, you're more what one means by God than in your transiency, let's say degrees of Godliness one could say. That's why yesterday I gave the picture of the rishi who is sitting on top of a mountain. And people come,and people go, and children are born, and people get married, and more children, and people get ill and then die. And the rishi keeps on sitting on the top of the mountain. So that's the sense of, the one who is meditating has a sense that everything is moving but he or she has a kind of permanence, resilience, against the change is superficial. So you identify with the core of your being or the life of your life which has a kind of permanency about it as compared with your personality that is changing all the time, your body that is changing. Perhaps you notice that if you do that, all of a sudden you feel a enormous power in your being, because transiency makes one feel very vulnerable and very fragile. But it's discovering something about yourself that you have never had actually really seen before. You might have heard about it or read about it or believed it, but actually experiencing it. That's called divine power. Now as I say our objective in this retreat is awakening beyond life and in life. For the moment it's still beyond awakening life, but we'll get to awakening in life. So maybe there are some clues here in the teachings of the Sufis. That is that the existential condition is made of devices in which the divine intention becomes known to one by means of those clues. For example you've seen the pug marks of the bear in the snow, but you haven't seen the bear. So those are clues. So you don't discard the physical world as deceptive because those pug marks, those clues are very important. They give you some sense of the bear. But still the whole Universe is process of revelation. ( Tatrili, tatrilia ) that's revelation. God reveals Him/Herself to the fragments of Him/Herself, actually to Him/Herself. So there are those physical clues, like the beauty of the sky and the mountains and the stars and so on. Those are clues which give a sense of the beauty of the divine splendor. You'll never grasp the divine splendor but through these clues you have some access to that splendor. And then God reveals Him/Herself through your personality, or rather through the seeds of you personality that unfurl as your personality and which represent the root, the divine, what you call the divine perfection, a plethora of divine qualities. So those are the second clues. Therefore as you're meditating at first, you, instead of discarding altogether the physical world, or considering it to be illusory, or trying to enclose yourself in your own thoughts, you are looking at the physical world from inside. I've often illustrated it as swimming on the water. So when you were swimming at the surface you say water lilies. When you swam under the water, you saw that it was a network of roots, and out of these roots there are water lilies that sprout forth on the surface. When we perceive the world, all we are doing is perceiving the surface. But now as we turn within, you don't discard the environment but you look at it from inside, backstage. So now you're following the clues to their origin, to what lies behind them. And that applies not only to the physical world, but also to your problems. And then as you proceed further in your meditation, you begin to realize that the idiosyncrasies of your personality are clues as to let's say to the divine legacy in your being. The wazifa for that is Warith, Ya Warith, the divine inheritance that Murshid talks about all the time. So they are clues again because they are only a few features that bespeak of the richness, the bounty behind these features. Just like these is much more bounty in the sea than the plants. So you don't just identify with your personality, then of course you're lost, if you do that, you're lost, in meditation you're lost. But you try and reach deeper, while you think of the qualities of your personality you try to reach deeper into the root of that plant which is much richer than whatever comes through in the branches and the trunk of the tree and so on. That's why Pir o Murshid said, One is able to see the flower and the perfume in the fruit of the plant. They call it the essence. You're experiencing the essence of what emerges at the surface. The consequence is that of course so much of the richness that is in the root of your being will begin to unfurl in your personality. If you tried to develop qualities, you couldn't do it. It doesn't work that way. But if you, because you think you need to develop a quality that I don't have, you see. But it's the other way around. You need to unfurl a quality that you have but which is not being given enough scope to grow. Now let us examine a little more what it means to turn within. There are several thoughts that will help us to do this. That is to learn not to judge things from one's personal vantage point. You see for example, an eclipse of the sun, the moon only has meaningfulness for the earth. But their configuration is a reality irrespective of what it means to people on the earth. So it is learning how to turn within is learning how to, well what we did already in the course of this retreat was to try and get into the conscious of other people, because then we could see the problem from several different vantage points at the same time. But therefore the implication of that, and that is that one sees the context of a problem. One sees the problem in it's context. Whereas from one's personal vantage point one only sees what one wants to see. One projects one's own psyche upon it. So turning within is not discarding the environment but looking at it in a very different way . I say a different vantage point I think, we thing that vantage point is a point. So I would say in a different setting of consciousness. Then of course a further aspect of turning within is that one, as Pir o Murshid says, well he says this about breath but it's true about consciousness. If consciousness finds that there is some kind of obstruction to it's reaching outward then it turns within. Consequently now you downplay let's say your receptivity towards the experience of outside. Let's say you're interpreting the experiences and so on. And what is more not only experiencing but ingesting the experience from outside. Let's say you put a halt to that at least suspense for a short while. So you can highlight what is happening as you turn within. Then you discover a whole different aspect. You discover the Universe emerging from within irrespective of whatever accrues to you from outside. And as I've already said, the beauty there is that it is not conditioned by what we call causality but totally spontaneous. And what is more this is where you discover your freedom. Because and we have to be very clear about this. Nature has a way of self organizing itself, and if you interfere you will hinder the work of nature, nature, let's say the divine programming. But at a certain point our will customizes that formative process, that morphogenesis. otherwise you will not, well Pir o Murshid says it very well, God can attain a high degree of perfection in a person. But if that person participates in his own creativity, then God can attain a greater degree of perfection. So somehow the, what is gained by the Universe is the individual, is the way that the totality is customized in each individual and therefore the tremendous diversity. So honor your own wish to be the way you want to be while nature is preparing things for you, you then can have some impact in your creativity at a certain point by projecting how you could be if your would be as you might be. It's a real vision because as the Sufis say, It is creative imagine that makes the transit from the abstract world to the existential plane. It is translating meaningfulness into form. Therefore your visualization of yourself as you could be, even as physical form, very concrete, personality is also a form, will enhance your impact upon the environment because there is always some relationship, some balance between the degree that one adapts oneself to the environment and the degree that we adapt the environment to our own sense of purpose. Now you can see that if you simply adapt yourself to the environment, you have a sense of inadequacy, frustration. You're playing a role. Your wearing a mask and you're not really honoring yourself or doing justice to all the possibilities in your being. But as you turn within then you discover your real being, not the role that you're playing, not your mask. Then that is like the pattern which then can be unfurled in your personality. Then you'll see how that does alter the situation outside. The situation you can't alter outside but by altering yourself or at least unfurling possibilities in yourself, then those situations are going to alter. The Sufis recognize imaginary forms as being valid aspects of reality, as real as the physical world, perhaps even more. So that's the world of mithal, the level of metaphor, a very great power, the power of transformation. As Pir o Murshid says the divine creativity is carried further by man. Then as one moves upwards towards awakening beyond life, as Ibn Arabi says, the images fall apart. Do you see that these are devices? As the Tibetans call it illusory body, illusory body because it's, well it's Maya, it's magic, it's imagination, it's a means of revealing meaningfulness. So it's a device. So that's where you get to a threshold kind of situation where you, perhaps you can do it. I hope you're doing it while I'm talking. You see you can fashion your aura of light like a sculpture. The way you want. Or rather, you're attunement in your realization is going to pass into your imaginary faculty and will fashion that light, that fabric of light, in a way that says something about your real self. For example a musician, a composer. The attunement of the composer is going to be translated in the form of melody or the rhythm. This is where the language of wasifas is a very useful one. Because just think you have all these qualities in your being. And every time that you can just focus on one quality. And the beauty is that we have language here that is not confusing that is different from our ordinary language. And so it's like signal, that word has consequences, and the relevance of that word. And so then you see how (tape turns) ..but if you can translate the wazifa in terms of a form in the fabric of your aura, the fabric of light, then of course it's most revealing because that imagination translates meaningfulness into form. And that's what life is about, it's the revelation of pure meaningfulness. But then you reach, as I say, a threshold state which is the celestial counterpart. And as I say again we're using words but I'd like us to really experience it because it's not like the light of your aura. It's light of course in a sense, but not in the physical sense in the least. And it definitely does not have a profile. And it changes all the time, much more malleable than your aura or of course your face. And it responds to your emotional attunement much more that to your will, or in fact doesn't respond to your will, or even to your realization. Yoga calls it Ananda samadhi. That is samadhi of emotion, of ecstasy. So you fashioned, that higher body of yours is fashioned by the emotion of glorification. The way that glorification is translated into form. Look at the forms of the cathedrals or the mosques or the synagogues or the temples and so on. It's extraordinary to see how emotion can be translated into form. And how the form itself is going to awaken the emotion. The emotion of glorification translated into form. So you're inner body can be formed just like a cathedral by the inspiration of your act of glorification. But it is true that in order to do that one has to recover the innocence of the child that is still in one. One has to discard any, not just discard, but reject any kind of manipulative tendencies in one's ego. One becomes defenseless in fact. You're very vulnerable of course. Perhaps you know that Murshid distinguishes between two types of angels, those that are not, let's say prior to incarnation and after incarnation. Or then prior to incarnation or who have not incarnated and perhaps do not incarnate. So the first one is like a child, he calls it embryonic. So that's one aspect of your being, the purity at the core of your being that is immaculate and can never be sullied by whatever you do or the impressions of the world. It is very ingratiating to know that, that it's there. So somehow one can reverse one's creative process to get back to the original state of the embryo and then from there start growing again. Start from scratch, as I said. Then as Pir o Murshid said, there are those angels who having incarnated and are now disincarnated. But they carry all the wisdom of the experience of the earth, so a kind of maturity. And of course a great art is to be able to integrate that innocence with that maturity and that wisdom. That's what we mean by the masters. So we have the wonderful faculty in our meditation of getting into the consciousness of whoever we want. So we could get into the consciousness of the angelic beings. And that is really a matter of affinity. It's because there is something in us that is of the same nature that we are able to shift our consciousness in the experience of what it would be like to be that being, and then of course of the masters. And that is something that is going to lift you beyond the limitations of your personal identity. As Pir o Murshid says, As one evolves, one looks to the heavens instead of to the earth. One looks upwards. And then when you look down, it's like looking at the earth from a helicopter. You don't really want to crawl like a worm when you have wings to fly like an eagle. So the birds come down to earth for a morsel of food but they don't really belong to the earth. It's a sense of identity that will give us access into the awakening. One is in exile, as the Sufis say. That's why the clue of Christ, They are in the world but not of the world. So he doesn't say they're not in the world, like the sanyasin is not in the world. But according to Christ you're in the world but not of the world. As I say I remember that rishi in the cave. And the people were asking him silly questions. And he really tried to get into the thinking of those people. It was so difficult for him. So that's the kind of thing. That's what Suhrawardi means by, The witness in you is the witness in the heavens. You see how one thinks in a commonplace way but it seems so trite. So far away from realization of the reality behind the hoax. So that's the next degree after Malakut, Jabarut, where you, it is, as the Sufis say, it is the revelation of the meaningfulness, divine meaningfulness which tries to come through in the world. But you don't need to depend upon your existential experience. That's a secondary form of knowledge but you have access in to this primary form of knowledge which is the divine thinking. So now what the Sufis say is that God does not reveal Him/Herself to you through a device like through, God knows Him/Herself through you, or you know God through yourself and so on. But what Ibn Arabi says, God reveals Himself to you without the devices. But then without qualities as pure intention, pure meaningfulness. As Newton says, I think like the Universe thinks. Well he says I think as God thinks, actually. That is what Pir o Murshid calls God consciousness. Now you see there are two stages here you see, and the Sufis are very clear about it. One is Lahut and the other is Hahut. Lahut, the devices are just the seeds, the seeds of all that ever manifests as in existential modes of reality. So that's what we invoke in the wasifas, the archetypes. These archetypes are continually changing of course, not permanent. Then it's there is a word of Ibn Arabi, If the names were not, the named one would appear. And that's the Zikre rather than the wazifa. The wazifa are still the names but the zikre, the reality behind the names, the essence, divine object. Another word, as long as you focus on an object, you miss out on Him. Whatever that means, Hu of course, Him/Her, the reality behind. As Pir o Murshid says, his last words are, When the unreality of life dissolves then the reality pushes against my heart. That's the ultimate. That's Hahut. As Jelaluddin Rumi says, It was a wonderful game of I and Thou until it was the I behind the I and Thous that averred itself to be the ultimate reality. So it's beyond the subject , shahid, at the Jabarut level. It's beyond the seeds that ever manifested in the world, Lahut. It's reality beyond duality, a duality of I and not I, or subject object. There is always a sense of awakening as though one had been caught in a hoax, a perspective, an illusion. All of a sudden one realizes that one had been caught in a perspective. Now one is free from that perspective. AUG 04, 1995 Tape 08 Abode Leaders Retreat Tape 8, August 1995 ...samadhi. So there are still people lingering at the breakfast table. So we'll, I thought we might just as well listen to some music before we start for good while other people are checking in. Did you play ( ) ? But can you find( ) ? Then number 2 and number 3. It's Arabic, he is a Syrian Sufi, when he was in Paris. The way of the dervish as opposed to the way of the sanyasin or the ascetic. And the beauty of what we are able to play on several registers, just like an organ or a piece of music. All this richness, this rich menu let's say of meditations give us an overall sense of meaningfulness of ourselves. So rather than feeling that we are pulled in different directions, it would be good to integrate these two complementary poles of our being in that practice that we've already done before and as I recommend you to do as you get back home again, is always start the day with this breathing practice. Perhaps you remember that what I said is that in Yoga you start with the individual and try to reach beyond the personal to the impersonal and that's also in Buddhism. In Sufism you always start by looking at things from the divine point of view. Even if you can't do it, you start reversing your consciousness. Eventually it happens. So it is, this is based upon the words of Kalabari actually. I think of course he is referring to the dervishes, he says As God exhales He/She descends from the solitude of unknowing in order to manifest the bounty of His/Her being in existence. And the existential set. And the emotion, the driving emotion behind that is Ishq Allah, nostalgia. So then you consider your desire to build a beautiful world, beautiful people, to have a nice house, nice clothes and so on, whatever it is that you might wish for, beautiful music and so on. It's not in Buddhism, Hinduism it ways you from your spiritual reach. In Sufism as long as you see it as an expression of the divine Ishq, the divine impulse to make God a reality as Murshid says, then you are enriching the world by your labor, and your enthusiasm, and your accomplishment. And you are making God a reality, somehow giving expression to the heavens on earth. But if you alienate yourself from that divine impulse which is the drive behind your own desire, then of course you become selfish and greed, manipulation and all kind of things that lead to war and misery and cruelty and so on so forth, tyranny. That's why when you're doing this you somehow consider your exhaling to be an extension of the divine exhaling, so you're not in this alone breathing and trying to master your breathing, but somehow it's part of a total experience. And when you inhale you experience divine inhaling whereby God derives or extracts the quintessence of what has been gained by human experience let's say back into the software. It is being recycled. And that is something missing in Buddhism. So he has, Buddha says, just exhausted his life. There is no purpose in it anymore, exhausted his life. There is a total gap between being and becoming. Whereas here the unteem stars give birth to the life eternal. So there is somehow a bridge now between what you experience contributing towards the divine realization. So our realization contributing towards the divine realization. So it's a totally new way of looking at things. That's Sufism. That means that our experience has value and our accomplishment has value for the totality, not just for ourselves. 'n the other hand it is also true to say that, perhaps you noticed that we were getting this morning, well it was a kind of samadhi, experience of samadhi but in Sufi terms. If you remember, in fact Murshids words were You discover your immortality. I even said it gives vent to your discovering the impersonal dimension of your being. And that is true, that Hahut lies beyond the personal into the impersonal because it's God consciousness in the Unity. There's no diversity there. That the beauty of what we're doing is there is always the opposite. So the importance of the individual, that's what you find in Sufism. The importance that God becomes diversified in each one of us and unique in each one of us. And the wazifa for that is Ya Samad. Sarmad means unique. Not Sarmad but Samad. And I must say that I find that that tallies with concerns of psychotherapists because the eastern philosophies tend to make one lose a sense of one's own idiosyncrasies. And as I said before our it is a sense of our uniqueness, our specific nature that gives us our free will and choice, therefore selectivity. And that's very important because that is the key to awakening in life rather than beyond life. I already said the immune system is based upon me and not me. And in the course of our retreat we have had those moments when I've tried to emphasize or draw attention your real being like discovering one's real being, who one is. One tends to blur one's identity in order to adapt itself to the environment, as I say playing a role or wearing a mask. So this is a great breakthrough if you realize that this is me. It's the way the Universe is customized in a particular way . It's not just the Universe. It's customized in a particular way. And this of course will enhance our creativity. That's why it's useful to meditate on the masters as we've often done, we've already done it here to. Reaching into the consciousness of the masters. But that does not give vent to our uniqueness. And so it is good to touch upon the archetype. But then I think we have to do the other way around and imagine how we could be if we would be as we might be. And that's the wazifa Dhul Jelal wa'l Ikram or Khanoon Jamil wa'l Ikram. Because the pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. You've already heard that. How I could be, that's creativity. Now what are the clues to awakening in life because awakening in life doesn't mean simply slipping back into the nitty gritty, back into the very commonplace way that everybody's into. That's nothing particular, just opening one door an closing it and opening another. So how, what does it mean in terms of our experience in our meditations? Well there is one one word of Murshid that is very helpful. He says Realize that you have come on earth in order to discover your spiritual existence. So there is something gained in the experience of earth that is not to be found in samadhi. A more powerful saying of Murshid is In Man is awakened the same power that created the Universe. It's not just a wonderful idea, a very powerful idea. Experience it when your meditating, in me that same power that created the Universe is present and can be awakened. Pir o Murshid goes on to say Where can you find God if not in Man? Well he said in the human being who has become God conscious. So it's the opposite of a lot of theologies, God up there and we miserable worms down here. But the words that were used by one of the Christian authors of the past. It's like God is a virtuality becoming a reality as us. Quite the opposite to thinking that the world is illusion and reality is there hidden behind it. It's the other way around. It's very paradoxical. Both are valid. Both points of view are valid. It's just that as one advances in meditation, one begins to be able to reconcile the irreconcilables. It's a kind of super logic. The ancient Christians call that (conjuncu opositorum) the conjunction of opposites. And as I said yesterday, if you fraction a magnet, each fragment has a positive pole and a negative pole. So you can't really fragment the Universe because each fragment carries the totality potentially in itself. So that's a thought. When you meditating that you're not just a fraction of the Universe, but the whole Universe is potentially present within you. And can be - that's just the first step - and the second is that it can be awakened. Now perhaps the criterion between awakening beyond life and awakening in life is that we emphasize, or we highlighted realization in awakening, awakening beyond life, and in awakening in life we are highlighting action, transformation, instead of just realization. That is for the Sufis God acquires a mode of knowledge through us that was not in the principles of His being, His/Her being. If we get into Samadhi states we get into the first form of cognizance whereby God knows His/Herself in the principles of His/Her being. But when we awaken in life, then we realize what is gained by God through having actuated Him/Herself as us. The second mode of knowledge that God acquires. So it's not, at first seemed like those are the clues that gave us access into the divine intention. Now we see that it's more than just clues. That is where the divine principles become reality. It's quite the opposite. Now these are as I say wonderful words and thoughts, and it's much more difficult to meditate this way rather than reaching samadhi because we encounter again a paradox, and that is much as we would like to believe indeed that we carry the potentialities of the totality within us and even the principles, we're like the exemplar of an archetype. Never the less we do have, since awakening in life does bring up a sense of our personality identity, we have a sense of our inadequacy. It is very difficult to reconcile a sense of inadequacy with a sense of the divine perfection that we believe is invested in our being. But that's a belief, and that's not good enough. Once more reconciliation of the irreconciliation challenge to our minds. And we have encountered in the course of this retreat ways of thinking, modes of thinking that are different from the ordinary commonplace way of thinking. Murshid defines that, he puts the accent very clearly, he says the aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the ego, the reconciliation of the irreconcilables. The greatest pride together with the greatest humility at the same time. But these are words. Do we know how to do that? Do we know how to keep our heads high when, not only when we're humiliated, but we feel that we have humiliated ourselves? That is do we allow, are we able to maintain our self respect when everything tends to make us have a low profile? That is the challenge. And there is only way of doing it and that is to accept that one carries within one the divine legacy. otherwise it's not possible. So I don't know how spirituality is possible without the concept of God, I must say. And then there is an engratiating thought of Murshid and that is that God is able to discover his perfection in our imperfection. Now that's a very challenging thought. I often illustrate it by the voice of Caruso that could be retrieved in our time in it's pristine glory. Bad recordings. So it's present within it's distortions. And that's a very engratiating thought when one has a low self esteem to think, yes there is a distortion there which has occurred for several reasons. But however the divine perfection is still present within this distortion, within the distortion. That's why Shams Tibriz says The man of God is a palace in a ruin. The ruins of Perciphilis are to my mind much more beautiful than the casino at Monti Carlo. It's a palace in a ruin, yes, but it's a palace. So think of yourself as a palace in a ruin. Unless you'd like to think of yourself as a palace, I mean, I hope there's no offense but there has been some wear and tear. But then I think this is so important in our awakening in life to be able to see that perfection within it's distortion, I mean in us. And it is, well it's possible to reverse the distortion in our higher self. That's where we have a power, tremendous creative powers, at that celestial level. Personality level, well OK there are flaws and so we have to live with them. Well it's alright as long as one does not identify with that distortion. Now the wasifas, as I say, the beauty of the wazifa is that it's a language that's different from ordinary language. It's the language of symbols. Our languages are of course symbols. But these are different symbols. And so their connotations are not exactly the same as our familiar languages. And therefore the signal would trigger off the attunement and realization corresponding to it. So it's a kind of skill we're developing by the wazifa. Your repeating the wazifa won't help, but if while repeating the wazifa, you're aware that your triggering off an attunement and a mode of realization, then of course it acts as a trigger, as a catalyst. So here we have wazifa that are very helpful to awaken in life. One is Ya Majid/ Ya Mawjud. Majid means, it's often translated by divine majesty, but I think it's divine glory. So somehow esteem for the divine glory. It's what the churches are trying to do, to portray that divine glory in (tape turns) Somehow the important thing is that we are highlighting a value in our priority list of values that we may encounter perfunctorily, but we're highlighting it. We're giving it a lot of precedence, we're focusing on it in our meditation. And so that, you see, by thinking of a quality and especially the attunement of that quality, one is awakening that quality in one, one is creating circumstances that favor the awakening of that quality. For example if your thinking of divine majesty, glory, that's going to awaken in you a sense of nobility and a sense of the sacred and a sense of values and so on so forth, which will immediately effect your personality and give you self respect. There is a word, another wazifa that I find very helpful, that is Muis, Ya Muis, and it means the one who honors you, who honors you. And God is the one whom we honor of course, but God also honors us. And that is a thought to be found in Al Hallaj when he said, God projected His being as humans and then he saluted the humans, and he even congratulated them on their good looks. So like he saw Himself in this being. So it's a very ingratiating thought. Like if we glorify God, we are responding to the act where by God is really glorifying Himself through us. That's Sufism you see. That's a thought that will help you to overcome your bad self esteem. As you know that is one of the problems that psychotherapists have to face day after day, and month after month, and year after year, the same old story, bad self esteem, you see. So I must say I don't see how the psychotherapists can deal with it unless they listen to Pir Vilayat. Well I mean unless they listen to Pir o Murshid, I mean to the whole spiritual tradition. Because I think one wallows in guilt and self deprivation, degradation. Somehow one prides oneself in one's humility of self pride. It's much more difficult to be proud than to be humble. When one feels a little bit tittery, one doesn't feel one is quite up to that pride, but it does help one. Mawjud is a wonderful word. It means make God a reality, that's what it really means. Majid, existence and Mawjud. And it's a word that is really conterversed in Islam because you know like the orthodox Jew is that God manifests, (tatrelea), and of course Zahir means to manifest. But Mawjud means to become a reality, to actuate. And that's for a lot of Moslems absolutely unacceptable although it's one of the wasifas, fortunately. I mean I remember giving a talk and that there was a Murshid was at my talk and he said, The scholarly speaker has given a wonderful exposition of Sufism, but... And the but was of course that God of course manifests but does not become a reality in the world. That's a breakthrough. It's to be found in Sufism, but I would say that the emphasis is to be found in Pir o Murshid's teaching. Maybe that is the message of our time. And so the message of our time is awakening in life rather than awakening beyond life. So you might say, Why did we take all that trouble, all these days to awaken beyond life, and now we are doing the opposite? But I think we have to do is to link those two, Majid and Mawjud. otherwise it won't work . otherwise we're right back to where we were. There is a word of Al Hallaj, 'h God take away my I am from between thee and me. And another one, My Nazutiat so that thy Lahutiat will prevail. Nazut my human nature, so that thy nature can come through, Lahut, the archetypal level. So I think that's right, well I think he could say it better. He could say like the way that thy Lahutiat has become my Nazutiat, I've become sclerosed in the way thy Lahutiat has become limited in my Nahutiat. Now I could have a fresh dispensation so that thy Lahutiat may burst forth the walls of my being so that it may incorporate my Nazutiat, so it may incorporate more of thy Lahutiat. So I find it very, as I say, wazifa are like a language. And their combination gives you a different mode of realization. You as representatives must be able to play with these notes like a musician plays with notes and scales and things. So Majid/Mawjud as an axis instead of Batin/Zahir, that's another axis from inside outside, manifesting and this is actuating. Or awakening in life is actuating. Just a thought occurred to me which I would say is the key to awakening in life. That is knowing by doing instead of just knowing. A sculptor discovering his/her sculpture by making it. God discovering by becoming us. It doesn't take away His perfection. Then I could quote Ibn Arabi. I know it sounds metaphysics, but still I think it's so important for us to understand behind what we're experiencing rather than just to jump into experience and getting lost in our, spaced out in meditation. There is a very important formula of Ibn Arabi. He said By discovering the divine consciousness as the source of my consciousness I confer upon God a mode of knowing. In other words our realization contributes towards the divine knowing. Because although God knows Himself in the principle of His being, there's a further knowledge that is acquired through the fact that His/Her consciousness is focalized through our consciousness. There are two modes of knowledge. And Murshid talks about these two modes of knowledge, knowledge of the heavens and knowledge of the earth. And he says that wisdom is born of the encounter of these two modes of knowledge. The second formula is, of Ibn Arabi, is he doesn't say discovering any more. He says, By actuating the divine nature which is the ground of my personality, I confer upon God a mode of being. I confer upon God a mode of being. Knowledge by recognizing the source of ones consciousness being by actuating it, by making it a reality. And that's the second awakening. So it's not just let thy will be done, but it's let thy wish become my desire. That is I as an individual play a part in God becoming a reality. So if you want to know what the purpose of our life is, it's very clear. What a chance we have. And at my age one realizes life passes very quickly. So as Sufis say, don't you dare die before you attain illumination. So that is these two things. These are words of course and they are beautiful. But try to see in our meditation like discovering the Shahid, the divine consciousness as the ground of our consciousness. That's very important like for example. You see there are two ways of doing this. I could illustrate it, walking along, making a retreat in Paris and walking along the Seine, not a conventional way of making a retreat. And being of course in the state of ecstasy walking along the Seine. And then thinking, 'h isn't this wonderful how the world is so beautiful and so on, the sun shining. And then thinking, Hum, I'm the eyes through which God sees. And you think to your self, Well that's still duality. In fact my glance is the divine glance. It has become limited, but still it's the divine glance. It's not just the means, not just the instrument. Then you have a third degree of realization. And Ibn Arabi says, God is not only the seer, but that through which he sees. So that's one thing you do in meditation. Instead of thinking I am experiencing, in the second stage it is God who is experiencing through me. And then ultimately in the third stage it is God who is experiencing. That's Jabarut, that's the level of Jabarut. And the other one is continually being conscious of, now this is a different type of cognizance because it's based upon experience, upon doing. That is you discover God, who remains just a belief, by making the seed of a quality into a reality in your personality. One is discovering God by awakening God in one's being. So for example we are repeating the wazifa. You think for example the qualities are let's say the highest expression, device whereby God manifests His being. Beyond that is of course Hahut, the unity where there is no device any more. So you just take a quality like for example Haqq. And you think to yourself, Now, well remember the words of Murshid of course God is hidden behind creation. And he says awaken God within. So you think, OK, now that is one of the features of the divine being is Haqq. But the point is just repeating Haqq, Haqq,Haqq, it doesn't do anything for you. Think to yourself, now supposing I would become more truthful. Then the divine quality Haqq which is latent in me will become active, will become awakened. And therefore I'm awakening God within. And where is God to be found if it is not in the God realized being? This is what Murshid says. Now the wazifa has a totally different effect upon you than just repeating the word. And then you follow it up with, OK I'm going to see that person, I'm going to tell him now. Well I'm afraid, it might be catastrophic, a real breakdown and so on, a real drama and and all the rest of it, but it's better for my whole life to be ruined and build it up again on solid ground. Now then Haqq is a reality. otherwise it's fiction of one's imagination. That's what Murshid means by make God a reality. So the key to awaking in life is awakening God within. As Murshid says, So that He doesn't remain just a fiction of your imagination, or your belief. So by doing so I confer upon God a mode of being. But of course as you can imagine there are another two propositions because by conferring on God a mode of being, one does confer upon Him a mode of knowing. And by conferring upon God a mode of knowing, one confers upon Him a mode of being. So there are four propositions. But anyway it's difficult enough to, let's consider the first two. So it is knowing by doing. Now then, well we're way beyond the time. Perhaps you could go and do this, work on this and then we have another session. There is still something we need to do. So awakening in life one sees how the emotion of the Universe is customized as one personal emotion. Instead of one's emotion being neutral, just seeking peace. Ishq Allah, nostalgic. All that means in terms of joy and suffering. Peace there is no duality. But here there is the price of joy which is suffering. And really honor that enrichment that takes place by suffering, instead of wanting to overcome suffering. Samadhi is an anesthetic. It's better to have the courage to confront life and suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice. So we meet again at 11 o'clock. Is that right? The whole program is totally askew now. Yes, why not? I've given so many practices, I think you can do with an hour. If it rains then we'll call you back. It's your last chance, now of sitting in nature and being on your own. AUG 04, 1995 Tape 09 Abode Leader's Retreat Tape 9, August 1995 Yes when in a retreat concentration it is terribly difficult to speak. One feels that one is betraying one's soul. And that's what is expected of me. At this stage when we are about to pass the threshold between a retreat concentration and our lives, we reflect of course upon the meaningfulness of our lives and the relevance of what we're doing. And what our retreat has brought to us is light that can open up new vista in our lives. So it's not like just opening up one drawer then closing it then getting into another one. No build a bridge. Of course I said before, the difficulty of Sufi meditation is that we need to do every day is to ask ourselves very clearly what are my motivations in life. First of all there are two things. This is muhasibi, it's self examination. First one is what are those things that I really treasure above any other? Then of course there may be several, priorities list. But you can't define it very clearly, but still some sense of what is more important, what is less important. Then the second is, am I really doing it in life or is it just wishful thinking, just some kind of an ideal that is not real? And then one tries to see what are the qualities that I need to develop in order to be able to fulfill that purpose. So it's not in order to react to an environment but in order to live up to an ideal. So you see that there are several considerations there. The first one would be simply in our minds if we were to prescribe a wazifa. And this is what I'm going to do next week. Well then what is the quality that you need to develop in order to meet a problem. The mind figures that out and I would say very inadequately because we feel compelled to fit in to the demands of the environment and consequently tend to lose ourselves. Meditation is sometimes a buffer that we place, surround ourselves with a zone of silence and place a buffer between ourselves and the environment so that we don't simply react but are able to consult our deeper self. And if your so consult your deeper self then of course you do get in touch with those qualities that are trying to emerge irrespective of what the problems are. And so they may be quite different and surprise you because you seem to be developing a quality that doesn't seem to have any relevance to your daily life. But then actually there is a third factor and a forth one but in my questionnaire there are only three. The third one is really, what are the qualities that I prioritize at this stage of my life, whether they are coming through or not, or whether I need them in order to encounter my problems. What is it that I really value? That will... That's your ideal of course. That will have the effect of changing your view about what you think is the quality you need to develop in order to meet your problem because now you're seeing it in an overview instead of being right caught up in the trauma of your life. And then the forth one is of course what are the qualities that I would like to develop, that I would like to be? And that is your free will and I think that ultimately you must develop the quality that you want to be yourself. Now all the things that we have experienced in the course of this retreat are incorporated in the zikre. So I would like us just to repeat the zikre a few times just to get into the feeling of it. And then try and get deeper into the meanings corresponding to the different phases instead of just repeating the words, you know receptively. La ilaha illa 'lla Hu (repeats 3 times) May I interrupt you now, and then we'll keep on saying it, and then I'll keep on interrupting, because I want to try and get into each one of those phases. Now so when you're in the circle think of those words of Jelaluddin Rumi, A million galaxies are a foam on the shoreless sea. And in the middle we dance. And it is God who is dancing. So somehow this kind of cosmic vision of the Universe that you get sometimes from looking at the stars if you are able to really reach out from planet earth and get into the whole whirling of the galaxies. A sense of, a kind of cosmic sense of,well life. That's what it is. It is just incredible. So that of course does have the effect of extending your consciousness beyond what we assume to be ourselves which is a very limited notion of ourselves. And of course there is an attunement there you can't describe of course, but a sense of vastness, and also particularly a sense of liberation from one's notion of oneself or one's situation in life and so on. Seems like a prison sometimes. Perhaps you know, you've seen that show of Marcel Marceau in which he is mime and he describes, he is miming, and he gives the impression that he is walled in, very narrow walls, and he keeps on pushing and pushing the walls further. And the further he pushes the walls the more wonderful he is able to dance. And eventually he dances the cosmic dance, that's the feeling. And Murshid gave that sense of of pushing the walls away from the limits of self. So the zikre does that to you. Now of course we've done the Zikre of light when we were building a temple. So it is true that by pushing the walls, one is clearing a vacuum in the center of one's being like in a temple. That's where rebirthing takes place. So as we, the head comes down when we say illa. That is where we turn within you see. Now we have over the course of this retreat worked very much with turning within, although with different aspects. And what I would recommend is to review these different aspects of turning within as you're doing the zikre. Therefore what I prefer doing, what I like to do myself is to stop, say it a few times then stop. Now I've got to concentrate on, now I'm turning within I say illa, I'm really turning within. I'm not cutting myself away from the world, enclosing myself, encapsulating myself in my psyche. No I'm looking at the Universe but from inside. That's the first step. And the second one is that something new is emerging in me from ex nilo, from the depth of my being, rebirthing. In fact it is God who is reborn as me like in the middle of the galaxy. Something new emerges from the vacuum in the center of the galaxy. So can we do the zikre again just three times, and try to remember this as we say illa instead of just saying the word. Yes, when you say La ilaha, you remember this morning I said the more you do practices the more a kind of power comes through you which I call divine power. So it's not just a sense of immensity that you get but a sense of what Murshid said when he said that in man is found the very power that moved the Universe, is awakened the same power. So you're awakening that same power that moves the Universe which is latent within yourself. So it's very powerful. And that is the attunement of the dervish. La. So it's not your personal power, your ego that says La. But somehow the whole Universe coming through you as we say La.. La ilaha illa 'lla Hu. Who is whispered. La ilaha illa 'lla Hu. You see it's much better to do it this way than to just keep on repeating it in what Christ called vain repetitions. Because then you don't get the whole benefit of the zikre which is realization and also the unfoldment of your being. Now then when we say La, illa 'lla. Actually there really are three a's but you don't say the second a. illa 'lla. Every time I have tried to describe the zikre to myself, I was enthused by what I discovered but then I found that I had to scrap it because there was a further insight. But I think that one had to just go through that insight and then replace it by a further one and not get stuck by one's interpretation of the zikre because it's absolutely infinite. But what is interesting is the effect of the sounds upon our body and our psyche. And of course "a" has the effect of opening up and "i" of converging into the core, into the nucleus of the vortex, into the void. Here we have three "a"s . You see I tend to contradict myself because I keep on seeing new things about it. But obviously all that we have learned about the different planes is going to help you to lift your consciousness in the zikre after having gone into the circle and reached into the depth as the ascent. And there I think it's very important to have a clear visualization of those different levels of one's being. Not planes as if they were somewhere else in space, but levels of one's own being. So there you distinguish, you see the "l" has a different effect than the "a". The "a" is focused on a certain center, whereas the "l" is always the transit from one center to another. So there you have those two principles of course. You have the whirling galaxies and then the new centers are created. So illa, the "a" of illa, in my present understanding is already in your heart center. Then the first "a" of allah that one doesn't pronounce which is very mysterious is in the thymus gland which I call the wheel of fire. Then you get another "a" which is, so that is the celestial sphere you see. Then you get another "a" which if the Lahut level, the level of divine qualities. So these are kind of guidelines. I don't say that these are absolutes. It's like a ladder that will give you a sense of I'm shifting my consciousness up from this level to this next level and now to a further level, and Lahut is of course impersonal. And then you have the "h" of Hu which stands for Hahut which is beyond the diversity of the qualities, or the divine Unity behind multiplicity. Then the "u" which is very paradoxical because, you find it in the word "human". It's really awakening in life. Very quickly you're awakening beyond life in the "h" of "allah, and then in life in Hu. Passing from one to the other. So could you just think of this as we say the zikre now again three times? Zikre. So you already anticipate the "h" before you say the "Hu". (zikre) That's why one does not turn one's head upwards when one says "hu", but when one ways the "h" one turns one's head towards the heart center.(zikre) You have the three "a"s then the "h" and then "hu". Now there is a more advanced zikre, or dervish's zikre, in which one says La ilaha illa Hua which reminds me of one of Yehova. And that gives you more emphasizes the awakening in life. Let's try it and see how it works. (zikre with "Hua" x 4) So the last "a " is in the heart again. And this time the heart is transformed. The second time you reach the heart it this transformed heart because of the "h". (repeat zikre several times) Now, may I interrupt you again? The two ll's of 'lla are often associated with the two throws of an arrow in the Mirage story. And what that means is a kind of measure that the Arabs were using in the metric system. So it indicates a kind of energy that lifts you from one plane to the next. Like think of the thrust behind the arrow is in the bow. Perhaps you can do that. The first one is reaching in the Malakut level, the celestial spheres. And the second one is the sphere of all possibilities which is what we design by the wazifa. (repeat zikre 3 times) Now there is the fikre of the zikre. That you do as you exhale go into the circle. As your head comes down you inhale and you continue to inhale as your head comes down. And then hold your breath with the "Hu". Let's try to do it a few times. Try to keep the "Hu" as long as you can. (fikre) Now I find that to emphasize awakening in life, I tend to think of the "h" when I'm holding my breath. That's because Hahut is beyond life, holding your breath in suspense. Then add the "u" to the "h" as I start exhaling and divide the exhaling in two, especially if you say "Hua". And you do that in the first half of the exhaling. And then you continue the second half of the exhaling in the circle. Then the inhaling is again divided in two. "illa" and "lla". Now we'll try and see how that works. (fikre) Alright now I hope you don't mind my interrupting again because these are just instructions that we can practice on our own. You see it is true that awakening in life seems to be the ultimate objective of life. As I said before awakening by doing. If you remember this formula of Ibn Arabi. Well there is a third one which is, By actuating or actualizing the divine nature in my personality I confer upon God a mode of knowing. So it's knowing that arises out of doing. Awakening in life. Of course then it seems obvious that the whole, as Pir o Murshid said, purpose of life is to make God a reality. But we are on the planet for a very short time. And so whatever has been acquired by making God a reality needs to be eternalized, hence the word the umteen stars will give birth to life eternal. And hence the importance of not just incarnation but resurrection. So there are two wasifas here which are, one is Warith which is divine inheritance, a word that Murshid is using all the time. And the other is Ba'ith which is resurrection. And that's why the Sufis say, Die before death and resurrect now. Don't wait for death to resurrect. So Ba'ith, it's on the handout anyway. So I've been, in repeating the zikre of course I've been trying to see how that comes in. Of course I have different views about it. But each one of you will see your way of making that transit between making God a reality so that reality may be eternalized instead of being transient. And as you know I've often used the model of the perfume of the flowers. The flowers are very smart because they are able to overcome the transiency of their being by turning into perfume. Then they live eternally. But it only happens by letting go of the contingent part of your being. So resurrecting before death means that one needs to start while one is still alive to clear a lot of things in one's being that are contingent, that are the infrastructure which carry the hallmark of one's being but never the less there is a choice that needs to be made. Now there is a secret to this, again in Pir o Murshids words when he said, The eternity of your being. I said a little earlier on if you remember, the perinity within the change. That's not quite your eternity but it gives you some sense of your eternity. But we are talking about another dimension. There is a very strange feeling to be resurrected while walking on the planet. It's a very strange feeling. That means, if you remember, it means extracting the quintessence of what has been gained by one's experience and ridding it of its dross, of it's contingent aspect. Just like drawing perfume out of flowers. That's why Murshid puts the emphasis on the essence when he says, You'll get to a point when you are able to sense the essence behind what you experience. So instead experiencing the facts and the circumstances and so on. Those are secondaries, those are devices. But what is essential is the essence. So now let us just consider our problems and see how one assesses the problems on the strength of the circumstances. This is the way it is you see. It's the circumstances. And fails to see the essence. The circumstance is just a support for that essence. I find it's easier to, because we need to have something concrete now to work with, I find it easier to think that certain qualities are being enacted by the problem. So that is the essential aspect of the problem. It's not the circumstance of the problem. But what are the qualities that are being enacted. In order to do that of course one needs to turn within. It's a matter of giving priority to what is more important rather than what is more urgent. And we generally do the opposite, give priority to what is more urgent rather than what is more important. And the great beings, if you look around you, you'll find the great beings will always give priority to what is important. There is a story of St. Paul who had founded this hospital of a thousand people. And it wasn't St. Paul, it was St. Vincent de Paul, yes. And the authorities had sent a delegation to honor him and he wasn't there. What he was doing was working in the hospital. The same thing with Buddha. His father had a big reception for him, elephants and so on. He wasn't to be found. He was begging in the streets. The essential. So that is the secret of Ba'ith is to try to earmark what is essential. And then one really has to let go of many things which one may be attached to but which are not as essential as what is essential. In other words the essence. I think the thing to do is to think that God resurrects, not just we that resurrect. Perhaps you know that saying of Murshid which I think is absolutely the core of Murshid's teaching when he said, the branches and flowers and fruit or whatever it is, the trunk of the tree. It all was originally in the seed. And at the end of the cycle the seed appears in the heart of the flower. So our unfoldment is like the unfoldment of the branches, and the fruit of the flower and whatever it is, and the trunk of the tree, even the root. But the seed emerges and continually tries to emerge in the cycle of the plant. And that is what Murshid means by awakening God within. So that is something that is trying to happen but that we need to facilitate. I would add to that, and I'm not sure that it's in Murshid's words. Anyway I would like to add that of course that's the recycling, the seed always appears, but then there is always the mutation of the seed. But I would like to add to that, yes, but out of the flower the perfume is extracted and in the perfume the seed lives at a higher level. That's resurrection. Well this is where we have to end this wonderful sharing together. A last remark I wanted to make before I forget it. And that is a practice I think you need to work with, we all need to work with. That is Ya Jahni/ Ya Muhni. Ya Jahni is, that's on the hand out. It's a custom of the Sufis wherever they are walking on the path, if there are branches or stones on the way, they remove them for those who come after them. And that's what Jahni means, clearing the way. It's clearing the way for oneself and also clearing the way for others. And the consequence that it gives you divine power. And that power is called Muhni. And it must not be in any way confused with being on an ego trip. And so I find the best way to to avoid that one should go on an ego trip, because that is the temptation all along the way, all the time. Or then either one is on an ego trip or one is suffering form false humility . One doesn't know, you can't win which ever way you turn. I find the answer is again in Murshid's words, You discover the power in yourself the same power that moves the Universe. That is the secret of the dervish. They call it divine power. As much as we shy away from power because we want realization, in order for realization to be effective it needs to be backed by power. That's Muhni, divine power. I often try to illustrate this because otherwise it remains a word. How can it be framed in terms of human experience? Well I think of Christ standing before Pilot. Pilot had the power of the world with him and all the armies. And here was Christ accused of having done and said terrible things like I can destroy the temple and build it again. And somehow Pilot was disarmed by the being of Christ because for the first time in his life he came across Muhni. He came across divine power. He had no idea what divine power was like. He knew what the power of Rome was. I think that's very important for those of you who are suffering in perhaps your personal relationships even, or the relationship with your boss, or in any relationship in which you are confronted with a person who is on an ego trip. And you are caught in an a situation and you can' get away from it. How do you deal with it? And there is no use to try and affirm you own ego power because you're sure to be a loser in that battle, because they are throwing you in their battle field where they have advantage. So the only answer to that is divine power, and they don't know how to handle that. Practices give you divine power. I mean the way that we have been doing them. They give you divine power. With that you can have confidence to fulfill the purpose of your life. That's why I urge you to do the practices. It makes all the difference. But it's true that just simple repeating the wasifas doesn't do it. And repeating the zikre doesn't do it. And that's why we went through all the details of all the different states, and the different modes of thinking, and the emotional attunement and so on corresponding to each one of the wasifas and the zikre. Then you get a sense of the whole magnitude of the practices. Then I think you will do them. If they're effective you'll do them. (tape turns) Well I think these have been memorable moments when we were all together, especially some moments when we were so deeply connected. That continues to live in us. As I said you know people live in you and you live in people. And so now that I can see you again after, in some cases, after a long time, it's renewing my ability to find you in me and perhaps you can find me in you a little more than before. That's a connection. And that's a very limited one because of course the connection is much deeper. It goes through Pir o Murshid, the silsila of the Sufis, the Chistis amongst whom there were some highly illuminated beings. The whole traditions I tried to bring through to you, which as you see is very different from Buddhism and Hinduism. It's the tradition, as Pir o Murshid says, The tradition of kings of kings, or the king of kings. I would add the queen of queens also. And then Murshid said we're using the word God and we don't realize that when we talk of God, we mean our concept of God. We have no idea what we mean by God. And so it's only possible by, not by belief, but by the experience of God and by awakening. So even the experience of God is not enough, awakening God within. That's what he talks about. So God bless you now. I wonder how we can sort of, perhaps we could just hold hands. AUG 08, 1995 Tape 02 Leaders Training Tape 2 Pir Vilayat 8/8/95 ....Then in order to shift into another perspective two things are required. One is of course to let go of the first perspective and the other is to start cleaving to the next one. And so that letting go is typically the way of the ascetic, letting go. And also Murshid mentions the ascetic when he says, I think one of the most significant things in his teaching is that of course interest, everything in life has been achieved through interest. And he says, as you know, if you achieve something by the power that you've gained by achieving, then you can achieve something more challenging. Then he says , "indifference however is a greater power". Or you gain greater power through indifference. That's, we wonder how that fits into awakening in life. You can be awakened in life and not be in a state of dependence on the support system. And then he says because our objective limits our freedom. If our objective is impersonal, it doesn't only limit our freedom, it limits our power. So Pir o Murshid is referring to divine power which we need in order to be able to do the work that we are doing in the Sufi Order. Those of you who are Representatives have taken responsibility for people. You don't only need understanding, you need power. And it's not personal power. So how do you achieve that? Achieve? How do you open up to that divine power? So in fact Pir o Murshid says two things, and in fact they obviously seem contradictory, but as I say the reconciliation of the irreconcilables. You find this all the time in Murshid's teaching. Where on one hand he says, "You are tested in your love". And then on the other hand he says,"You are tested in your indifference". Life, we are tested in how far we are not dependent upon circumstances, and then we can love. If we depend upon the person we love, then it's not unconditional love. If you say to a child, I'll love if you are good, but if you're naughty then I won't love you", then that's not unconditional love. OK, Alright. Now I'd like us to start with that breathing practice. I think I referred it yesterday, but I've said so many things in these last days that I've really forgot if I said it or not. It is a word of Kalabadi, and I think of course he is recounting some of the practices of the Sufis. He says," As God exhales, He descends form the solitude of Unity". Exactly the words I can't remember. But all the implications is Sufism are in order to acquire a mode of cognizance that was not there before, "I was a hidden treasure that desired to be known and therefore actuated the Universe". That's the way that the hadith is generally spelled. And then there is the word of Rumi who said, "Of what point the purpose of the garden if it isn't for the love of the flowers?" So that somehow that hadith, there is a very interesting hadith because as a matter of fact, it doesn't say he, well he wished to be known. The way that it's translated is that he loved to be known or to know himself. So love comes in there. And of course it's been commented by some of the Sufis, it wasn't, I think the last Sufi who commented was Pir Vilayat who said, "I was looking everywhere for that coat, and I found that it was my own". But it's very controversial because it wasn't in order to know myself that I created the Universe, but it was for love, the possibility or you. So it's both of course. And so that accounts for that Ishq Allah. Ishq Allah is, one can translate it in a number of ways but I like the word nostalgia because there is a kind of longing in God at the abstract level to become a reality as us. And that means to, that the principles in His/Her being become an actuality in the Universe. The Universe is the fulfillment of the divine Ishq, not just desire but nostalgia. Passion in it. The consequence is enormous because it is really validating our desire to build a beautiful world of beautiful people. Sounds rather incongruous in our time I must say. But still it is the objective idealists who are optimists. That means, what Murshid said, the optimist takes the chance of winning, but the pessimist takes, yes he takes the chance of losing but the pessimist loses the chance of winning. So let's say that we're cryptic optimist. And therefore I hope that is our purpose to build a beautiful world of beautiful people. And if that is so, then that is not the way of the ascetic. It's validating all the efforts of humans for all time, building these cultures, these cathedrals, this music, all that has been achieved, even the lifestyle or the computer. All that is the expression of making that glory a tangible reality. And that's why it's so central in Murshid's teaching in regard to reality. But then, so I'm paraphrasing Kalabadi's words, but then the opposite is "as God inhales, he extracts", I'm paraphrasing,"He extracts the quintessence of what has been gained into the unity". In modern terms it would be like feedback. The software is being replanned according to the feedback gained by the hardware, and so on, reprogrammed. So that's very essential because you know I keep on quoting Rumi who says, "Tonight the umteen stars give birth to the life eternal". So that in Buddhism you have that cliff, you have that break between being and becoming. Becoming does not contribute to our being. There are two categories. Whereas here in Sufism we see that the awareness that we gain, the realization that we gain is somehow fed back into the divine consciousness. Therefore God acquires a further mode of cognizance through our realization. A very important way of looking at things. So there is no doubt that the way I would like to illustrate this extracting the essence would be like the perfume of the flowers. And so when you extract the perfume from flowers, you have to eject, or reject the dross. So there is detachment there. There is no doubt about it. So on one hand interest and on the other hand detachment, both. And so we can do that as we breath. I'd like to recommend this practice to everyone. It is a typical Sufi practice. And that is as you exhale, experience the divine Ishq Allah and experience your own wish to build a beautiful world of beautiful people as the fulfillment of that divine impulse, Murshid calls it an impulse. But of course if you alienate your personal desire from that impulse, that is when it becomes counterproductive and the cause of cruelty and tyranny and so on. As long as one is keeping in touch, keeping in line, one is just feeling. It's really a matter, I think one has, if you can do that, you think of ,Well what am I doing in life. While you're doing that, think of it as being a way of pursuing a divine impulse. So there is no break. One could even say customizing that divine impulse. And then as you feel that Ishq Allah, that nostalgia, that one could easily appropriate, I want this or I want that. That is why Murshid said, " Let thy wish become my desire". The connection between the divine Ishq and one's personal desire. Then as you inhale, then loosening the ties. That is surrounding yourself in a zone of silence. That's what we've been doing at that retreat. Placing sentinels at the doors of perception, even sentinels in your psyche so that you are not totally subjected to conditioning. In fact the inhaling is finding freedom, and not just from conditioning but from the way that one distorted that divine impulse by not connecting up with that divine impulse and simply promoting selfish motivation without any reference to what it signifies in terms of, well in terms of people of course, in terms of the Universe in general. There is a wonderful, the wazifa og course that I would suggest here is Vahid or in India one says Vadho, but if you keep on repeating it then the o is like a kind of link. But the original Arabic is Vahid. That's a very interesting word because it means the multiplicity in unity. And hid, that is just the unity. So somehow one is moving form the multiplicity and all that is gained by that interfacing, that interface between those different aspects of multiplicity and then moving back into the unity. Because ultimately it is then all fed back into the unity. And of course, there is no doubt about it that it is a perspective. In that perspective one has lost one's notion of individuality. It has merged into the whole. And that's why Ibn Arabi says at times,"Know that thou are not other than God", and at other times he says,"Know whereby you're God and whereby you're not God". It depends upon your level of consciousness. If you've reached that level of consciousness, then you don't have to say "Know whereby you're not God", because you have lost your sense of personal identity. What I'm saying therefore is that the only way for personal know-how to be fed back into the unity is by let's say offsetting our consciousness of our individuality, but, so which is samadhi but the beauty here is that one does not just stay in samadhi, but one keeps on alternating between awakening in life and awakening beyond life. Now that's a practice that I advise everyone to do. I'm doing myself of course. Now I wonder whether we could explore some kind of experiential application of the principles I mentioned yesterday which absolutely in Sufism. ( tape is double dubbed about 7 minutes.) I remember I used to be shocked by the environment the ( ) New York, 14th Street. I looked at those people, many of them were very obnoxious, and somehow I saw such beauty in them. So that's looking deeper. There is a story of Christ walking on the path and there was a dead dog. Somebody said, 'h don't look it's so ugly. And he said yes but the teeth are so beautiful. And that's why Jelaluddin Rumi says," If you could only see yourself through my eyes, you'd realize how beautiful you are." And of course it tallies with the words of the Koran, "Everywhere is the face of God", but it's hidden, tries to come through. And if we have a bad self image, well you could do the same thing looking in the mirror and trying to see your celestial face behind your physical face. And perhaps if your self esteem is based upon the mirror, you know that it is one of the most deceptive of all feedback systems. OK, now the next step is a further clue and that is in the features of our personalities. The idiosyncrasies which are a clue to what is behind it, which is the divine qualities that are trying to come through. So when you are meditating, try and become more conscious of your self image when you're contemplating the world outside. And of course you can easily get stuck with your self image, with the inadequacy of your self image. And that's where trying to cast the root of that tree or that plant that is your personality, and realizing that it is let's say less personal, in fact almost totally impersonal. And that's how God reveals Him/Herself to you as yourself. And that probably accounts for that word of Ibn Arabi which says, "By contemplating ourselves we contemplate God". And then he goes on to say, "By contemplating God we contemplate ourselves". And then," by contemplating us God contemplates himself". God is discovering Him/Herself through us, and as Murshid says, "His perfection through our imperfection". So it's a kind of measuring, but not horizontal but vertical one could say. We are always looking for ourselves in another ourselves it's often said. That's what we were talking about yesterday, one takes support from outside. Those are crutches of course, recognition until one doesn't need it any more. But this is vertical, one's connection with God as well, there are several levels here. One is trying to reverse your vantage point. We've already learned that, trying to get into the vantage point and seeing how that other person, the kind of impression that person has of one, of oneself. And now you do the same thing and try to reverse your consciousness and imagine how you look, how God discovers Him/Herself through you, that is through the limitation of one's being, the divine being can discover His/Her perfection through our limitation, I said like the voice of Caruso, in it's distortion. So that's a further stage. And so I would say that this is a clue to the wazifa. I would say that when you're repeating a wazifa, think that you're displaying a divine quality customized in you such as it is actuated in an existential condition and consequently in some, that you're not alone, that somehow it involves the whole Universe, of course what we mean by God. And so consequently think of God as discovering Him/Herself in the imperfect application that you make of His qualities in you, of His inheritance in you. I, there are two wasifas that I like to use here. They are Ye Wraith / Ye Mawjud. Because Wraith means the divine inheritance and the way that the divine inheritance is trying to come through, albeit in a limited way, in Mawjud, existence. That's a wonderful thought. Instead of Wraith, that I carry the divine inheritance, which is too general. But, yes this inheritance is trying to come through. And I need to facilitate it. And that's what I'm trying to do with the wazifa. It's not just because I'm trying to develop a quality but I am a means whereby God is discovering Him/Herself in a very special way, in a lot of new ways which were not there in the original state. Now think of a wazifa apart from those that I mentioned, but like for example, compassion -Rachman, or divine power - Kadir, mastery, truth - Haqq, any of those qualities that you must be familiar with. And instead of thinking that they are up there in God up there, no they are potentially, virtually present within the roots of that plant that is our personality. And they are trying to come through. And if we think the way God thinks instead of the way we think, we are facilitating the emergence of these qualities. And if we just think the way we think, then we are precluding the emergence of these qualities. Because we can only conceive of those qualities such as we can conceive of them in our personal understanding, our limited understanding. It makes all the difference in the wazifa. Now we could pursue this one step further. And that is, you know it's a question, I mean you say you can experience God but how can you experience God? Well we said, well you don't really experience God, but you start with the clues. And those are the physical world, what you see coming through. And then your personality. And somehow (end side one) somehow, well there is a saying of Ibn Arabi again, and that is that, "You only know the archetype through the exemplar". So that the qualities in our being that are the idiosyncrasies are the exemplars of the divine archetype which is what we mean by sifat, the divine qualities, at the level of Lahut. So one never knows those qualities in their archetypal perfection, but somehow the exemplar does give a clue. And that is where tawill comes in. That's where you have to move from the archetype, from the exemplar towards the archetype. And that's very difficult Sufi thing. I'll give you an example of that I've often quoted. That is that you come into a room and you see a very person and you think just how wonderful it is to see such a peaceful person. But the Sufi would say, how wonderful it is to see the divine peace coming through this person. So now you're highlighting the archetype. The exemplar conducts you towards the archetype. That's tawill, conducts you towards the archetype. otherwise you're right there where everybody is, that's a nice beautiful person. Anybody could say that, a different dimension. There is another aspect of this, because as I said, in Sufism, cognizance is always related with doing. Like the sculptor who discovers his/her statue by making it. As I said, by making God a reality, one confers upon God a mode, not only a mode of being, but also a mode of cognizance. So that is why the wasifas always related to this whole knighthood, fotohut, this is source of Sufism, foundation of Sufism, and that is that one feels that one is providing a service to the divine lordship by actuating His/Her qualities. So it's not just contributing towards the cognizance that God has of Him/Herself but also of making God a reality. That's why Murshid puts so much accent on making God a reality. So that is the link that is called, in the language of of chivalry it's called (sasurnty) sovereignty, or fealty. The link between the vassal and the lord. The thing is that one can only serve the lord by adopting the manner of the lord, which is called akhlaq Allah, the manner of God, which means of course adopting the qualities, or the divine qualities in one's personality because that's how one is serving God. So it's not one's self but out of service, not because one wants to become another person. And therefore there is a word of Sal Tostari, "The Lord requires a being through which His lordship becomes actuated, and that being is you".He says you are Sur Rububia. That is you're the secret of the divine sovereignty. That is a king is only a king if you recognize him as a king. It's not just recognizing, if you actually, in this case it's not the same thing, no. It's really like the link between the Lord and the sovereign saserin . It's not just recognizing the king, but recognizing the inheritance of the king in oneself and actuating it. otherwise you are not the vassal. The vassal has to really embody the Lord not just serve, or to serve has to embody. That establishes a very profound connection with God. It comes through in the word of Bastami when he says," God told me, he said my creatures want to see me, present yourselves." And he said,"Invest me with thy qualities". That's what we're doing with the wasifas you see, invest me with thy qualities. "May thy Lahutia become my Nazutia." And he said,"And unify me in thy Unity so that when they come to see thee I should not be there". Well that was Bastami's view. When he says "I should not be there" he meant his false ego. Whereas when Al Hallaj said, "Ana'l haqq" he wasn't referring to his false ego. And so he wouldn't say, "may I not be there". In fact he had a real problem with Junayd because Junayd accused him of, well of ana'l haqq, well of affirming the divinity of the human being. And he said return to the state where you were, you know Junayd you know was return to the state where you were before this process of becoming. And then Al Hallaj, as you know, was condemned and crucified. And when he heard the, he was incinerated. And he said, " 'h Lord how is it that Thou has wished for the formation of this body if it is now to annihilated like that was what was gained by it was something really concrete. The purpose is not to return to what you were before, that's samadhi". Then all of a sudden he saw the connection. He said," My body then will be exposed to the four winds as smoke". And then he said," as incense, the promise of my resurrection". He saw that it's not the physical body, but the transmutation of the physical body. But he saw the purpose of the physical body. Instead of considering it is a pair of clothes that you wear and then you can cast off. So now we come to a further level and that's a real breakthrough because it's true that God reveals Himself through these clues which are devices. But there is a time when as Ibn Arabi says, "We know God..." There is a link in my, I want to be absolutely systematic. So there is a word of Ibn Arabi referring to the qualities you see when he says, "It is since the ephemeral manifests the form of the eternal, it is by the knowledge of the eternal that one knows God". Pir o Murshid says that when he says, it's a clue to awakening, "Realization", he says,"you discover your immortality", the deathless state. So the discovery of immortality is not just, it's not the qualities so much as something deeper in our being which is perhaps more real. The qualities are devices, as I say, in which God becomes known. But that quintessence of your being which is immortal, and being immortal manifests in a transient way,in the perinity of your being continuity and change. If we identify our self with the transient aspect of our being, all of a sudden grasping one's, first of all one grasps one's perinity, which is like the continuity beyond the change. But beyond that there is still a sense of one's mortality beyond one's perinity. I know it's rather difficult to follow me. There is a word of Al Hallaj who said, " Oh God thou manifests thyself beyond the transiency of my being in the perinity of my being". You know the implications of that are just enormous, incredible. That tallies with what Murshid said, " Identify yourself with your eternity, your immortality". But then that immortality, that aspect of yourself that is immortal, is much more God than all those clues. There are degrees of Godness let's say. That's why he says,"Know whereby you are God and where you are not God". So that is, we are really talking about developmental stages. So this is a further stage in one's spiritual advance. The word for that is Ya Qayyum. In fact there are two words, Baqi, Ya Baqi and Qayyum. Baqi, I think it really stands for perinity, that is something subsists in the process of change. Like it's all the same river that passes under the bridge but it's not the same water. Whereas qayyum is, actually the word resurrection is Bayith, it's not qayyum, which means the transit from the transient state, the mortal state, let's say extracting the quintessence of one's being and it gets merged into the totality. That's Bayith Baqi means like when the Koran says, "Everything fades away except his face". Except the divine face. It's not the face, the form. So something has been gained by the fact that reality became form. Reality that didn't have a form acquired a form. That's what life is about. Then that subsists. So it gives you a kind of resilience when you feel that everything is falling apart around you. Then you say Ye Baqi it gives you a sense of, somehow I am able to survive that breakdown. The same word Fena/Baqa, Ya Baqi. And then Qayyum is really the process, it's more than the process. It really means...(tape ends)like everything is moving. I suppose the best example would be like pendulum. One pole keeps on moving in time and space while the other pole remains stationary. It overcomes transiency, it overshadows transiency. Those are wonderful words. The beauty of these wazifa is that constitute,as I say a language which is not limited to our usual conceptual language. So we can discover further meanings than our ordinary language can tell us about. So then OK. The next stage is again I'll refer to Ibn Arabi but you'll find them in the teaching of Murshid. You just have to find them. Says,"God reveals Himself notwithstanding any device", any ayat, and clue.That's Jabarut, that's the state of Jabarut. He says God reveals this. You don't achieve it by your own will, by your incentive. It's revealed. What he says you have to let go of the existential I would say focus myself, perspective. It's there. I mean you have your body and so on. But for the time being you kind of mask the consciousness of the existential world, and then also the imaginary world. Because for the Sufis it's a reality. Hadik and musawwer. Then you reach into the level which he call abstract, that is without images. That's when God reveals Him/Herself to you without using those devices in the existential experience or in your creative imagination. That's a real breakthrough. God reveals Himself to you without ascribing any form to it. So it's quite a tour do force to be able to do that. That's very close to what we call samadhi. And then you pass the gate and you awaken in life. I like to use the word Tawhed but Tawhed can be used in many different senses ( ). But what he says is then that having shifted your focus from the existential world to the imaginary world and the abstract plane which is Jabarut, you reverse things and you get to see God in the existential world. But you have to go up all that way before you can awaken in life. There is a saying of his. I think I quoted it in the hand out, a special experience he has of God, not in the abstract, but right there in the, through the senses. So we've completed the circle. So perhaps, 'h Ive gone beyond the time. No it's been about one hour. So I think this gives us some general guide lines to work with. At first we were more experiential. Now we're into metaphysics but we would have to have much more time to go through each step. Step by step, stage by stage and see how it works in our experience. God bless you. AUG 08, 1995 Tape 03 Abode Leader's training Tape 3 August 1995 Yeah, I think we need to start with an attunement. So if you will agree I think if you could all stand up for that attunement. So first of all I would be able to see splendor coming through, not just nature, but the whole of the world in which we live, trying to come through, splendor trying to come through as beauty, as majesty, as power, as love, as understanding. Now can we look into our selves and see how that same splendor is trying to come through in our personality. And keep on being newly born as the qualities emerge with greater force than ever before. Discovering in ourselves the same power that moves the Universe. Discover in our minds the thinking of the Universe. And may our pain, may we burst the abscess of our pain so that in our broken heart the intensity of divine love arises, unconditional love, being in love with love, madly in love with God, as the one we love in all beings, when divine splendor comes through. And let us dig deeper than our minds, like pulling one veil off after the other until we get to something that we cannot grasp but so real. It's like the ground of our being, the ground of the Universe. As above so below but only if we don't simply descend back into the commonplace, our commonplace way thinking. And then let us, as Pir o Murshid says, there comes a time when there is a passion for beyond. Beyond which maybe present within and present without. But still veiled. We have a need to reach beyond and beyond and beyond. As Pir o Murshid says, "When that longing happens so that our eyes are turned upwards towards the heavens instead of downwards towards the earth, and we discover the divinity of our being". And then a saying of Nur, my sister, based on Murshid's teaching, Nur said,"Whatever you do remember that God is looking at your". Let us (inaudible). We are subjected to so much hassle, so much psychological pollution, so many challenges in our life that the need is felt more and more to, for let's say the care and maintenance of our soul. It is embodied in our need for the sacred. One is always looking for it, one tends to look outside, like going to the church or the mosque or the synagogue or a guru. But the Sufis try to build a temple out of their own body so that they may discover that sacredness within themselves. There are skills that help us to build that body and maybe by the power of our visualization which is a very real power. So what I suggest that what we do is to review the stages that are leading towards that objective. We're going to have to, since our time is so limited, I'm going to have to move rather fast. But let us say that our bodies have the ability to, the cells of our bodies have the ability to absorb light from the environment. So if you just meditate under the starry sky at night time, and think that, as Pir o Murshid says, that the stars are simply the way that the light, the all pervading light is converged and then radiated forth. So it is really like a real maelstrom of light and a tremendous whirling and a tremendous choreography of light. So if we just let ourselves be carried into that light, that vision of the original state of the Universe which was just light. Then it helps us to discover our own light. And we can think of our bodies as crystallizing that light, as a crystallization of light. And then the crystal itself in turn is able to absorb light and emit light. This visualization is effective in that it only replenishes the cells of our body. And I hope that you feel as you hold your breath after inhaling, you feel the light that you absorbed. Actually it tends to open the pores of one's skin to receive the light. This is a real fact. This is not just imagination. And the cells of the body start giggling and sparkling and even dividing. So a whole effervescence within the body. And the consequence is that as one exhales now, one can radiate much more light than ever before. So I, these are words. I hope that you are really experiencing this as you're inhaling and to feel the light around your skin and especially around your arms and chest, and your head. Now what I was going to say is that this light is not only enriching, vitalizing to ourselves, it's energy really. But it has a kind of cleansing effect. Nothing can hide in the light. It's in the darkness that the devil seeks refuges from the light. I'm talking metaphorically of course. So that maybe, there may be in the depth of our being some thoughts that we don't approve of, deceiving people or hating or whatever, they may be thoughts that we don't really like. But somehow the very visualization of light will expose them. Alright now the next step would be for example just identifying with that aura, and thinking that your body is a formation within the aura, that your aura is the template. And if you think that way then of course you notice the difference between inhaling and exhaling, because when you're inhaling the light of the universe seems to converge as your aura, because there is no between the two. So your aura is like a vortex within that light. Then as you exhale then that whatever it is, the zones of the outreach of your aura, tends to merge more and more with the environment. So you lose any sense of, how can I say, the specificity of your aura. Now the next step is turning within and discovering the all pervading light of which Murshid speaks. Now again I would like this to really be experience rather than belief in such a thing as all pervading light. So course there are all kinds of theories, like the implicate state of Dr. David Bohemia. But can you see for example that for example the way that a wave can emerge out of total, what one calls wave interference pattern, like a network? You feel like the ground of your being is like the ground of the ocean and now you're a wave in the ocean. So now you're, there is no frontier between the wave and the ocean. But now you're trying to dive deeper in your being until you are aware of that dimension of your being which is the ocean rather than highlighting the wave. And so then you see that it is like a wave interference pattern. It's like a network. Then this light becomes explicated and radiates as your aura. In it's deeper depths it is not radiant light. It's all pervading light. Imagine infused light. There is no particular point from which the rays are emitted or radiated, or broadcast. But of course we do tend to converge this light and then we can radiate it just like the sun, as Pir o Murshid says, or the stars. Now the secret of turning within, that means stripping the veils, Batin, stripping the veils one gets to the core. Well one never gets to the core because it's always deeper. Is as you breath in instead of thinking that you're always converging light from outside through your skin, through your senses. Think that your breathing, not only are you drawing light form within and then it manifest outwardly as your aura, but also energy. Consequently as you breathe in, instead of thinking that I'm breathing, I'm drawing the Universe into me from without side, energy, whatever it is of the Universe, think that you're breathing from inside. I suppose one is like a flower that keeps on unfurling from within. And the older pedals start falling apart and the newer pedals start unfurling. Think of it as sprouting up from within. Now sometimes it's good to have an image, a visual representation. One can imagine the walls of the temple, actually a temple doesn't have walls, it's really like zones of light. But the light from within would be depicted as the alter. The candles are the light the emerges from within. And then as one exhales then one radiates. One does not simply boomerang the light back that one has absorbed from the environment, but in addition one is radiating a new dispensation of light that emerged from within. It's a sense of having access to a source of light from within. Sometimes one can think of it as a flame. That's why the Zoroastrians always built a temple wherever there was a gisa in the or gisa in the desert, I don't know how you say it in America, all of a sudden a flame emerging from the sand. It's a picture you can imagine they built a temple around that. Of course the key to all this is creative imagination. We realize that everything that ever materializes starts by creative imagination. So one is awakening the faculties in one, or aspects in one's being that may be dormant. And simply by visualizing them they begin to become enhanced and awaken. You see it's a kind of recognition of something that's already there. There is a kind of a sense of resilience that is there. Because one feels pulled by the call of the outer world as we saw the other day, our glance is forced into focus by the objects. Somehow there is a pull of the outer world, gravity pull. And one feels called to respond to it. And consequently we develop this personality of ours, a kind of secondary personality, that is the adapted personality, that represents our reaction, short circuiting let's say without consulting our deeper self. And so you can think of the temple as being a buffer that you place between the challenge of the world and your inner self so that you're able to find yourself without feeling urged to respond right away. At least you can muster all the resourcefulness of your being if you don't feel threatened to respond right away to the challenge. So what Pir o Murshid says is that when breath, and it is true of consciousness, finds a barrier, it's natural tendency is to turn towards the outside, when it finds a barrier, then it's going to turn within. otherwise there is no way of doing it unless you take a rather radical step. Let's say for example you can't see the light of the stars when the sun is in the sky. You definitely have to do something to mask the impressions from the outer world, and then somehow consciousness turns within. So that's the practice of Saghal. You all know it, but let's do it now. First exhale through both nostrils before you start. You know that you breathe in through the right nostril three breaths, not more. And then take away your hands but keep your eyes closed. There are two stages here. One is that you turn within to withdraw into the solar plexus. And the other one is to turn your eyeballs upwards and of course reach upwards then as you...that is a different kind of light than the inner light. It's, so we'll be talking about it in a minute. As you exhale, well concentrate on, as Pir o Murshid says, one is like a sun or star that is converging inner light of the universe and manifesting it by radiating it into the outer world, let's say from the implicate to the explicate. So be aware of the radiance around your shoulders and heart and shoulder blades, as a matter of fact like a mantle of light, and also the crown of your head. So again you could say this is imagination, but I have sat in a cell in Dr. Motayama's laboratory in Japan, Tokyo, and trying to radiate enough light to set off the whole system working, so that the light goes on. And so I know that it works. It's not just imagination. You can actually, by the power of your imagination, you can enhance the normal radiance of your aura, which may not be so great. But as you keep on thinking of it as a sun and enjoy the ecstasy of light, of course you burn more brightly. Eventually, in this case you set the whole system going. But what I'd like you to do is to concentrate on the light of our glance, the two beams of light that are cast forward through your, well there is a lot of light in your brain. Then this light is threaded in the optical nerves and the retina, and it passes through the lense of the cornea and into the environment. Now think of it as two beams of light that are breaking through the darkness. And at the same time you are aware of your whole aura, and you're aware of, well we call it a crown, but we'll have to look into this a little more. Now what you could so is to alternate between turning your eyeballs upwards and turning your eyeballs forward as you inhale, as you exhale. I find it useful to curl the tongue, press it against the pallet as you inhale and then straighten it out as you exhale. Not simply just opening one drawer and closing the other but linking the two so that now you feel that it is not just the light that is in your brain that is being threaded through your eyes, but there is some kind of higher light that you don't know how to describe. But one is really building, well it's more like a lift rather a bridge between the spheres. So let us pass on to the next practice which could be illustrated by the words of Hildegard of Bingen who said, "I find myself in a world of light, and that light is so bright that I am blinded by it, and overwhelmed by it, and permeated by it". You know it is as though what we call the physical world is just a certain perspective and that if we shift our perspective, then we can grasp the world of light. That seems to be crystallized or seems to be perceptible in what we call physical forms, although in physics light is considered to be matter. Alright then at a certain moment she says,"This world of light seems to open up into a further world of light that is even brighter and I am more overwhelmed than ever before by the splendor of this light. And I seem to be drawn into it". I would add that rather than thinking that these are spheres of light, let us think of them as dimensions of our own being that are coextensive with levels of the Universe. And so you can continue to move upwards depending upon how much you enjoy the ecstasy of light, how important it is for you. And if you are afraid that it's a spiritual bypass and it's not dealing with your problems, just consider that if you enter a room and your eyes are full of light, and you entertain luminous thoughts, it is going to change the ( ) of your life. Now Buddha uses a method that is very similar to what we have been doing. That is supposing you were to look at a disk, red disk for example. Then you close your eyes you see a green disk. Now what he is doing is supposing you were to look at a very bright light, and then you would close your eyes. Of course you might see a shadow. But if you could just shift your consciousness to another level, then you would see the reflex image of this colorless light. Then you could proceed further and consider that reflex as let's say as a step, and then reach into the reflex of that light. That's a practice called kasina. So you consider the temple of light to not just be ordinary, what we understand by light or the light of our aura. But it is many tiered. Not only the dome of the temple is made of let's say a higher more subtle diaphanous light, but it somehow permeates the whole temple of light. Instead of thinking of the heavens up there, think of it as just a different perspective even in the physical world than the usual one. Now there is a further step and it's really a quantum leap. It's of course in the formula given by the Sufis it's called the light of intelligence. But it's no use just entertaining the physical thoughts. How do we experience the light of intelligence? Just think of a situation where all of a sudden you are able to see things differently and more meaningfully than ever before. It's like a light and maybe the word light is just used as a device because we don't have a better word for it, as a means. The breakthrough of realization which may be triggered off in a situation where you have questioned your point of view. And so since your judgment does not rest upon your point of view, you're kind of open to what we call guidance. What the Sufis say is that a, well I'll use my own words. A perspective opens up because you're not jammed in the previous perspective. So you're free to enlist a new perspective. And just as though you're intelligence is like a light, but this is just metaphors, the light that is thrust upon a situation, like Pir o Murshid said, it's like entering into a treasure house in which there are a lot of treasures, but it's all dark. And somehow our glance is like Aladdin's lamp that lights up these objects, like the light that you project upon things instead of being passive. Your glance is most of the time passive, just simply picking up the, actually one is picking up light from outside. Here you are thrusting light upon not just objects, but upon all situations. So I, if we follow up the metaphor of the temple of light, you could think that you are the priest in the temple and that you are illuminated by the divine intelligence. Now of course any kind of metaphor is limiting, because in fact you'll have noticed that when suddenly you are able grasp something you hadn't grasped before, your whole face lights up. It could be that by simply being aware of the aura around your face you will awaken that breakthrough of realization which we call illumination. It works both ways of course. It's also a question of identity because of course we do identify with the temple. Then we identified with the emergence of light within the temple. And now we are identifying with the more subtle, one calls it celestial light of our being. There is a sense of déjà vu, like when you look into the eyes of a baby, it reminds you of something one has forgotten and one becomes very aware of the shadow of the earth, of the greed and the hatred of people. And one has been contaminated with it oneself. And maybe one did inherit it too from one's ancestors. The way that it does mask one's celestial identity. One forgot who one was. In fact it does require innocence to be able to have any sense of that identity. One can't be smart let's say, or manipulative, or device. One needs to be maybe the word is not naive, but innocent and wise at the same time. But it is that sense that however one may have been tarnished by one's guilt or whatever situation that one has been exposed to, that in the depth of one's being, one is, as Pir o Murshid says, like a mirror that can never be tarnished by the impressions upon it. It's that sense of the immaculate that gives us some sense of what we mean by the celestial spheres. But as I say instead of thinking it's up there, it's something that is present within us and begs to be awakened, but we cannot fasten it and hold it. It keeps on luring one into dimensions of one's being that give us ecstasy. And then in turn that will give you a kind of resilience against the kind of depression that the psyche incurs by disappointment and dissolution. Let's say need of faith. Faith needs to be substantiated by something real, by a discovery of the celestial dimension of one's being is something more tangible than saying I believe in God and it's just a concept. Or you're the priest and you can only be the priest if you become a bridge between heaven and earth. So that you are reminding people of their home. Now this is what we're doing when we are doing the zikre. We are building a temple of light. Consciously,willfully or volitionally, perhaps not, unknowingly, unwittingly because you know for example, the power of a magnet is greatly enhanced if you whirl it. It becomes a dynamo. And so we can with the power of our imagination, we can awaken a tremendous amount of even physical light in our aura, called bioluminescence. But by whirling the aura we increase it. And as a matter of fact it becomes like part of this, as I call it, maelstrom of this vortex of light of the galaxies and the choreography of the heavens. And then as we turn within, then we discover the inner light that is emerging from within as we say "illa". And it sparks as a flame that arises from the void in the center of the vortex of our being, and rises upwards. And as it rises from one chakra to the other, think of those different levels of light until we reach let's say the apex of the ascent. Then there is a sudden takeoff, what do you call it, like a space craft taking off, a sudden leap. It is a kind of separation. It's illustrated by Bellerphron riding (tape turns.) If you think of it as static to safeguard the sacred in yourself. But that is still too static rather than dynamic. So I don't know how to change that metaphor, think of the temple as not enclosed, and always reaching further upwards. There are some temples, in Rome for example, there is a temple that has an aperture in the middle. And then there is the sense of the descent of light upon the alter. So there is the flame that rises from the bottom, and the radiance of the alter, but there is also the sense of a different kind of light that descends, often represented by the dove. And that is unnotable unexplainable of course. But there is a sense of being receptive now instead of being the light that is thrust upon all things, light of intelligence, now we become the recipients of the divine blessing. Some kind of feeling, I don't know if you have gone to a Catholic church and you've seen people have taken communion and come back with a feeling of carrying something with them into the world. You could picture, there is a beautiful picture of Christ. His heart is a lamp and he is protecting that lamp against the storm. So there is a sense of, like I'm carrying this investiture of light in my being and protecting it and at the same time, you're not only just on the defensive, you're reaching out with this light because there is nothing more wonderful than whenever the hidden becomes manifest. In fact the whole of life is the manifestation of the divine spirit. (tape ends) AUG 08, 1995 Tape 04 Leader's Training August '95 Tape 4 I like to choose a music that corresponds to the mood of the group. I think that reflects how we feel this morning, jubilant. Well now upon reflection, of course the master, the teacher is God. I mean the real teacher is God. And as we know God manifests Him/Herself through the signs, the ayat, at first until there is a sequence whereby the teacher, God as the teacher reveals Himself or His/ Her intention. And so at first we are looking for our self in other than ourselves. And we have have maybe rather simplistic ideas about good and bad. So we're seeking an ideal in those ayat, those signs, for example nature, or for example music, or in people. Sometimes it can be embodied in a person whom we think is our ideal teacher. Actually I say we, but really it is, as Taj calls it, our adapted self, that aspect of ourselves which is concerned with adapting itself to the environment or the change in the environment that is seeking to discover itself, and also seeking for support and corroboration. So that as I say one is seeking for oneself in other oneself. But actually what one is really seeking for, one doesn't realize it, is when one says oneself it is one's adapted self, that part of oneself that is concerned with adapting oneself to the environment and concerned about, well it does lead towards role playing and even wearing a mask. So we as Yoga says of course, we project on the environment, whether it's physical or social environment or people, our own psyche, what it means to us in our identity as an adapted being. So what does the world mean to us, what does God mean to us appearing through the ayat, through a form that comes to us from outside, whether it is nature, whether it is music, whether it is that person whom we love for example. We find ourselves in a person we love in a personal relationship, or whether it is of course in the teacher whom we idolize and in whom we seek the ideal. At that stage we imagine a teacher, either a teacher whom we know, for example in Hinduism they have their guru, a picture of their guru and a candle, all that you see, sort of guru worship, idolatry, in Sufism of course it's idolatry. So it's the appearance, one is seeking the appearance of God embodied in a person. And of course one doesn't realize that for the world to teach one, or let's say for God as the teacher to teach us as the world comes to us, it has to incorporate all the scale of values that are in existence, therefore not just the ideal. God's perfection includes all in a bounty, and what is more for there to be, for the eternal principles to become actuated in the world, in the existential state of course then there has to be, well there has to be some defilement. For one thing because the divine will, free will is delegated. The greatest gift of course, freedom. The consequence is of course that you get all kinds of, one departs from the divine will, then one's personal will is alienated from the divine will and so there is a defilement. And maybe that defilement is necessary for there to be a recycling, a renewal of life is to be falling apart. So eventually that picture of the guru, one had seen in the guru that which one was hoping to see, a kind of projection of one's ideal. Then one finds, either one finds that the guru has feet of clay, flaws in the guru, or then one finds more generally in the picture that I painted yesterday of my own life, the ideal came to me in those two opposite forms. One was the ideal model, that was Pir o Murshid. And the other was the school,if you remember. The feeling that I didn't like what I saw. And the ego of people. That was the way the divine teacher came to me through those children. Because if I had only known Pir o Murshid, I wouldn't have known how to meet my problems in the world. And consequently that aspect of the teacher that doesn't correspond with what one would like the teacher to be can teach one as much as that aspect of the teacher that one idolizes. But all of that, I say one, but all of this is connected with our sense of what we should be in order to be able to function in the world and to be able to adapt ourselves to the challenges of situations until we realize that if we simply react to the challenge of the world, it's only the external part of ourselves, the adapted self, that is being mustered. And the consequence is that one is missing out on all the resourcefulness of one's being, like a short circuit. It's only the surface of one's being that is called upon, feels that it is called upon to meet the challenge of the environment. That's the reason why I often play that 4th concert of Beethoven to show how he is describing himself as the pianist and the world is the orchestra, and how he places a buffer between the challenge of the world and himself, so that he can find, he doesn't have to react, so that he can muster all the resourcefulness in his being. So that's a real step. And so, yes I missed a link there because one is not just projecting upon the outside world oneself, and that means the good and the bad. That's the first step. And the second one is that one is really ingesting the environment, the social environment. And consequently since there is defilement in the environment, there is contamination and one, well especially in the adapted self. Hopefully it doesn't reach right down into one's inner self. But some kind of contamination takes place. Consequently the practices we do consists in protecting ourselves against those influences which are detrimental to our being, which we feel uncomfortable about. And consequently then as you know we surround ourselves with a zone of silence and place sentinels at the doors of perception, and actually not just sentinels at the doors of perception, but also sentinels within our own psyche so that we are able to repel influences that we can't digest, let's say. If we were as we would like to be, then we could encompass all good and bad in our being. But let's say we would have an indigestion. Therefore to start with it's better to make some kind of selectivity. And it is our sense of me, as I said, that gives us ability to make a selection. As you know, the immune system is based upon me and no me, at least the first immune system. So that consists in, therefore it's to have, it's necessary to have a very strong sense of me. And if one is totally subjected to the master, as is traditionally the case, one loses a sense of me, unless it's a very good master. And then he will strengthen you in your sense of you instead of imposing his or her will upon you. So that's, in order to have a very strong sense of me, one has to not identify with that aspect of oneself that adapts itself to the environment. It's the other way around. It's that aspect of oneself the adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose. And that is something which is not to be found in most esoteric schools. And I glad to say in the Sufi Order we are now becoming more and more aware of the uniqueness of each being and also respecting, and acknowledging, and honoring the uniqueness of each being. There is a wazifa for that, Ya Sama, called unique. So actually each being is unique as God is unique, incomparable. That is, we are doing some practices with that, for example when I say think that you're carrying a mask, for example. All of a sudden you discover your real face, your real countenance. And you know this is me. There what I see in the mirror, that's well, as I say, the mirror is one of the most, the cheapest and most deceptive of all feedback systems. So and therefore, so then, another notion of ourselves begins to emerge to our cognizance. And then God as the master appears from within. And the way to make a transit is, what you find in Sufism instead of thinking of projecting upon the picture of the master, tasawiri murshid, the picture of the master, having the picture of Murshid there and having a candle and so on. Murshid doesn't like that as a matter of fact. That's idolatry. Then what the Sufis use the word Tawajeh, which is getting into the attunement of the master. That's what I was trained to do in the Hasarabad because I said well my teacher is Murshid. So he said, well while you're doing the zikre just think that you are Pir o Murshid instead of idolizing Pir o Murshid out there. And of course that makes all the difference in the way you say the zikre. So that's God the teacher, God as the teacher, as coming through the form, as coming through in one, I hope you're following me, coming to one in the form of what is coming through one, that is what is emerging of one's being form the depth of one's being, emerging within one. And that's why one learns how to turn within. And it's true that one has to downplay that, not only that outer world, the way God appears to one through the senses or through the outer world, but also one has to downplay one's identity with one's adapted self, which Sufis call traditionally the false self. But I don't like that sense, that idea that we have several selves. It's just an aspect of ourselves that is concerned with adapting itself to the environment, or an aspect of ourselves that is more real and which is more genuinely ourselves except that it is something that we don't quite know at first. It begins to, it reveals itself to us from within. So in order to be able to highlight something and downplay another, no rather in order to highlight a perspective in our being, which is like one's real being, one needs to downplay another perspective. It's like when you're looking at a hologram you see, you change your perspective, it looks like this way one way and then you look at another way and so on. So it's really a matter of perspective. And downplaying then, offsetting consciousness, the focus of consciousness does require detachment, which is the way of the ascetic. And so you see what we are doing in our training is that we are enlisting a lot of attitudes that we learned from different dedicated people, whether it's knights, or whether it's masters of saints, all these beings have some relevance to us because they are all within us. In some way we like to project them outside as other than ourselves in order to find ourselves. And it's a principle that we have to know that in favorable circumstances, dormant qualities in us emerge. And so they don't emerge just like that. They emerge if you create the appropriate circumstances. That's why for example, people go to church because then they are looking for their ideal actually, an aspect of themselves, very important aspect of themselves which is a sense of the sacred. They are looking for it in circumstances that favor the emergence of this quality in themselves. And somehow they are not quite, most people are not quite clear about the difference between the adapted self and the deeper self. So they, one sees, I think one really does project oneself in the priest and the cathedral and so on. Those are aspects of oneself that one discovers of one's adapted self because the ideal is also to be found in one's adapted self. So when you tell me then, of course the only kind of image that will help us to discover the inner self is of course to for example, as we did yesterday, build an inner temple or build a temple of light. There is some protection against, not just the impact of the environment, but those elements of our psyche which do not tally with our ideal, which are there but somehow we, it's an artificial step. It's not the ideal thing to do. But to start with we need to almost protect ourselves against aspects of our self that we dislike. Hence the word Vakil or Muhaimin, and placing sentinels at the doors of perception, actually sentinels within our own psyche and so on. Now then if one does that, then one is able to see the inner being of the teacher irrespective of the outer being. And that helps one to discover one's own true being and also cautions one against those aspects in oneself that one dislikes in the teacher. There is a kind of self discovery that takes place when the ideal of the teacher is carried to the point where one appreciates the values and sees that they are wrapped up in a human being with frailties. And that one would like this ideal to be the way one would like it to be, perfect. And then it wouldn't be real because it wouldn't be human. Ultimately you can see the master in everyone in the beauty in a person who is really in your mind obnoxious, you see beauty there. That is discovering God as a master coming through the defilement. And that is very well illustrated by listening to the voice of Caruso in the bad recordings. It's not to just hear that voice in the good recordings of that time, but in bad recordings. So one, that's why, perhaps one of the reasons why Christ said,"Be of good cheer, you heartbroken in life. There is beauty in the despair of people when there is just a little flame of hope in that despair". So they can teach us something about ourselves that an ideal teacher sitting in samadhi cannot help us with. Of course what does emerge as one turns within is a rebirthing, that is qualities that one didn't think that one had, or begin to aver themselves, become known to one. Actually one doesn't realize that really speaking one is contemplating God as emerging as one. And that's why Ibn Arabi says, "By contemplating oneself, one contemplates God". He says it that way but I think it would be better to say that it's dynamic instead of static. Like God in becoming in one as qualities that one had to a certain extent but all of a sudden emerge with new power and new strength and new evidence. One begins to become aware of them. And of course it is very extraordinary to discover God revealing Him/Herself by actuating Him/Herself in us. Again Ibn Arabi. And of course it is, as I say the Universe has a way of self organizing itself. And it happens if we don't interfere with, if our adapted self wants to develop power in order to control one's life, or one's being, or one's thoughts, or other people and so on, then of course one is interfering with this self organizing faculty that takes place within one. But Pir o Murshid says,"God can attain a great degree of perfection in a being, but where that being participates volitionally in his/her creativity, then God can attain a greater degree of perfection". So that is where we need to do something. At first we don't need to do anything. It just, we must not interfere with that emergence. It's very difficult to determine exactly that moment when we are customizing the divine process. otherwise we would become puppets in the hands of God who was manipulating us to be just do his thing. Whereas here the beauty of the variety that comes though the uniqueness of each being is the result of our own volition, the fact that the divine will is multiplied. And that's the greatest gift the gift of freedom. So we discover God in our own free will. We discover the divine will in our own free will. That's why Murshid said,"May Thy wish become my desire". Instead of thinking 'h God, what do you wish me to do? And then God would say, well I mustn't tell you what to do, because then you wouldn't be free. So take responsibility. In many schools the guru takes responsibility for you. But what we are doing now is to encourage free will, that is free incentive, always even if it goes askew, goes awry, which happens. Murshid said once," I see people come with a project, and they ask for my blessing on that project, well I don't say I don't give it or I don't not give it. I don't tell them not to do it because then I would take away their free will. But I know that at some point that they are going to retreat what they are doing, so be careful what you wish because it might come true. That's a saying of Emerson. But still you have to do it. So life is trial and error, learning by doing. And the curious thing is that you would have thought that these qualities would emerge if your don't start interfering. Well they emerge in relationship or with regard to an action. It's a little bit subtle. It's not like reacting to the environment in one's adapted self, but so the action is creative action rather than a reaction to the environment. And so it is that action, our sense of being self creative, that will call dormant qualities in to one's personality. But if one simply identifies with one's personality, one gets stuck in that self identity, even if it's the inner one, not the adapted one. And that is the reason why at this stage one needs to dive deeper than one's personality and identify with the ground of one's personality. That's why Buddha for example says, compares with to felling a tree to it's roots and then another tree grown again. And is it the same tree or is it another tree. We don't know and it really doesn't matter. The point is that we are capturing something more fundamental than what is at the surface. Let's say that our personality is like the trunk and the branches of the tree, whereas deeper down is the root, and normally we don't identify with the root. So as we turn within we learn to identify with the life of our life or the seed of the plant of our being. That is very fundamental in the teaching of Murshid, the seed. When of course at first he says, there are different passages in which refers to the seed. And one in which he simply says that one gets to a point where one can see in the seed the plant. It's a kind of intuitive kind of knowledge. So for example if you are looking at a person, if you're a guide and trying to guide a person, that you don't assess a person upon the strength of their personality, but that you're really assessing the person on the root, or actually the seed of their being and you realize that all they see, they identify with their personality. If you can see the root of their being, or the seed of their being, sometimes the root is the same as the seed, in a bulb for example, then they see themselves through your eyes because teaching is really mirroring. And so as I say mirroring, when we're looking for ourselves in another ourselves, that's the outer being that is looking for ourselves in our outer selves. We seek to discover the root of our being as we turn within. And we can't find it in another person however wonderful a teacher is. But we can find it if we are able to attune to the tawajeh, to the attunement of the teacher from within. That's a kind of mirroring because then we discover not our personality, but the root of our personality, the seed. Then of course Murshid goes further and so he says the seed is recycled in the plant and it emerges again at the end of the cycle of the plant in the heart of the flower. And so there the seed of our being which is let's say the ground of our personality, is trying to emerge, and in order to do so it needs to emerge as the features of our renewed personality. And then ultimately, hopefully it will all of a sudden appear in the heart of that flower, the flower of our personality. That's where it will appear again. So it's hidden, as Pir o Murshid said, 'God is hidden in His creation". So God is hidden in us. And that's the meaning of the word Batin, it's hidden in us. God is hidden in us and we have all these projections. And we're trying to find God in a teacher in the world and all these different aspects of ourselves. Then finally, so if Ibn Arabi says, "By contemplating ourselves, we contemplate God". Yes it's still a device because what do we mean by ourselves? So one sees qualities emerging. Those are ayat, those are signs in which we refer as clues, about the seed behind those qualities that are emerging. That requires a further stage in our development when we cease to earmark the qualities that emerge. But go deeper and realize that what is emerging is something so much more universal than we think we are. In fact ultimately the seed is a further step towards, let's say the diversity, each seed being, let's say a further step towards God the unique, the seed of all seeds let's say, that is emerging in each of us from within. And so the practices for that, as I say, do require one to offset one's consciousness from first of all identifying with one's adapted dimension of one's being, and also looking outside to find ourselves including in a master. And eventually one realize that God is the master, and the master may appear in different forms, that's trying to appear within oneself. And there are great moments that Murshid describes when he says for example,"when you discover in yourself the same power by which the whole Universe was created". It's like a universal dimension of one's being so one's identity changes all together. And that's what Pir o Murshid calls God conscious. Those are words but if you are really seeking for the root of what is emerging as your new personality, you see the danger is of course we just are so enthused by discovering something in ourselves that is emerging in our personality that we perceive, let's say we earmark these emerging qualities. So we fail to reach into the depths. Now these features are images. According to the Sufis form is not only geographical forms of objects in the world. Our qualities are also forms, subtle forms. So at a certain point one has to give up this quest for creativity to project into qualities, to project one's being in to qualities which are forms. And so there is a total change in one's sense of identity. So I think we can say this is a new hurtle in our developmental stages where we give up trying to be creative of our personality. We're not longer concerned with repeating wasifas so that we can unfurl qualities in our self and so on. It's very important but there is a point where that is no more important. Then one, actually one comes to the realization that realization will trigger up qualities, and working with qualities doesn't necessarily do it. But it's like much more cost effective practice to simply seek realization and then the qualities will unfurl instead of working so hard to try and develop those qualities. That's the reason for the zikre because then you're not concerned with qualities at all. Then it goes through various stages. It's all stages you see. One is if you're not concerned about your personality. There is a word of Buddha that illustrates consciousness by a flame that needs a combustible. So as song as you experience the physical world, then your have consciousness, the flame of consciousness. These are combustibles. So then if you consider your thoughts, your consciousness is in a state of duality, then you're contemplating your thoughts. So you identify with your consciousness. You think , that's what I am, I'm my conscious, my thoughts are passing but my consciousness is a reality. One doesn't realize that it's really like a flame so it's a continuity in change. So you mustn't think it's an entity. One is conscious of one's identity. So if you identify with your personality then you are conscious of your personality, This is me. That's why people say, I want to know who's me, I want to know who I am. One doesn't realize that what one wants to do is to somehow, one doesn't know what one says by that, but one one thinks one wants to know one's real being. And so one's personality is not one's self image, so one would like to know something deeper about oneself that isn't one's self image. Pir o Murshid would call that ones personality. But at this stage no more consciousness. So how does one make that quantum leap. When I say no more consciousness that's still negative. Consciousness is resorbed in one's ground and that's intelligence. That's a word of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, "Intelligence becomes consciousness when faced with an object in the duality situation." When there is no consciousness or let's say one is not concerned about experiencing or even identity, then consciousness is resorbed in it's ground which is intelligence. So that's the real step that is denoted by the word, by Jabarut, the high level in one's developmental stages where one relies upon the revelation of meaningfulness without basing that meaningfulness upon experience. So that's, there are several intermediary steps here. So I'd like to illustrate it. I don't know whether I can call it a retreat, but a kind of situation, very strange situation which I was in after having done a retreat in India and coming back to Paris, and being alone, and the weather was fine and I was walking along the quai of the Seine, and it was wonderful. The sky was blue and there were these barges and people, just marvelous, a kind of sense of euphoria, like life is so wonderful. What a privilege to experience that. Why do I have to close myself in a cell. As Ibn Arabi says, he says, "For one who is God conscious a retreat is impossible". Because he says God reveals Himself to you through his signs. So if you close yourself in a cell, then you're not open to these signs. So there is a stage at which one needs these signs until one doesn't need them any more. So as I say, we started with these signs either outside, and as you turn within of course, then you find these signs in yourself. Then you can close yourself in a cell. Then of course it's much better because you're not looking for the signs outside. So you can meditate better in a cell than you can sitting in Chamonix watching that wonderful panorama. But then there comes a point when, as I say I was walking along the Seine, when I thought to myself, Yes of course it's wonderful but it's very limited, limiting to be just be caught up in my personal consciousness. Why is it that it's so meaningful to me. Then I thought, actually God is looking at His/Her own body, which is the Seine in this case, or Paris or whatever, the Universe through my eyes. So you're still in a state of duality. God is the real master, now God is the master, is the Shahid, that means the witness but it really was God. And then I thought I was the witness. I thought I was my body, I thought I was my personality and so on, I thought I was my consciousness but I realize that ultimately it is God who is the witness, the spectator and my consciousness is just a lens through which, my eyes are the lenses through which God looks at Him/Herself actually, which is the embodiment of all He is, He/She is in the process of becoming. Then I thought to my self, well of course I had all the background behind me in Yoga, and Buddhism and Sufism. And I thought to myself, this is still duality, God looking through my eyes. That's still duality there. And of course all the esoteric traditions are helping you to attain the ultimate realization which is a sense of oneness. And so all of a sudden to my dismay I discovered that my glance is the divine glance instead of just the lens. That's a real breakthrough. The reason I'm saying this form personal experience is because otherwise it would be like theory. But I'm talking from experience, a sudden breakthrough. All of a sudden I could understand Pir o Murshid, when he talks about the glance. I could see that the glance of the mystic is the divine glance. So when you read those words you really experience it. That's incredible my glance is the divine glance. Yes as long as I don't lose sight of the divine witness. otherwise I fall back into my own personal illusion of my personal identity. So that's still consciousness, but it's the edge of the act of consciousness because still the world is (tape turns) It's in the word of St. Francis because St. Francis was getting into the consciousness of the trees and the birds and so on. And then he said, "The Universe is looking at me". All of a sudden, a total about turn. Now I would say that this is a clue to what the Sufis are trying to do, to look at things from a divine point of view. But how can you see things from a divine point of view? We try to and hope to, but there is no way in which this can happen. But at this point there is that sudden quantum leap. And so if the world appears as the body of God, then somehow one sees, one thinks, this next stage is the embodiment, not just the body. And therefore the way in which the being of God becomes known to Him/Herself, let's say becomes known. Then you realize that you're beginning to grasp God irrespective of the manner in which He/She becomes known. That's what Ibn Arabi means when he says,"You're not trying to know God through the way that God knows Himself through you." through the qualities in you," But you know God as He is in Himself" In order to do so you have to shift your identity. And being the witness, not the personal witness, the divine witness will make that shift. And when you do that then you begin to see the divine intention. Now if you read, there is a wonderful book by Niffari. It's very difficult to read. It's Abdul Jabbar Niffari. Maukeef He was a dervish in the desert and he used to come to the home of his daughter and son and law, and he would make these nonsense comments and she would write them down. Now they have been published and if you read it, it just doesn't make sense. It just has a deeper sense. Really one, you can't understand it with your mind. If you're in your usual state of consciousness it just, you know it's not even that poetical. At least Rumi is poetical. But it's, so it's very strange. It puts you off, and the more your read it the more it puts you off. You know I think about the teaching of Murshid, you know you can't really, if you're in your ordinary state of consciousness you can't understand Murshid. To see a picture you have to stand where the artist was making the picture. So if you are in the consciousness of Murshid then you can understand what he is saying. otherwise you try to figure it out. A lot will say , yes well it's simplistic. They don't understand. So what he is talking about is really the Mukum, one is going through different stages. And instead of saying that one progresses volitionarily through one's will or through one's realization, all of a sudden you go, as I say you go through a stage where you don't see something, then all of a sudden you see it, so you feel that you have make a step forward in your realization. But seen from the divine point of view, God is revealing His/Her intention and uses devices, like the film ET was made up of devices in which Spielberg was communicating his intention. If you are caught by the devices, you fail to see what was the intention behind it. And what he says is that when God not only reveals new vistas, divine revelation (Kacwar) but also He keeps you in your station until you're ready for the next. Think of that because we'd all like more initiations. And I unfortunately can't receive any further initiations in the Sufi Order. There are 12. If you stay longer than 12 years in the Sufi Order then of course I don't know what initiation you get. So we all would like to, it's very alluring, like I'd like to be awakened and illuminated and some of the, like they say in India, "Don't you dare die before you get illuminated". It's like one's objective is, bugs one terribly, makes one feel very bad, one hasn't been able to achieve it. And one has the idea of what it would be to be illuminated. So it even makes one's self image even worse than it was before. Except that Zen master said we are illuminated but we don't know it. Actually illumination is just discovering that you are illuminated. That's a difficult Zen koan, paradox. I would say that I prefer in the (Brihardine Yakua Pashan) where it said, "That flash of realization passes across your mind before you realize it". Or so fast that it's already gone when you start realizing it. So you can't hold it you see. It's gone. So you can't say, This is it, I'm illuminated. It's something that passes like the bluebird. And if you try and catch it well then it escapes you. As I said before, in fact we did this once before in our practice. Maybe it was in a retreat. That is as you breathe in from the right side, right nostril, you free yourself of your objective. At first it's your objective that pulls you forward. "The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past." And then eventually you have to realize that your objective limits you, as Murshid says. And so fena or detachment is at that stage, requires one to give up one's objective. And that's when one says, when Christ says "Thy will be done". It's no more let thy wish become my desire. It's really totally, absolutely no personal purpose because it is the divine purpose that takes over. Then it is as Niffari says,"One is invited in the divine treasury". It's a wonderful word because that's Lahut, you see the treasury. There are all the different qualities. You can't say all the qualities, but at that level of attunement one begins to have a sense of the archetype instead of the exemplar, for example roundness instead of round tables, or rosehood instead of roses. As I said the other day for example you imagine that a peaceful person comes in the room. And instead of saying , Isn't it wonderful to see a peaceful person, you say, Isn't it wonderful to see peace coming through this person. So you're really always seeing the archetype behind the exemplar. But you mustn't think of the archetype as being something stationary because they are evolving too. So there is different levels of time until one gets of course to, I think it's pretty good if you can get that far. Beyond that is just a sense of unity. But actually it's a pity we are running out of time because I've been describing awakening, well turning within and awakening beyond life, and really speaking of the ultimate objective of awakening in life. But it does not, we have to be very careful not to confuse thinking, because there is a very great danger in simply slipping back into the nitty gritty. It's no big deal. It's like seeing how the totality works through each being. You know the words of Preston, I forget now his name, " I wish for the impossible possibility, infinity in a finite fact, and eternity in a temporal act". That's awakening in life. It's not what we call the here and now. It's the way the everywhere and always comes through in the here and now. There is that notion of Vact, of time in Sufism, that you don't find elsewhere. I could go on but we're running out of time now. Anyway I'm trying to describe stages and maybe we don't have to try and talk about further stages. It's pretty good if we can just understand these stages, at least the first stages. And that would explain our concerns about choosing a guide, and however the role of the guide, being human and inspiring at the same time instead of that ideal that we make of him/her. Break your ideal on the rock of truth. God bless you. 1 AUG 08, 1995 Tape 05 Mureeds Retreat 8/95 Tape 1 August 11, 1995 It's a combination of a retreat and a camp situation where there'll be a lot of input from a different of teachers. What I do suggest is that if you want to derive the maximum benefit from this meeting, what I suggest is that you consider the morning to be retreat. Then feel more free in the afternoon to talk and communicate. It is very effective to maintain silence. If you've never done that before, you realize what it does to you. You have to do it to realize what it does to you. I think apart from the very calming tranquilizing effect it has on one, it's wonderful to be able not to be able to be on call. People want to chat with you. So that you can be more centered. And also you'll find that one tends to limit one's thinking by one's concern about spelling them out in words. Our language, ordinary language is intended for middle range thinking. So if you are, it's true that even if one's not speaking one may continue thinking in terms of words and language. But if you've been on silence for some time you lose that habit of translating your thoughts, your thinking rather in terms of words. I corrected the word, instead of thoughts I said thinking because thinking is dynamic, where as words, the dynamic flow is broken up into words so it is really artificial. It's a very powerful thing be able to get in touch with the dynamic flow of thinking. You will discover of course that there are many levels of thinking. At first one doesn't quite realize that. That's something that we want to go into in the course of these days because of course it all starts with experience. We want to promote experience. But then experience is interpreted by our understanding and therefore very often distorted. We project upon experience our way of thinking. And so some of the work we have to do in meditation is we have to correct our commonplace way of thinking or at least add to it a further dimension of thinking. And so, if the weather permits, what I do suggest in the morning that you go off on your own, sit in these wonderful woods and do the practices that you'll be learning and come back again and then you'll receive further practices. And then in the afternoon perhaps, maybe you might feel like speaking at lunch time. And the afternoon it's a different format. And so you are able to make the best of both worlds. I'd like you to note anything that strikes you as being very pertinent either in your meditation or in the way of handling situations in life, because I do consider a retreat to be a rehearsal for life. And so one is preparing oneself. It's like a rehearsal. It's like musicians rehearse before going before the public. And in those circumstances you can get in touch with your deeper self without getting pulled into action. There's, I often illustrate this by a piano concerto of Beethoven in which he describes himself as the pianist and the world is the orchestra. And the world bullies him, challenges him as it does all of us. But instead of simply reacting, he placed, really he placed a buffer between himself and the challenge of the environment so that he could avail himself of a richer pool of resourcefulness in his being than he would if he had simply short circuited, because reaction is a short circuit. And so think of meditation as that. A wonderful opportunity of placing a buffer between yourself and the world so that in these protected circumstances you can start discovering some of the bounty latent within your being. And it does take some, normally one is not conscious of that, those deep roots of one's being because one is always pulled to the surface. So in the course of these few days, I was going to go very fast, now to give you some of the most fundamental practices that I have been working with. And the other teachers are going to give you their practices or insights and all together you will have a more overall picture of our teaching in the Sufi order because it's now becoming more and more like a partnership and so we're able to incorporate more and more rightness into our menu, let's say. Well I'd like to start with something very tangible and that is working with light. It is true that one has to visualize. And one wonders sometimes when one is just following in imagination instead really experiencing. And therefore as a preliminary what we'll be doing that it has been ascertained in laboratories that if one concentrates on the light emitted by the body, it's called bioluminescence, one can ascertain by photoelectric cells that indeed the body does radiate more light. So there's knowing that and I hope that you feel confident that we're not just imagining things ,that we are really doing something in our minds which has very tangible consequences in terms of our body. And that's only just an example of many of the things that we'll be doing which are perhaps not quite as tangible. Like for example, imagining that you're that you discover that you have great power in your being. And again you might think that you don't have power but somehow or other the power of imagination is such that let's say that given favorable circumstances, virtual qualities in our being emerge, they are awakened in favorable circumstances exactly as a seed will start unfurling in favorable circumstances, in a favorable environment. So what we want to do is to create that environment, and what is more that environment includes not only circumstances, but our realization our endeavor, or discipline and of course our emotional attunement. OK well that was just a preliminary, so I would like us to start with a practice, a very simple practice. Imagine that your eyes emit two beams of light, just like the headlamps of a car. Now it is true that the eyes do emit light but by concentrating upon them, by imagining them, you'll increase enormously the effulgence of your eyes. And you'll find that, well for one thing, people pick it up. Most people of course love light. And people will react by feeling more luminous themselves. So you're establishing a kind of communication with people in term of light. And as you see it's a very simple practice. And I suggest doing it every day, I do it every day myself. Now of course one can without further steps, for example I find it helpful to imagine sky with, like I saw once above Chamonix above Lac Blanc after a terrible storm at night time and in the early morning about four, the clouds offered a display of the most wondrous hues of all different colors of red, and orange green, and yellow, and gray, and even black, and violet and rose. And it was quite incredible, and the scene kept on shifting. So sometimes you could see one cloud and transparency behind the other one. Then you could see the glorious globe of the sun rising in this array of colors. And I thought to myself " This is the world that I belong to, I'm in exile on the planet." That's just you know a metaphor. But all of a sudden discovering your being by your communication with light, or discovering that fact that your being is really, at least one dimension of your being is light. But in order to discover it it's wonderful to either experience it or imagine it as I did, or as you can. I remember a statue, well it's in San Francisco, in Golden Gate I think there is a museum. There's a Chinese monk who is well he has a vision of such beauty. You can't see his vision of course, but you can see it on his face. His whole face is transformed by that vision. And I think well, just imagine how a human being can be totally transfigured by a vision of splendor. And what are we doing in life. Sufficing ourselves with nitty gritty, very trite commonplace, when we are offered the glory of the heavens? So this kind of way, once more you are really imagining, you are projecting an aspect of a being which maybe does not have a form, just impingine or impending splendor. You're projecting it into forms that call for all the power of your glance. Your being is almost carried into that landscape of the soul and totally transformed by it. Perhaps you will notice that somehow the mind itself is involved in this transforming experience. The way I see it is that thoughts become crystal clear instead of nebulous. So I use the word "entertaining luminous thoughts". And of course in the domain of emotion, in fact I don't even think that one can even project this picture unless it is motivated by, supported by a very beautiful emotion. Need I say just how different it is to dark emotions, resentment, or betraying someone, or hatred, or deceiving someone, manipulating someone for one's good, and so on, greed and so on. Something of the angel of the angelic dimension of your being emerges when called for, as I say when circumstances are favorable these aspects of your being are going to emerge. And if you keep on repeating this over a period of time, then your personality will be transformed because you bring into your personality elements that otherwise would have been simply buried. Now you don't have try to figure out what is happening with your thoughts. It won't just them happen automatically. But it's a nice idea to think that, think of the difference between thoughts when they become crystal clear or when they are nebulous. And I think that when there is even the slightest inclination to deceive someone then one's thoughts become nebulous. They're not clear. Now we could carry this further and become aware of our whole aura. Again, once more, I hope that imagination is going to reach a point when it is really experience rather than imagination. But of course we are at the edge of our normal experience. But can you sort of feel? It's more like feeling, of course not seeing. But can you feel light around your shoulders and upper arm, and even in front of your chest? I know one can imagine it. Even some people have difficulty even in visualizations. I don't know whether you know the photographs of Walter Chappell. He made photographs of flowers in ultraviolet light. And you can see the corona around the profile of the plants. And therefore it's very clear that it's true that our bodies are rather like those of flowers that we do, our skin, the profile of our body is surrounded by what they call a corona a light like in Krilian photography. It's helpful to have seen these pictures and then to try to imagine the same thing is happening to you. I find it very interesting to turn my body left and right. One has a feeling that the aura is turning to the left and turning to the right. As I say, but this is a feeling. But you could of course, I did, go to the laboratory of Dr Mutayama of Japan, Tokyo. He has a photoelectric, well a cell, and then within it of course photoelectric cells. If you're good meditator you can emit enough photons so that the whole system lights up. So you sit there and you really try to emit a lot of light. And it's amazing that if you really try, of course then one needs to be used to working with the aura, at a certain moment then the whole solar system lights up. You've triggered off the threshold situation. And I find it useful to become aware of the sort of outgoing radiance of your heart. The heart chakra which is at the center of the chest is really like the center of your aura. So you think of yourself as a sun. And your heart is like the core of the sun. OK Now let's go a little bit more into detail. So let's get back to identifying with your body, how you feel your body. And you know how you feel when you sunbath? I think one really does open the pores of one's skin to be receptive to the light of the sun. So you don't have to do this in the sun, you can do it in a dark room. It's a kind of availability of the cells to be receptive to light. The fact is that the body does absorb light. Or the cells of the body absorb light, so it's not just your skin. In fact the molecules of the cells of the body, in fact the atoms let's say avail themselves to the energy of light, because light is energy. And they are transformed by it. I don't want to go too much into detain. But the electrons jump their orbitals and jump from one to the next, so overcome the constraint in which they are when they don't have enough energy, this surplus of energy gives them this freedom, and so on. Then when they have expended all this energy then they fall back to where they were. Any excess of energy is radiated and that accounts for your aura. In the mean time you can say that the atoms, molecules, the cells are giggling, sparkling in a state of effervescence, dancing. And maybe that's what Julaluddin Rumi means by the dance of the atoms. And the galaxies, the dance of Shiva. So when you're sitting there meditating, you may think that you're immobile, but then everything is giggling inside your body. You can intensify that ebullience. And it is, I think that by becoming aware of it, or even just sensing it a little bit even though you're not, it's not very clear. But just having a vague sense of awakening all this energy within your cells. What happens actually is that the cells when they avail themselves of more energy from the environment, they start dividing, which is called mitosis, the process of well reproduction, renewal. And so it's a wonderful therapy in the body. You're really promoting the growth of your cells simply by the power of imagination. It's very tangible, very effective. I find it even useful to study the configuration of cells. You can look at it in a book on biology or physiology. And you descend into this wonderful world of basic living structures that are continually renewing themselves. In fact the real infrastructure of your whole of your consciousness, the way that your consciousness awakens out of this deep infrastructure in your body so that you are really involving your body in the awakening of your consciousness. So now having, I think it's good to imagine that you're absorbing light as you inhale. And then as you exhale consciously radiate light. That is once more, I said can you feel the effulgence around your shoulders. But really speaking, as you know the photons travel through space at 186,000 miles a second. Can you imagine? Of course one can't imagine. So instead of thinking that you're just, you're body is surrounded by a corona of light, it's the light of the photons of your body are shooting out through outer space, yes through outer space, and maybe bombarding the stars, and form with the stars what they call a wave interference pattern. So that we think that our body ends with the boundaries of the body, the skin or what we think the skin is the boundary of the body. But in fact light is considered by scientists to be matter. And consequently our bodies extend into the starry sky. Can you imagine that you're out there, and you're here , but you're here and out there at the same time? Of course it just blows one's mind. Now we could just make one step further and understand that the body is a hard core within that template which is our aura. Or another thought which I think is helpful is our body which is a crystal which would be, or rather as a crystallization of light. And in turn that crystal absorbs light. It's a way of looking at one's body in terms of the light of the Universe. It's part of the big bang. A breakthrough of light. If you were to make a space walk, you can do these days, it's reserved to astronauts, but maybe one day people will be able to do it by paying a few dollars. If you were to do these meditations while you were out there in outer space, then you could think, instead of thinking 'h I'm looking at these stars, it's wonderful how they look from this vantage point and how planet earth looks and so on. If you identify with the aura of your body, the stars are not the objects of your cognizance, of your observation. Your aura is the convergence of the light of the stars. And your aura boomerangs the light of the stars back into the wave interference pattern of the stars, of the light of the stars, well the light of that ocean of the Universe, ocean of light. So this is a vision that will fill you with delight and give you a totally different sense of yourself than the rather commonplace notion we have of our bodies and our situations in the markets of the world as the Sufis say. A kind of cosmic. So it's like discovering the cosmic dimension of your being instead of identifying with the personal dimension or individual dimension. It's like we're multidimensional beings. Now the next step would be is to as I say identify with your aura instead of your body. Instead of thinking my body absorbs light from the Universe and radiates light, you think the body is as I say a hard core within the template. And consequently if you identify with your body, you'll notice that it pulses as you inhale and exhale. And really your aura doesn't have boundaries, so it's like a vortex, whirlpool within the ocean of light of the Universe. But somehow I don't know quite how to describe that. But in the whirlpool there is a centrifugal motion and a centripetal one. I think the energy builds up towards the axis of the vortex as you inhale. So you feel that the energy is flowing into your aura, rather like one pumps the tire of one's car. I was going to say the pressure is increased in a smaller space, and then the other way around. And you see an expansion of the aura as you exhale. Although as I say the aura does not have boundary. It's a wonderful feeling. It's like the ebb and flow of the tides of light and the starry Universe and you're part of it. The consequence is that you're going to become a much more luminous being. I hope that is a criterion. I hope you like people who have a lot of light in them . And you are rather wary of people who carry just a dark cloud where ever they go. A kind of dedication to light. Now there is a further step. That consists in, it's really very surprising, you'll have to reconsider all your thinking. Because you see, I know people don't like my talking about science, but somehow one has to, I find that physics provides us with a model for what we are experiencing that is much more precise than anything one could have thought out normally. That is the that Universe such as we experience it is just one perspective of two perspectives, well of several. But anyway you can talk about these two now. For example there is this tree here now, that tree there. That's the explicate condition, not the condition, the explicate perspective that we can understand the Universe broken up into categories, discrete entities as they say. But then there is another way of looking at things which is rather paradoxical. And that is waves. So waves don't have boundaries. And what is more particles will collide, so you can see the ego conflict. Waves will compose together and form what is called a wave interference pattern. It will intersperse. The fact is that everything that we experience as discrete entities at the surface in the depth is interspersed with everything else. But we can't conceive that. So we are more comfortable in the perspective where we see everything as discrete objects. So this is what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state of the Universe. And he says that this is the fundamental state. And the explicate is just a derived state. Now when you translate this in terms of light, then you'll find that we always think of light as something that radiates from a source of light, the sun, a candle, an electric light. There is definitely a source of light and that source is definitely located in space in a particular point in space. So it's very difficult for us to imagine infused light, what Pir o Murshid, my father calls all pervading light. The light waves intersperse other light waves, a sort of basic condition of light. And Pir o Murshid points out that the stars, we look in the sky we see those what we think of as the stars, but in fact what we see is the overall way that the Universe is converged in one point in space and the other points in space. And we call that a star. And of course we can do the same thing with our self. We can also, how can I say, converge the inner light, or the all pervading light and radiate it forth as our aura. So that when you look at your aura it's not just the radiance that we boomerang back from the environment. You know we absorb and then we emit light. It's not the same thing as reflecting light. But anyway called fluorescence. But that we also let's say further dispensation of light is availed to us by turning within and then when we exhale, when radiate our aura, we're not just boomeranging back the light that we absorbed from the environment. But in addition to that we are radiating light that we converged from the inner light, or the all pervading light, or the infused light at a kind of subliminal level of reality, like a white hole for example in outer space. So you can do that if you, we'll there are several ways of doing it. One is to hold your breath after inhaling and before you exhale. And concentrate upon the solar plexus. Imagine that the solar plexus is like the center of a whirlpool, a vortex. And so the matter of the universe, and in fact the light, gets converged into it from outside, the outer light, yes, the explicate, gets converged, drained down into that black hole. And then the opposite it acts as a white hole so that new energy emerges from the center of the vortex. And then well it, new energy is converged at a subliminal level and then it starts radiating from your heart. I don't know whether that's clear. So the solar plexus acts as a black hole at the end of your exhaling. No, of your inhaling. That's right. Then your hold your breath. And at the end of your holding your breath, before you exhale, the solar plexus avers itself to be a white hole instead of being a black hole. And new light energy emerges not from (tape turns ) level of your being and is radiated from your heart chakra. See if you can do that.(pause for practice) OK Well these are practices you can do on your own. My job is simply to give these practices so that you, but the only way that they're going to be effective is if you do them yourself. Now maybe you could simplify this practice. Because I think of the words of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan who says, he talked about breath, and he says, If your breath finds a obstacle between, in the way of its expanding into the outer world, it will turn within. And the same is true with light. So in the first practice we did we did absorb light from outside then we converged it. Now, so we absorb light as we inhaled light from outside. Now what we could do is simply imagine that you've really placed sentinels at the doors of perception or let's lay some kind of barrier. And consequently you breath in from inside instead of from outside. It's a very strange thing, it's a whole new way of breathing. So you're absorbing light from inside, and converging it, it becomes centered. As you exhale then you radiate it forth. OK so here be have some rather wonderful practices. The next one would be as you inhale try to transfer your attention from one chakra to the next. I hope you know what chakra means. Let's say the plexi of your autonomic nervous system starting from the bottom of your spine. I don't know all the scientific words, like the sacral and so on. But you transfer your attention from one center to the other as you inhale. One center, that is think of them as, how can I say, stations within your spinal cord. And the end one is actually the pituitary gland which is considered to be the center from which the crown center radiates. And then you do the opposite as you exhale. You see if you are aware of your aura. At first it's a bit vague like having a lot of light around one. But I've already drawn your attention to the fact that there is light in the cells. It's not just surrounding your skin. But now if you become more sensitive, you'll realize that there is all different frequencies of light. It's not all just colorless light. And even that the color of your aura changes with your mood. If you're angry I suppose it would be red. And if you were in an very innocent state, it would be blue, light blue and so on. We don't know but these are things we need to explore. There is a good presumption then. But the colors seem to be rather random at least at first. Actually we experience them as colors, but in fact what we're talking about is just frequencies of light. But one can, this is a very wonderful practice to do, one can alter the frequency of one's aura in accordance with the spectrum of light. That is by the power of imagination. By imagining red at the bottom of the spine and ultraviolet at the top, and gold in the heart, and you have orange at the solar plexus and green at the throat center, and blue in the eyes, and sort of vermilion in the second chakra. So there you have a whole, a beautiful array of frequencies of light. And by the power of your imagination, if you ascribe of these colors to each of the centers it will have the effect of bringing your aura in a very harmonious condition. And it will have a lot of consequences, for example you'll become very calm and very powerful, very centered. You'll overcome all the randomness of your thoughts giggling here and there. Random thoughts. It will give you a sense of being absolutely in tune with the Universe. It's like when a harpsichord is beautifully tuned, one has a feeling that in some way it is connected with the symphony of the spheres in some coherent way. If you could do that practice as you inhale. Now what you do when you hold your breath. What I'd suggest that then you make a quantum leap into a whole different level of light. So it's not the light that you absorb from the Universe, it's not the inner light, it's another type of light, if one couldn't call it light at all, perhaps purely by derivation. But the Sufis call it the light of intelligence. So think of your intelligence as a light that is cast upon things. And think of your glance as a light you cast upon things. That's why we started working with the glance. Because normally our eyes are instruments of perception. They're passive. They're receptive to the light of the environment. We little realize that our eyes also do emit light. They're mainly the other way around. They're mainly absorbing light. But if you think of your eyes as being those two beams of light that I described. And you might think that you have the faculty of thrusting the light of your understanding upon situations. In fact if you understand situations, there has to be some matching between the circumstances and your understanding. I mean a kind of prior understanding, understanding prior to experience, which is called protocritic in philosophy. Protocritic, prior to our interpretation of things. For example if you know that a table is round, how do you know a table is round? Roundness is written in your intelligence. So you come across something that is already present in your intelligence and then you recognize it. otherwise you'd never be able to know the difference between a square and a circle. And so this sense of the light of the intelligence will enhance your need to develop your intuition, your insight. It's not based upon experience. Now there is just one more point before we end this session. As you exhale, I said well you pass and review the chakras as you descend in the descending order, yes. But think of the light of intelligence as a catalyst that sparks the latent light in each chakra as it descends. Just like, I imagine it but I've never seen it, a Christmas tree, if you could have all the bulbs attached to a cable. But you could have the light progress one to the other instead of all lighting up at the same time. Now this is a very wonderful experience. And for me it's a step in preparation for what, at least it is for me a very important objective in my life, and that is awakening and illumination. And also because it does establish some kind of connection between mind and body. The light of intelligence, the light of your aura. And I try to, I like to illustrate it by the fact that, for example if you have a, for example I think of a scene in which the mother shows the child a puzzle and says, Do you see that little pixie in the tree?" And the child says," No Mummie, I don't see it". "Look again". "No, no I really don't see it." "Look again." "Yes" All of a sudden the whole face of that child lights up. So there you have, it's not just features. You can prove it if you measured it in a laboratory you'd see that the whole aura of that child all of a sudden starts sparkling. So think that the light of intelligence sparks the light of the aura. And that is exactly what is meant by a light upon a light which is a word used in the Koran, a typical saying in the Koran that we often refer to a light upon a light, that's the meaning of it. So God bless you now. Xxx AUG 11, 1995 Tape 02 Mureed's Retreat 95 Tape 2 August 11, 1995 Yes. This is a training program for mureeds, although there are very few mureeds here in comparison with the mureeds in the Sufi Order. But you could consider this to be like a, we are setting a model for the training of mureeds in your center. Of course I would like to add that there are many representatives here who have been going through a course of training for representatives and now making an interesting experiment and that is to try and translate what we have learned into how we are working with mureeds. And then finally of course how it's going to work having people who are not mureeds. So as I say it's an experiment. And I want you to know that there are a lot of new things coming through. For one thing the whole format of our training has now become much more a partnership than just one to one, let's say a guru kind of situation with one teacher. And last week there has been a wonderful concurrence of very different, how can I say variations on a theme, different ways of training which are all complementary rather than contradictory. So my job is to try and see, or highlight the common denominator, and give a general orientation to the training in the Sufi Order and in the meantime account for all the differences and variations. And for that of course again my job is to maintain the continuity of the transmission while being open to change. To incorporate new ideas which will however need to be integrated with those that have been transmitted traditionally in the course of the decades. We are in a rather invidious situation here because it's training of course, but we need, n the morning at least we want it to be experiential rather than too theoretical. Now I have to find some way of meeting those two objectives. As I said before the map is not the territory. So knowing the parameters of what a training is based upon is not good enough, it's just a map. So we want to experience it rather than just talking about it or theorizing about it. So instead of, and I'm stating sort of generalizing, I would say it's good to think in terms of stages. Mureeds go through stages. It's called mukum in the Sufi tradition. So it's not good to jump the gun and try and get into an advanced stage when one has not made the initial steps. I know that is a great temptation. And behind it all there is a kind of knowledge of how the human being works or how the human being reacts to the impacty of spiritual teaching and how it affects the unfurling of our personality and how it affects our way handling of the situations and problems in our lives. All that, you know that's behind all that we are doing. So in the course, actually it's much too short. There is no way that we can bring through all that we would like to bring through during this weekend. However it's three days isn't it? Four days. So it's not a weekend. OK now let's say that basically it is really paradoxical. That is to say that it is often not only different, but the opposite of what one assumes at first. For example one assumes one is who one thinks one is. And one would like to know more who one is. And one would like to then become aware of the transcendental dimensions of one's being and the cosmic and so on. Those are the kind of practices I used to give starting with the notion of the self, the as a discrete entity, then discover a wider dimension of one's being. That seems like the rational thing to do. But Sufism is always paradoxical, and really gives you a jolt. Because right from the start one tries to see things from the divine point of view. And of course our minds react to that. How can you see things from the divine point of view? You don't know the divine point of view. And this is really based on the words of Pir o Murshid, and I must say the words of Pir o Murshid really are the basis, the staple behind our menus. When he says, start with the concept of God, and we confuse the concept with God. And so we're taking about God, we don't know that what we mean really our concept. We don't know what we mean really by God. And then the belief. And he says, That's all there is is a belief in God. But where are you to find the living God if it's not in the God realized person. So the belief is not it yet. But of course it's a help. Then he says mysticism starts with the experience of God. Then of course your mind balks right away and thinks," Well how can you experience God?". You're experiencing the physical world, you're experiencing people, you're experiencing yourself, you're experiencing your problems. Perhaps you're even experiencing your emotional attunement, but how can you experience God, you see? That's a paradox. And the fact is that step by step, one can get into that consciousness whereby God, that is think of God as the one being of which we are apart, and of which the physical Universe is the body. Whereby this being discovers Him/Herself as us, not through us but as us. That's Sufi parlance. And if you continue listening to me, you'll be continually faced with Sufi ways of thinking which are really paradoxical, challenging to your mind. But it's really healthy to challenge your mind and all your concepts. But you'll find is that what is interesting here is that instead of saying you know, the world is illusion, your assessment of your problems is illusion, all those kinds of things that you hear in Yoga. We're always saying, "Well there's another perspective". So it's positive instead of negative. If you downplay one perspective then you can highlight the other. So we could say that the stages in the training of mureeds is that, you'd think that it's your discovery of God. But it is really the discovery by God of Him/Herself through you as you. So it's, as we say, it's not that easy. And that's why Sufism is not that popular in the world because it's really very very difficult. Yoga is much easier. Buddhism, thousands of people adhere to it. It represents a kind of pessimistic reaction to life. A kind of reactions of civilizations which is self destructive. So it's very tempting because it's part of what's happening in our time. Sufism is very positive. And so it ends by these words of Pir o Murshid," Where are you to find God if not in the God realized person?". And then you could say, What do you mean by being God realized. ... That's what it's all about. There are stages leading towards that, which the Sufis call tawheed. And our practices are devices intended to lead towards that point. Awakening a point of view a perspective which is virtual or latent within us but which is awakening or can be awakened. I said this morning. I'm talking about main principles now and then we're going to work in more detail. I said this morning given favorable circumstances, potentialities in our being will awaken which otherwise would be slumbering, would not be active. And consequently one discovers, thanks to these skills, these capacities in oneself, that one had not availed oneself to before. So from your point of view it is self discovery. But never lose sight of the fact that it is really God's self discovery. Because otherwise one gets encapsulated in one's own personal vantage point and one does not avail oneself of all the richness of one's being because one could say that one is like a pendulum. One end of one's being is an individual and the other is the totality. And we're the whole pendulum. Don't just think of just those two poles, but all that is between them. It's all challenging to our mind. But I think it's good to discover new ways of thinking and the commonplace ways. And there's a kind of joy about it. You're high about it. It makes you high. All of a sudden the breakthrough of realization will make your high. I find that a lot of people are really low key. Then it becomes systemic, so the low key of one person makes another person fee more low key, and that's the cause of the drop of the common denominator right down into limbo. So realization will transform your being, and give you such joy. And you can really still honor your sadness. I think we feel concerned about being loyal to our sadness . So it's OK to be sad as long as you can be happy at the same time. So you can have sunshine and rain at the same time, and the consequence is beautiful rainbow. OK So, what are these stages? You see if you take initiation in a Sufi group, Sufi Order, whatever, or in any esoteric school, you look for training by a teacher. And somehow, in the old days, it was just assumed that the guru knows all the answers, and the people don't know anything. And now that is shifting a lot. Although I must say that in India sometimes, one accepts that actually the guru learns from the cellas, from the pupils. Now since all the scandals about gurus and things, I think we are beginning to realize that even people with a high degree, maybe of realization even, have a shadow. One is afraid. There is a fear that I felt amongst young people at the young adult camp here, of young people who think that of course they need some kind of guidance, but they are so afraid of getting themselves in the hands of a teacher who is not an ideal teacher for them. And where are you going to find an ideal teacher. Rare these days. A teacher for yourself. Two or three people per teacher. That's totally unrealistic. Well, what would be an ideal teacher? It's really a sort of utopia. Like someone who knows all the answers, who can see into your soul, who knows exactly where you're at, and knows the next step. That is of course our objective. I mean it would be wonderful if we could train ourselves to reach that point. But there is a kind of, there is a basic error. There are two basic errors in this. And that is that really we have an inner being and an outer being. Or rather it's the same being. But one aspect of our being, psyche, personality, I don't know what's the word, is concerned with adapting itself to the environment. Like I need to have a little bit more strength because my boss bullies me. Or I need to have a little more compassion because it's difficult to love this person who is so obnoxious. And so one feels the need for a teacher to help one in order to enhance qualities that are in one. But one feels that one doesn't have enough compassion, or enough strength, so on. So that's the outer self is seeking for reinforcement, confirmation, acknowledgment, even empowerment and so we like a teacher who says you can do it and shows you you can do it. And perhaps this one of the primary forms of training. You'll find that for example when I was learning rock climbing in Chominix all the guide was doing was to show me that I could do what I didn't think I could do. I didn't know I could do it, but that's all he did. Of course I could do it but he had to show me that I could. So that's I would say a rather primitive form of the training but an essential one. And when I was practicing the cello, my teacher said, "We're all self taught." So it was very good. I had come to depend upon him and he wanted me to know You can do it yourself. You mustn't think that you have to always hang on to a teacher. But on the other hand he said, " You see if your put your bow just a little bit closer to the bridge, just see how it sounds, you see?". It made all the difference. He had to tell me that. So the teacher can tell you things. You might have discovered that but you know it saved me a tremendous amount of time. Just in a few minutes he told it to me. And so that would be one aspect of the teacher which I could call the mentor. One might even say the facilitator. But one, in the depth of one's being one entertains a kind ideal. And one thinks of God as that ideal, you see, and one is looking for that ideal. And somehow surreptitiously, I think one is unconscious about this. But I think that this ideal is buried in one's soul. So that one is really in search of one's ideal. One is really in search of oneself, but of course one doesn't know, could never claim to be that ideal. At first one is searching for that ideal in another oneself. Because it helps one to discover that aspect of oneself. Because one is so used to basing everything upon experience rather than self discovery. So one is projecting this ideal upon a person who is one's teacher. And one is putting that teacher in a very embarrassing situation, because that teacher feels that one is expecting him or her to be a role model. And he or she generally falls short of being what the pupil thinks. And what is more, if that person did not embody the divine teacher. That means the divine teacher has it all in him/her the good and the bad. Now you think that God is just good, but not perfect but that's the word of Murshid. We ascribe everything good to God, so we make God out of our own projections. The fact is that the Universe couldn't be all good. Even the Universe say the body of God. Because for for there to be change, for there to be evolution there has to be a breakdown. The nails of your fingers start getting eroded, and your hair and so on, the cells of the body die and so on. And your personality too. So there has to be some defilement for there to be renewal of life. So you can learn not just by the good aspects of God that you would like to project upon the teacher, but by the defects of the teacher because those defects reflect your defects. Let's say I use the word defects. The word that's used in Jungian psychology is the shadow. The shadow has a lot to tell you. I've given you ...this example a thousand times. It's that workaholic woman who finds it very difficult to be peaceful. And when psychoanalyzed we found that the reason why she found it difficult to be peaceful is because she can't stand that woman who is spending all the time on the beach munching chocolate. So it's like the shadow of peace would be laziness or indolence. And the reason why we have a problem developing power is because we don't like the ruthlessness of tyrannical people who have power. So those defects will tell you something about your qualities, and will help you to develop a quality like peace for example. You know that if you see, I don't know if your teacher is lazy. But let's say it's powerful and you see that he/she does and tends to be a little bit overbearing, and that's not what you want. So you can learn from him or her not just because of his/her qualities but because of his/her defects. That's why when I was describing my life as a child, as I grew up and so on, the curve of my life as they call it, I was saying how at first I was so impressed by the being of Pir o Murshid. It was like my ideal Then the contrast I saw in the school, the egos and I would say even the cruelty of the boys at school. And I couldn't reconcile the two. And then terrible fear because you could hear the bombs. They weren't the Nazis. It was the first world war. The zeppelins were dropping bombs. That sense of being born in that situation where people are going to kill you. I suppose that's what animals feel in the jungle. So that's all part of learning. I can see now that I learned also from the boys at school rather than just from my father. So I'm saying that so that you see that the first step, so that you do not pass through that period of that deception. You lose faith in the teacher and then you don't want another teacher because you probably would come across the same thing. Learn what you can from whomever you can. What I'm saying here is that the teacher is always God coming through a particular form. In this case the way the world comes to you might be in the personality of a teacher. Now one of the methods we use at this stage is to represent to ourselves masters saints and prophets and sit in the presence of that being. It's very very effective. It's only a first step. There are further steps. But one can imagine that of course, I have done that. But of course I've sat in the presence of very wonderful people in the Himalayas, and also dervishes, and even hermits in Mt. Athos just without speaking, just the very, even just the features of the face, the whole atmosphere, the magnetism, the intense love and the insight coming through the eyes of that person. All that is very, has a strongly transforming effect upon one. And this is embodied in a word that I'll never forget because I was climbing high in the snow in the high mountains without any track, and beyond all those villages, frozen to death at night time. Having caught pneumonia. So this great rishi in his cave. And what did he say to me? He said," Why have you come so far so see what you should be? ". That was right on. We are looking for ourselves in other ourselves. If you have that great privilege of being able to meet the kind of people I met then of course, one would have thought , "Well that's it. That's enough for a lifetime." It's only the first step. Incidentally, they were never anything like my father. They were all wonderful beings, but no comparison.. So now the practices. I say that's a practice, imagining a master. But what you can do is you can expand your consciousness so that if God is the teacher, the first teacher, coming to you through the ayat, the signs that, the physical Universe is made of signs. It's not God exactly, but it's like the pug marks of a bear that will tell you something about the bear. So it's signs. So that's the first way in which one experiences God. One doesn't ever experience God as such, but through signs, so it's a kind of approximation. So that first stage, well it could be illustrated by sitting looking in the mountains, looking into a wonderful panorama, or going in church listening to the organ playing, a wonderful service, or the lights on the alter, anything, of course for me looking into the eyes of a baby. So anything like an act, like that of my sister volunteering to the point of sacrificing her life for her ideal. Well those are the kinds of things in which God becomes known to you through a device. And that calls upon your consciousness to reach out. But of course it is true that one does project one's psyche into the world. And it's particularly true in the case of one's problems. So that's the first state in Yoga is to recognize that one doesn't experience the world such as it is, but such as it appears to one. From a personal vantage point. And that's particularly true in psychology. We think that we are trying to assess our problems. What we are doing is we are grappling with our impressions of our problems and not really dealing with our problems. So that's the first thing is to know that you have to somehow not limit yourself to your vantage point because that sets a bias upon what you experience. And so one of the first practices consists of your expanding your consciousness instead of it being focalized. The fact of considering a panorama already has that effect of giving you, making your consciousness less centered. otherwise if you're concentrating on your third eye you're centering your consciousness. One of the practices that I've been recommending is to get into the consciousness of another person. And you can do that especially with regard to your problem. Like the person who is countering you in your problem you have difficulty with. Seeing how things look from the point of view of that person. Pir o Murshid said of course to see from two different points of view at the same time. The Sufis call this, "I look through his/her eyes". And so just imagine how things look from the point of view of that person. And it's a whole new complementary perspective to your perspective. Then it even goes further,"I see him/her through, I see myself through his or her eyes". Then you understand why the person is treating you the way they are because they assume you are what they think you are. So their assessment of you is not any better then your assessment of yourself. They are both incorrect. But still at least you have an expanded view. Now if you were to extend this view more and more, then you would have this fantastic situation like you find in Kahlil Gibran's book, Jesus the Man, where he describes, Jesus is described by people who knew him at the time. It's all fiction of course. But those views are totally different you see. But somehow together it builds an image of Jesus. And you see how totally off the standpoint of people is. And the consequence is that you are not that impressed by the standpoint of people because you see it is totally incongruence. What people had to say about Jesus had nothing to do with Jesus you see. The same thing is what people think of you is not reliable. One of the first items of finding freedom is to free yourself of the opinions that people have of you because that can really bear your down particularly in a marriage situation. Be free, find yourself. So that's it you expand your consciousness. And consequently you will reach a point when your consciousness, you get used to an expansion of your consciousness. The trouble is when we do this the notion of ourselves gets expanded which is true because there is no boundary to our self. But the trouble is that a lot of people cannot handle that infinite dimension of themselves and become spaced out. One of the reasons why psychologists accuse spiritualists of the spiritual bypass is I would answer that there is such a thing as a psychological bypass too. And also that, as a matter of fact, I think that the bypass is very helpful in the case of one's heart. And after all you give yourself a sabbatical and so on. It's good to open one door and close the other. Anyway, I'm saying that because there has to be some caution about the way we expand our notion of your self because we tend to lose our identity. I know that's very eastern. And Rudolph Steiner used to accuse eastern teachers of doing that to people so they lost the sense of who they are, and especially if you don't like your self. Then you tend to do that more because you like to lose yourself and it gives you some satisfaction and you assume that is God and so on. So that is the reason why Pir o Murshid gave us a sense of expansion with some kind of containment. There is a wazifa that indicates that. You have two wasifas Ya Basit and Ya Kabid. Basit expansion and Kabid restriction. I never used to give Kabid, but for one thing Murshid said we converge the Universe or the light within as we did this morning. Then there is a sense of constriction, when you inhale there is also a sense of constriction and expansion at the same time, but still constriction. And I find that we can extend this notion to a way of dealing with power. I have during the last years cautioned people against the practice Ya Wali because it leads one very easily into an ego trip. Of course we say in theory it's divine power instead of human power, but one doesn't always know the difference. And not only that but forcing yourself beyond your capacity which is a thing I keep on doing and people try and model themselves on what I'm doing and then they break down. So don't model yourself on me because everyone is different. What Pir o Murshid is saying is that undertake something that is less good than what you can do, rather than taking on something that is more than you can do. And the power that you gain by achieving what you achieve you can achieve something more challenging. But don't start with something more than you can achieve because you often take away your self confidence they you won't be able to do anything anymore. So that is Kabid. And I must say I like the combination between Ya Wali and Ya Kabid because then right you develop mastery but I don't want to over stress myself in my mastery. But the other one is Ya Wasi, which is not the same thing as Ya Basit, Basit is just expansion. Wasi means wide domain. That's a word that Pir o Murshid uses a lot because really Sufism is based upon knighthood (fur tohat) means knighthood. So the lord has an area of responsibility and is responsible to his lord and to the whole hierarchy ladder. And so that is a much more, more concrete sense of the expansion of your being is your domain. So you survey your domain every morning and think well what are the things that I'm responsible for? People, situation, I forgot to write that letter, I must ask forgiveness of somebody I've offended. There's that person who is really in need of help and I haven't done it and so on. You just survey all this. Those are your domain. And the greater you are the greater your domain. So one thinks that there is a kind of boundary to their domain. You know animals have their domain, hunting grounds. But somehow it's not as clear as that because what we do to one person is going to affect a third person and further and further and so there really is not limit to our responsibility. And there are areas where one is not so clear. For example you could say well I'm responsible for my family, whatever. But then how about the people in Bosnia. Are you responsible for them, are you not? And to what extent and so on, people in Africa, people dying of AIDS. All over the world. Your responsibility ultimately is unlimited. But it gives one a sense of, I think there is some mistake in trying to develop mastery or trying to develop power for oneself. It's like, it's because it's a problem that it calls upon the power in one to deal with it. It's much better. And therefore I would never give Ya Wali as a practice, even with Kabid. I would always associate Wali with Wasi. There is a very nice phonetically, Ya Wali, Ya Wasi. There's always a relationship to a field of activity . OK So that's the first step. It starts with trying to discover oneself in another oneself, and therefore by experience the world looking at one's problems and how one's personality is challenged by one's problems. And so your concern in that first stage is," What are the qualities I need to develop in order to meet my problems?" That's the first question I ask everyone before giving a wazifa, "What are the qualities you think you need in order to meet your problems?" And I would even say I didn't even have, write that on my questionnaire. I would even say what is the wazifa, if you know about wasifas, that you would prescribe to yourself in order to develop that quality you would need in order to meet your problems? But remember that is because that is because we are identifying ourselves with the outer aspects of our self that ( ) calls the adapted self. The ancient Sufis used to call it the false self, but I like that word very much. I think the adapted self better. It's not a different self, it's just an aspect of the ____our self that is concerned with dealing with the environment, adapting to the environment. But you know there is always a balance between the amount one adapts oneself to the environment and the amount one adapts the environment to one's own sense of purpose. And therefore to do that one has to start becoming aware of one's inner self, the deeper core of one's being than that aspect of oneself that is superficial and that is concerned with the environment. And so in order to do that one has to learn to turn within. And of course we'd like to know what that means turning within. We generally assume that that's what meditation is about, turning within. But you must be very careful that turning within is not just simply getting encapsulated within one's own psyche like one sits back after a long day of work. And there are all these random thoughts come into your mind and they are giggling in your psyche. And you can't find any peace in trying to fight these thoughts and so on. So how do you meditate. Really basically how do you meditate. All these random thoughts. And what's the use in just sitting there and getting disturbed by all these thoughts. Of course these thoughts are a process of digestion. So when you're active, then you're not conscious of them because your thoughts are monitored by the situations outside. But when you turn within they you are delivered in the hands of all these random thoughts. And you think," Well I'm not the meditative type". So now we have to learn how to do this, really basically how to meditate. So remember that we unfold. Let's say that we have infinite possibilities inside our being, but in order to awaken these potentialities, as I said before, one of the ways to awaken these potentialities is to discover them outside ourselves. And that's just discovering but it's really more than that. We are really ingesting the Universe. Just like we are ingesting the food of the Universe into our body. The same thing is true of our psyche. And just imagine that the food that our psyche is taking in is our false interpretation.(tape turns) Because there is all these potentialities in a being that are trying to emerge. And if their emergence depends upon your false interpretation of your life, you're stuck. And so the thing to do is to filter the impressions from outside. And so for example what I'm saying here has practical applications. When you're meditating you're exhaling, inhaling. You're becoming aware of your inhaling and exhaling. So when you're exhaling like you're reaching out in the vastness. We've already done that. Trying to discover yourself in another yourself. And as you inhale then just imagine that you place sentinels at the doors of perception. So that you don't allow any impression in but you make some selection. You could say how do you do that? And the answer is, that if you have a very strong sense of who you are, that is your measuring rod. And so you feel, this is just not me so I can't deal with it, I can't digest it. We all suffer from psychic indigestion. Most of us because we are open to all these impressions. And they are conflicting in us and giggling in our psyche. So there you are. And a lot of psychologists are very concerned that spirituality makes people have a weaker sense of them selves, their uniqueness. Give them a sense of their cosmic nature and here in Sufism it's the other way around. We have both the expansion. Already I cautioned you about the expansion. So perhaps you know the immune system is based on me and not me. At least the first. There are two immune systems. The first one the body will reject organs that are notion synch with the DNA. And the second one is the body can adapt itself to organs that do not have the same DNA. And it is true that if we were not able to do that we would not be able to eat food at all. So there's the ability to ingest things that do not have the same affinity with our real being. And somehow, at least in the case of food, we can change the amino acids so that they are replicated by the DNA. But in the case of physical organs of course, I don't know what the case is there. It's not my domain. But as far as the psyche is concerned, that is an extraordinary ability we have to transmute the impressions of the world. So the first one is to reject anything that you can't deal with and it's not necessarily contempt. There is some judgementalism about it, we are allowed to have judgment because it gives us our standards. But you can say, Ya I don't know, I prefer Bach to hard rock or to heavy metal. So it's my problem. Maybe some of you can, but I'd rather not have to deal with it. So you find your being, like you affirm your being and that acts as a kind of protection. So instead of trying to adapt to the world eventually the world will have to adapt itself to you. Or there is some balance between the two. So now what are the practices like. The wasifas for example are just signals that are associated in your mind with a certain way of looking at things. And will of course lead to self discovery. So the basic wazifa that we're using is Ya Batin which means of course turning within. At least we translate it by the Veiled one. The Moslem woman who is veiled. But then that's rather simplistic. The whole story of life is the unveiling of splendor at high cost. Al Hallaj was crucified because he revealed the secret of his love for God. And there was a very famous Iranian, Portes, I think it was the last century, I don't know, long time ago. Very famous. And she was at a gathering. And she unveiled her face and the mullas came and killed her. And what's happening is of course the unveiling of the feminine in our time which represents that in us which is hidden. And it needs to be revealed. It needs to be unveiled. So it's not just turning within but it's really lifting one veil up after the other that hides our real self from our view. Not just from the view of other people. We don't really know our real self. So God appears now as the inner master, instead of the outer master as our real self. And of course we need a model for that and that is why, at least at this stage, the Sufis do not advise that you imagine that you are sitting in the presence of a master, saint, or prophet and trying and imagine that being which is called tasha vuri murshid, tasha means picture. That's idolatry in Islam. Icons in the church and so on. And so if you can't, if you're not allowed let's say taboo to have these images in the mosque for example, then at least you are creating conditions that are favorable to finding God without these outer images. And the Sufis speak of an inner form instead of an outer form. And so the qualities of our personalities are forms, but they are not geographical forms. And so tasha vuri murshid which is just imagining a master which as I say can be very helpful is replaced by tawaja which means getting into the consciousness of a master. We learned how to, for example, get into the consciousness of people we are dealing with in our problems. Well we can do the same with a master. For example, you could imagine Abraham, a very grand king. But you could get into the consciousness of Abraham and think, what it would be like to be Abraham. And then you discover something in your self that represents your inner self not your outer self. You can find your outer self by imagining, by the image of the master but you can't find your inner self. And there are a lot of thoughts attached to this. For example realizing, as you turn within suddenly realizing that one is playing a role in the world. And that one is wearing a mask. And that one has forgotten who one is. And all of a sudden you discover who you are. It's like a sudden flash. This is me, this is me. And even the countenance behind your face, as I've often said, an easy example is the mirror is the most deceptive and the cheapest of all feedback systems. But if you can see what transpires behind that which appears, then of course it's really very useful. So it's really transposing your awareness of being here in your body and transposing that sense of location in order to really dislodge our self and to get into the location of that master, saint or prophet, and see how it would feel to be like that being. Then for example if your repeat the wazifa Ya Kadir, it won't be an ego trip. It will be something that's coming from the depth of your being. Murshid describes that as discovering within you the same power that moves the Universe. So what I'm saying then is you have rejected thoughts or impressions which are deleterious to your being and which you can't digest, your body does that anyway with food. So you've made a selection. So you've made a whole series of defense lines, the more external ones watch keepers at the, sentinels at the doors of perception, but also there's that of course. The impressions that your memory, you remember impressions. It's not just impressions that you are receiving at the time, but you remember impressions. And when you remember impressions, then they have passed the threshold from the external world into your psyche. And you can even then start, you can't reject a thought or feeling in your psyche at will. That's why I would say that if you are so overwhelmed by the discovery of your real being that those thoughts don't have any hold upon your consciousness. That's why one has to do something positive in order to overcome the impact of the environment. That positive thing is discovering God within, discovering the master within. And it can take, of course it's difficult to do that. For example we did this today. We represented to ourselves light , a beautiful scene, clouds and so on, lit up by the sun. Then we turned within, the light within. And that's of course much more difficult. It's much easier to imagine that you're looking into a beautiful scene of light. Of course. I think of a situation in which you would be looking at a wonderful show, maybe from time to time there is a wonderful show on TV. It's rare but it could happen. A nature show or something like that. If your cat comes into the room, you wouldn't turn your eyes toward your cat. But if the show was boring, you'd look at your cat. So it's the same thing. Those thoughts will distract your mind if your whole attention is not drawn towards something that is so meaningful that the rest is just not important. So the discovery of the self is the most amazing, the most enthralling. But of course we have our self image which stands in the way of honoring our real being. That's why I say that discovering that you're not what you thought you were is a real breakthrough. So the inner teacher, let's say at this stage, the teacher, if it's a good teacher is revealing yourself to your self, becomes the mirror of your soul. That accounts for the words of Julaluddin Rumi who said," If you could only see yourself through my eyes, you'd realize how beautiful you are". There's a practice of the Tibetans. They concentrate on a statue. It's not the way of the Sufis but it's another stereotype. But still, they concentrate on a statue and then they imagine that they are the statue. And then they walk as though they were that being that they had concentrated upon. It's a very powerful practice, but it's artificial. But now supposing that you discovered your real being, and you'd be walking in the consciousness that this is my real being and forget that people might think that you're putting on a show. Because they will pull you back into your false being, always. That's why Buddha, when he was, after his retreat, when his disciples came to see him, and he said,"Have I ever spoken to you thus before?" He wanted them to know that he was not the same person as before. Bless you now. 1 AUG 11, 1995 Tape 03 We have many facets to our personality. And we have many facets to the latent virtualities of our being that can be awakened and otherwise would remain a virtue. We need to create the circumstances that favor the awakening of the aspect of ourselves which we do not think we have.And so in order to turn within in meditation we need to create, at least in our mind, an environmental situation that calls upon the emergence of this facet of our being. Which contrasts very much with the active workaholic aspect of our being, that aspect of our being that takes responsibility and is concerned with adapting itself to the environment. So it is an aspect of our being that maybe doesn't seem to have any relevance to the activity of our life. At least we can't see it. But when it awakens it gives us a sense of the meaningfulness and fulfillment which transforms our whole being. Hopefully the consequence will be that we will be more effective in our activity in the world. So the facet that I am thinking about now is the ascetic in you, the hermit. I find it easier if I not only represent to myself some of the wonderful ascetics that I've met in my life in the Himalayas amongst the dervishes, but by really trying to get into the consciousness of an ascetic. What does it feel like to be an ascetic? Something very very special and obviously other worldly. Well I would say the main characteristic is detachment, indifference, those things that seem to our achieving something in life, withdrawal from the pull of the environment. There is a word of Pir o Murshid which says that when breath finds a barrier between the inner and the outer, then it turns within. And the same thing is true of our consciousness. Normally our consciousness is concerned with the environment even if we do not, if we have our eyes closed and so on, and we're in an isolated place. The memory of the environment is still there present in our psyche. And what's more our psyche is continually transforming, I mean imbibing the environment. And therefore in order to turn within, it's not good enough just to put sentinels at the doors of perception, but one needs to put sentinels, build defense zones within one's psyche, and not just defense zones, but really one needs to operate a kind of cleansing of one's psyche because, as I say all kinds of impressions have their place in our psyche, sometimes very disturbing. And what is more an erroneous interpretation of our situation in life, our problems and so on. We continue to carry within us our false picture of the world, well our circumstances in the world and also a false picture of ourselves. And therefore it has to be corrected or reversed, just like one can reverse the damaged recordings of Caruso in order to get to the voice in its pristine glory. So there's a kind of work one needs to do in one's psyche and that's what meditation's about. I used the word cleansing but maybe a better word is a kind of correction of error just like if you're playing the piano and you make the same mistake over and over again, and then you sort of play that part over and over again the correct way. And then the old habits seem to wear off. So I said there is a kind of emotional indifference, I would say non addiction, I would say an independence with regard to let's say the support system which is the world, which gives you a kind of power. And then you find that the reason why we're carrying a false picture of the world around us is because we see it from our personal angle, that is with a certain personal bias. And that's not what things are like. If you see a building from one vantage point, then you haven't seen the building. And so if you are detached then you don't have that bias. So it's really, essentially it doesn't mean detachment from the world as much as it means detachment from one's own dependence upon what we expect from the world. That becomes a very powerful feeling because there is nothing that gives you more power than freedom. So you find that all those ties with, well dependence upon not just the more obvious things like TV, TV is an addiction. I'm not talking about well cigarettes obviously. Then chatting with people, a lot of things. Depending upon approval of people of one's being. Lot of addictions, we don't know, or we don't realize that they are addictions, opinion, opinions of people. Our own self image that is sometimes very fragile. And so depending upon it makes one extremely vulnerable. So being free of all that, it doesn't matter what people think. It's just of no value. And one's own opinion is also of relative value. You see what it does to you. It enlists a wonderful attunement, the attunement of the ascetic. Where nobody can influence you, nobody can make you what you're not, nobody can take away what you are, nobody can make you lose your self confidence, nobody can insult you , humiliate you. Yes that ascetic. Now of course that has a dramatic effect on those random thoughts that keep on bugging us when we try to meditate because those thoughts do have an emotional charge. That is the reason why they have some impact upon our consciousness is because they have an emotional charge. There's hope, there's fear, there's resentment, there's guilt, there's a lot of things, emotions that manifest themselves in the form of random thoughts. And you can't fight those thoughts. There is a technique in yoga. But you really have to go though tremendous discipline to develop the kind of power that can control those thoughts. Anyway, that's not the way of the Sufis. Those thoughts have every right to be there in the process of digestion. But what you can do is to dive a little bit deeper even in your mind and consider these thoughts to be revolving in the periphery of your psyche, in the twilight of your consciousness. And the one thing that learns not to do is to turn the search light of one's consciousness towards the thoughts, but let them just try to impinge on the spotlight of our consciousness just at the very edge. So we're kind of aware of them but not very much. But of course the only way to, that is still negative of course, not allowing oneself to play ball with one's thoughts. The positive thing is that one is so deeply emotionally enraptured by the sheer feeling of, as I say, by the feeling that one finds in the depth of one's self from all of the dependency on all the circumstances outside. It's not an image and it's not even a thought. It's an emotional attunement of tremendous inner joy to have found freedom. That's the emotion of the ascetic. And so you don't have to have a real breakthrough of understanding or anything like that. And so this is depicted in Buddhism by the story of Buddha sitting in the middle of a storm and where he sits is perfectly peaceful. Which is a fact because the center of a hurricane is a vacuum. So just consider that, think of that. You're sitting in the middle of a storm." There's a lot of turbulence all around you. But where you are you're surrounded by a kind of zone of silence. The turbulence can't quite reach it. A kind of protection because the impressions of the world through your memory are trying to reach into that area there. So one needs to we say place the sentinels. It's a kind of protection. And protection in one's, detachment is a protection. Now you know that you cannot force yourself to peaceful. You can't apply your will to be peaceful. But if you proceed as we have been doing, then you'll find that you're emersed in a state of peace that permeates your being. I think that so far we've been describing peace as something that we encounter by withdrawing. So it would be almost like an escape. Now you find that peace is active as having a positive effect upon the environment. Now there's a further aspect of this. Actually the periphery of your personality is concerned with adapting itself to the environment. Not quite you. It's you mixed with, merged with the environment. We don't always realize that our personality is like a plant. And of course that the plant is simply the unfurling of a seed. And normally we identify with our personality. We say,"I want to know who I am". We don't understand what we mean by that of course. We think ,"My personality". Meditation is really discovering one's real being. It has to do with a sense of identity. So turning within really means not just shifting one's thoughts but one's identity so one is able to identify with a seed or the root rather than the branches or the leaves on the surface of one's being, not one's personality. And the deeper you go into the foundation of that plant the less personal you seem to be or the more universal you seem to be. And so of course that's very challenging to the mind. Because what it amounts to is that we are both a specific and unique individual and somehow we carry the totality within us, and that is often what we mean by God as opposed to the self. And of course we would be wary of thinking that we are God. But as I say there's all these degrees between the individual dimension of our being and the divine dimension of our being. Of course you can't force yourself to do it. It's just that as you dive more deeply within the depth of your being gradually you'll discover dimensions of your being that you never suspected. There's a word of Pir o Murshid that describes it. He says, "You discover in yourself the same power that moves the Universe". So we're looking, normally we admire people who are very much together and who have power and who organize things, you know they're brilliant and so on. We admire power in a lot things. For example an elephant, a storm, thunder and so on. It's because somehow it has value that has transforming effect. And otherwise everything would be chaotic. But it has a shadow which is ruthlessness, tyranny and so on. Where as here we are discovering a power that does not have a shadow which is called divine power. You see it's because it is not the power of the individual dimension of our being, but the power of the impersonal depths of our being. And it's a far greater power than you could ever muster by your will. And so that's a kind of feeling you get if you're meditating and turning within. A kind of inner power, inner peace, inner power. And then you find what they call unconditional love because at the personal level of our being our love is conditional. It's easier to love someone we like or somebody who is good or whatever. But there it's very often mixed with hatred or at least dislike, a kind of contrast where as in the depth love is absolutely universal and flows forth to all beings without any judgment. So I would say that this is where we can find the wasifas, I mean those qualities. It's not the wasifas that creates the sifat. Those qualities that we're trying to develop. We have to be very careful of trying to develop qualities because that reinforces our outer self which is concerned with adapting itself with the environment. Where as remember that our self is continually emerging from within just like a flower for example. The fresh pedals keep on unfurling while the tarnished pedals fall apart. So this happens from within. It's quite another thing trying to acquire a quality by working with that quality. That's a sort of tendency we have. Or then just waiting on for the emergence of the qualities from within in all their genuine authenticity, their germane reality. And we can't quite, we can't do much about that. They well emerge just when it's the right moment in our maturation. We don't even know that they are emerging. Only at a certain point, just like the crocuses that break through the snow in the early spring or late winter. It's only at a certain point that they become visible. Then we give them reinforcement by our awareness of them. So you see turning within is not concerning yourself with the outer world any more, and espying the emergence of new dispensations of being in the depth of your being, in the center of your being. Emerging through that white hole as it were which is like a void in the center of the vortex. There's a black hole and a white hole. Our sense of individuality gets sucked into the void and then our new birthing begins to aver itself. For having lost our identity we find it totally transformed now. And then we need to follow this up. You see the Universe has a wonderful ability to self organize itself if we don't interfere. If we interfere then of course we upset the the plan let's say, program. And it's as if the Universe was saying, " 'h you think you can do it, OK, It's up to you now". And you think, "What's wrong?". 'n the other hand it's not as simple as that because in fact as Pir o Murshid says, The Divine creativity is extended, is even delegated to the human being so that nature cannot product a symphony of Beethoven or Brahms. It takes the way that nature is customized in the human being, that is it takes the individual incentive to carry the work of nature further. And the same thing is true of our personalities. So from the time, and there's a moment, and it's very difficult to judge where that moment is, a quality is emerged and we can make something of it providing that we don't alienate ourselves from the divine will. That's where Pir o Murshid says, "Let thy wish become my desire". And then we find our own will emerging from the divine will, customizing this will. And the beauty of course of what's happening at the existential level is the uniqueness of every fragment of God as the totality and we are these fragments which carry within them potentially the totality. So that's, well you know, the holistic paradigm. So we carry within us potentially what we mean by God. So you see that turning within one does not seek for God up there out there. And of course we have to be careful of all those aspects, characteristics that we ascribe to God with your limited minds. And so it's like a reality that is only known very partially in the very depth of ourselves as it emerges within us. Quite, totally different relationship to we understand God, thinking of God as other. What the Sufis say is that God reveals Him/Her self. That is that it's not something that you can achieve by your own efforts.. Makes it a totally different world. That's why we have to place our will aside. There's an Egyptian papyrus, the soul, I mean the will, the personal will is described by a bird that is sitting on a door, just put aside. It doesn't intervene at this point. OK Now there's a further aspect of this which is very paradoxical. That is that the emergence of our being is spontaneous and not the result of causality. And it's true that we, the thought of causalities, I mean even if you don't understand the scientific significance of causality. It's written right into our thinking. We assume that since we did such and such a thing, we pay the consequences of it now. And that affects our personality and so on. For example if you watch the sea at the shore then you see that there are waves. And each wave seems, the wave seems to disappear and peter out. And then there is another wave. And that other wave seems to be like a continuation of the first wave, like a causality. Like each wave causates the next one, determines the next one. But what one doesn't see at first is that in fact, that is a fact, but in addition to that the whole ocean emerges as each wave. So that's a different causal chain. And that is what you encounter when you turn within. Let us say that it intersects the process of becoming. And intersects means interrupts. And consequently time can stand still as it does for example in a pendulum for example. At the end of a swing the pendulum stops and then moves towards the other side. You think that it is the pendulum that stops, but in fact it is time itself is variegated. Just like space is landscaped by gravitation, so is time. So time can stand still. In music for example there are moments when we have what we call an apostrophe. For a choir of course it's a wonderful opportunity to breath in. And this is something we can do in our practices. We can stop the forward march of becoming and just by our breath. Holding your breath, you see, I think one needs to know that one's breath acts as a metronome and gives one a sense of time. Now if you slow down your breath of course you lose your sense of time. That's why you'll find that you'll get into a much more peaceful state if you slow down your breath. But if you stop the ebb and flow of your breath, suspend it, then you've lost your sense of time, I mean you've lost your sense of becoming, what they call the arrow of time. And so you're creating circumstances that favor the emergence of your new being. otherwise you you keep on being caught in the inexorable advance of time, circumstances, the pressure of events and so on. And that's the reason why we have this practice of holding the breath. That practice will help you to turn within and it will also help up to reach upwards. That's something we're going to do the next three days. So let's do this practice now. Place the middle finger of your right hand on your right nostril. Place the thumb of your right hand under your chin. And then the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand and the thumb of your left hand on the proximity of your left nostril. And now exhale through both nostrils first. Then inhale through the left nostril by pressing the middle finger of the right hand, hold your breath, press both fingers. Exhale through the right nostril. Inhale through the right nostril. Hold your breath. Exhale through the left nostril. Now inhale through both nostrils, take away your fingers. Hold your breath. Exhale through both nostrils. OK so that's a simple practice. Now we want to, how can I say, graft upon this infrastructure, this breath as an infrastructure, a thought . Namely as you hold your breath think that somehow you're calling a break to the effect of the past on you. Somehow, especially guilt. I don't say that you're going to be totally exonerated of your guilt of the past. But it's a word of one of the Sufis, Hujwiri, one of the first Sufis who visited India before Haj Moiniddin Chisti. And he said, (Wakfa ) is the instant in time, is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future. So I think that is really what one means by the here and now. That there's some kind of, at least it somehow intersects the process of becoming. And therefore it somehow some sense of remission from the effects of the past. At least the chance is there now for another element to come in. It's like for example if the plane is about to stall, that's when it's very sensitive to the wind, more sensitive than when it's in motion. So at that moment of suspense something new can come in much more easily than if you were moving from the past into the future. You're creating circumstances that favor emergence of something new in your being. So we have to be very clear about the difference between the instant of time and the moment of time. The moment of time does overlap with the future, for example does dovetail, for example the note that you've just heard in the music continues to linger in your ears or your memory while you hear the next note. And sometimes you can almost anticipate the next note while you're still hearing the previous one. So there's some kind of overlap. But this is a clear cut. It's like the turning of a page or the opening of a new chapter. Somehow maybe the past somehow maybe the past has some influence but there's a clear or new phase. It's called mukum in Sufism, a new stage, new dispensation. And it's important in our mind that we can become a new person. And we don't have to keep on schlepping the old person further into the future. But the only way to be a new person is to make a pledge that marks the passage from the past into the future. It's a pledge. There's a reason of course the origin of Sufism is chivalry, the ancient Iranian chivalry. And what establishes the subtlety of the vassal is the pledge to the lord which is embodied in the words "I will". And there are two aspects of the will. I will not...(tape turns) a break from that time on something different has happened, a new dispensation, or rather from that instant on because a pledge is made in an instant. It might take time to come to a decision but there is that instant when one says, " I will". So your retreat is a wonderful opportunity to think of situations in your life. And the "I will" is not necessarily a decision with regard to your action with regard to the environment although it may very well be. But it could in addition to that as an alternative be a definite decision about an attitude within yourself. For example, I pledge myself to be absolutely truthful. That's a pledge. It has consequences with regards to one's relationships with other people. Or then I pledge myself to take control, to be masterly. So again it has consequences in terms of one's leniency in one's relationship with people for example. So there's a kind of tightening up, a discipline. Whatever. So you can make a pledge. You realize of course, a wazifa is really a pledge and has no value at all unless it is a pledge. That's the reason the words won't do it for you unless it is accompanied by a definite pledge. Then it works. So you see that a retreat is not like in the past we used to say," Don't think of your problems anymore". Your problems are the theme of your meditation but it's a matter of first of all assessing them differently than one has been doing so far, correcting one assessment. And secondly being much more aware of the relationship between one's being and one's problems and seeing how one needs to transform one's being in order to transform the problems instead of thinking that one just has to transform the problem or the situation. Now the same thing applies to one's prefiguration of the future which because one is always considering the future with a certain amount of trepidation. One makes plans but isn't sure whether they are going to work out. And of course at a certain point one realizes that one has somehow limited oneself by one's projects, limited one's freedom. So these are things that we will need to follow up in the next session. I just hope you feel a kind of freedom that comes from your discovering your freedom, I mean discovering your free will, your incentive gives you freedom from conditioning. And consequently it will reinforce your self esteem on solid ground. God bless. AUG 11, 1995 Tape 04 (First words are not on the tape) is to extend the time that you can work on the retreat concentration and then perhaps later on in the afternoon open your hearts as part of what we're doing so that we're communicating. Yes. Because we don't want to talk at you we to know how you feel and we are there for you. Well, I'd like to back track a little bit before I follow up what we started--the breathing practice left and right. Because I think that we need to be very very clear when we are meditating other wise it becomes kind of random and first (brief break in words on the tape) so we have the fact that for example when the sun is in the sky we can't see the stars. And so as long as we are very aware of our circumstantial conditions then it's very difficult for us to sense what is behind it all--the deeper issues enacted in our problems. And then we judge things in a perfunctory way and react instead of availing ourselves of the tremendous pool of resourcefulness that is in the depth of our being. And then we make mistakes and suffer from the consequences of them and it's like a spider, well it's not true, but there is always this metaphor of the spider that gets caught in its web it's own web. So when you are sitting there meditating then of course it is most likely that all your tribulations distress and so on all those things will start erupting and you will find it very difficult to meditate. In fact you're almost more disturbed than in everyday life when circumstances monitor your thinking and your emotions so you don't have time to deal with deeper issues. One is always catering for the more urgent rather than the more important. So meditation is a wonderful way of eschewing the situation. But then how do we proceed you see. The yoga yogic method is really very drastic and that is one discounts the physical world and even the circumstantial situations as being illusory. And as a consequence you it takes away like the pull that they exercise upon your consciousness. Consequently you really build a barrier between the outer world and the inner world to such an extent that, for example, when Ramakrishna was in a state of samadhi the doctor put a pencil on his well cornea cornea. Well actually probably he I don't know whether he had his eyes eyelids closed or not, but I think it was the cornea, and there was absolutely no reaction. So according to the doctor, well, he was dead, but he came to. And so it was the doctor couldn't understand how that was possible. Challenged all the know how of medicine. Well it's just to illustrate the fact that the yogic method is very drastic. You discount all together the physical world and your circumstances as being illusory deceptive. And the consequence is that as I say when the sun is not in the sky then you do see the stars. It let's say it's a pragmatic as a method that is that works. But it doesn't satisfy our need for a deeper understanding of the meaning of life. There's a kind of devaluation of what life has to offer which is a typical ascetic paradigm. And so certainly isn't the way of the Sufi's. So I really think you have to know what the difference is here because that's going to affect the way you meditate. And according to the Sufis the physical world--of course it's not what you think it is because it is simply made of devices which like signs clues as to the reality that transpires through that which appears. And so if you take it for ultimate then of course you are being deceived or deceiving yourself. But then if you consider it to be a clue then instead of discounting it--for example, a clue like for example seeing the pug marks of a bear on the snow, well then that's a clue you see. And you could follow up that clue--that's called tawhil, following the clue further and further until you have more sense of what it is the clue about, what it is telling you about. And the consequence is that when you are meditating we don't advise you to totally forget or ignore or even reject any memory of your circumstances your problems. 'n the other hand if you simply let yourself be simply totally submerged by the impressions of your everyday life, then of course you're not going to be able to sense what lies behind it. And that's why I suggest that you think that these the thoughts the random thoughts that are always in some way connected with our circumstantial situations and are emotionally loaded as I said this morning. Always consider them to be circulating in the twilight of your consciousness and do not turn your attention towards them. Well, this is something that you find in Islam--when one says the prayers for example one isn't supposed to look right and left if somebody is passing by right or left--one isn't supposed to do it. There's a word of the prophet--the prophet didn't turn his eyes left or right. And in Hinduism it's called ekagrata, being centered. And that will give you certainly give you a lot of strength because our attention is so scattered and that takes away your strength. There is a practice which we even do in the Sufi Order what they call, it's not it's--well, it's not placing a sentinel against the doors of perception, it is really blocking the doors of perception--putting your fingers in your eyes and your thumbs in your ears and so on. It's a drastic method and that's not our that's very effective, but it's not quite what we are looking for because it's a yogi practice. Of course, many yogic practices have been included in the curriculum of Sufis, but it's not exactly in line with what Sufism is about. But what Sufism is trying to do is much more difficult. It's like looking at your problems from below the surface if I may say to it. Or, well, I've often illustrated it by imagining a lake and then you see lotus flowers and then if you or water lilies and if you swim under the lake then you see a network. So the Sufi attitude is more like you are instead of just judging things according to their appearance at the surface of life consider that life is almost like a lake as though what one experiences normally is at the surface, but now you are looking at things from what, let's say, backstage of the universe. And now you see that everything is connected you see. Whereas if you are looking at things at the surface you can't always see the connection between these water lilies, but now you see that they're all really different expressions of that one network of roots behind it all. That's what Dr. David Boehm calls the implicate state as compared with the explicate state. And what he says is that the world is unfolding in trees or what ever--discrete entities. Whereas if you turn within then it is enfolded--everything interspersed with everything else. And the consequence is that you are able to see the context instead of just what they call discrete elements or whatever--entities. So for example, you never judge a person according to on the strength of their personality but you always think you try to reach to sense what is a deeper level of their being in which you find much more richness than ever comes through in their personality. And then if you are able to see that, then you are helping that person because that person normally is really encapsulated in their self image which is very limiting. So now when you are meditating then if you think of your problems you don't consider the problems at their face value but there would be a tendency to try and see what are the issues enacted beyond the drama of your life--beneath the drama of your life--deeper issues. And I must say that this is where the knowledge of the wazifas is extremely helpful because you look at a situation and you ask yourself, you have criteria you see, you ask yourself: Well, in this situation what are the qualities that are being enacted in this situation?. Well, I'm being tested in my compassion for example. And that person is being tested in their sincerity. It might be the other way around. It might be that I'm well it might be different it might be I'm being tested in my sincerity and that person is being tested in their love. Now there are all kinds of things and if you understand the wazifa--because they are not they can't be translated in European terms there's much more than what one ever the equivalent. And it's much more like how that works how that we call it compassion. Well, you know that's just a concept. But you know how it works. Now one of the ways of doing it is reaching into that network behind below the surface is to enter into the consciousness of people so that you are able to see how this problem appears from the vantage point of that person. So now you have two vantage points and both of them are unreliable--your own vantage point and that of the other person. You mustn't think that the point of view of the other person is right, but at least you'll understand better why the person handles the problem the way they do--or treats you--well, handles the problems the way they do. Now you can actually get in to the kind of image that that person makes of you so it's not just their (the?) problem but what you how they see you. I see myself through his eyes they say in Sufism. And now you really understand that the that person is handling the situation which you are involved in on the assumption that you are what they think you are. And so you understand why they are doing it. But in fact you see that of course they are acting on false premises and they don't know it and so you can't blame them. Somehow there's a basic error in our judgment all the time. So when you're meditating instead of thinking, oh this is terrible my situation is impossible I mean as long that situation is like that I'll never be able to attain illumination maybe I should go to a cave in the Himalayas. And then you realize that, as I have done, that it is just in life that we learn. And as a matter of fact there is a word of Ib'n Arabi that is rather shocking because he said, for one who is God conscious retreat is impossible. There's another word which is perhaps a little more acceptable and that is where he says that you learn or let's say the divine teacher appears in the signs that is the clues that are that are revealed let's say the meaning behind those clues is being revealed to you through those clues in life. And that's why you must not totally discard your problems when you are meditating because we'd be missing out on the lesson that the divine teacher is vouchsafing to you through those situations. But instead of considering the situation at face value which we are doing all the time we ask ourselves: what is the lesson that the divine teacher is teaching me here. And the language of the wazifa is just simply a nice kind of support system that will because it's--there are data here. There are definite something you can--much more tangible than just vague ideas about it--definite quality you see. There are definite qualities coming through here. So actually this is really expanding within, expanding from within. Because one generally thinks that expanding is from without. Like, expand my consciousness into the physical universe into the starry sky and so on. Yes, that's at first, that's what we do at first. And then, as you remember, we as we inhale we are ingesting the environment, it is being transmuted into our psyche, and as I said, now we have to operate some kind of selectivity and reject thoughts that are or impressions that are deleterious. And also we have to--that's the first step. The second step is the same thing as in alchemy. It is transmuting indigestible impressions that are not in sync with your being--transmuting them so that they become digestible. Well, there's a way of doing that. So those are first two steps, right. First of all, considering the universe by expanding your consciousness. And then secondly, ingesting the universe but protecting our self and by rejecting the let's say that part of the food that you just can't digest and then assimilating it--that is, transmuting it as reaches deep into your being. So you are placing not only sentinels at the doors of perception, but some kind of correcting action, as I said this morning, within your psyche--you are freeing your psyche from a lot of misconceptions. And then the third step is exactly what we are doing now--is expanding but from within instead of from without. You begin to see the network, that is, the context of your problems. Whereas normally one just pinpoints one's problems with boundaries artificial boundaries--this is my problem, this is my domain. In fact, there is no boundary ultimately, it involves the whole universe. And therefore, if one could see things from the point of view of not just the person that one is involved with in one's problem, or perhaps even a few more people, if one could see it the problem from the viewpoint of more and more people, then one would have a more reliable source of judgment assessment, but ultimately of course you could imagine that if you continue that in infinite regress, then you get to the point where you understand the words of Saint Francis when he said, the universe is looking at me. Instead of I am looking at the universe. So I think that is really the limit of what we understand by expanding consciousness from within. When you expand consciousness from within it turns over and it is really the consciousness of the universe that is looking at you. Can you just do that for a few minutes before we make the next hurdle. (Pause) OK. So, now turning outside will of course highlight our concern about adapting ourselves to the environment, so, we as I say we're assessing our problems in a perfunctory way, and now we found that by turning within we start seeing deeper issues in our problems, but more importantly, as we turn within we begin to see the impact of our being on the problem instead of just judging the problems at their face value. And consequently that requires us to discover whom we are and that's not an easy thing to, it's not that simple. Most of us don't understand what we mean when we say I want to know what I am or who I am. And so consequently when you start turning within then you, let's say, need to downplay a little bit the impact of the challenge of the environment--not all together, you don't cut it out all together, but somehow you reach from within, as we've already said, you reach the lotus flowers or the water lilies from the roots, but still you are still really imbued, I mean, centered in the roots not up there in the flower. Now, so, right. The problems are there but you are beginning to see a little more what's behind the problems. And you see this of course that it concerns much more your being than the problems themselves. You are beginning to highlight your being and now you realize that there are several layers to your being so that at first you think it's my personality that has an impact on the problems. You know, trying to see how, for example, if you change your personality, the problems are going to change, hopefully. Working with wazifas--if I had a little more power then my boss wouldn't bully me. That kind of thing and so on. The impact of your personality upon your problems. But then you go deeper and you discover, as I said, the more--let's say--the root of that plant that is your personality or that plant that is your personality. And, for one thing, it appears to be less personal, as I've already said, but what is more important is that it appears to be real in comparison to what you thought you were. All of a sudden it's as though you were discovering your real being and you had always kept on assuming that you were what you thought you were and making a lot of mistakes because of it and misassessments. And now all of a sudden something all of a sudden flashes upon your realization and you discover your real being. Well, it's never one's real being because there it's in infinite regress, it always goes further. But still certainly much more real than what we thought we were. And all of a sudden one discovers that one was really encapsulated in one's picture of one's self. One didn't realize it--in one's self image--one's inadequate self image. And if that happens, then there is no way in which you can progress. In fact, more likely that you will be getting worse instead of progressing. And I see that happening amongst a lot of people. Instead of--they are wonderful when they are young and then they tend to degenerate as they get older instead of becoming better or more wonderful. And I see that because people get encapsulated in whom they think they are. That word I want to know who I am somehow one mistakenly thinks that it is one's personality. So what we want to do is to reach deeper. And the way to do it is of course to question just as you questioned your problems I mean your assessment of your problems in the same way you question your self image. That's negative and then that has to be compensated by something positive. Now there's a thought which is connected with this to get to the positive aspect, I mean we may accept that we are not our self image but then who are we what are we. And as I said, you feel one of the clues is: I realize that I'm playing a role in life because that's what life is asking of me and as a consequence I forgot who I really am I adopted an adapted self. And what is more I am wearing a mask. That is, my face gives vent to aspects of my adapted personality. Where there's struggle, there's disappointment, there's despair, there's anger, bitterness, precariousness, uncertainty, fear--all those things which are features of the adapted personality--begin to become visible in the face of the person and then one identifies with that effigy of one's person and is oblivious of the real countenance that is hidden behind that outer face that is the face of the adapted personality or adapted self but it is not the face of one's real self. And so if you are not concerned about adapting yourself to the environment and you are not trying to prove yourself, either to others or to yourself, that's in the retreat you don't have to adapt yourself to the environment and you don't have to I mean the social environment and you don't have to try to prove yourself to anybody or to yourself. And so consequently in these circumstances you can be your real self. Another reason for being on silence because you don't have to speak the language that people understand. Now you can find your real self. So there are two things. One is one's true let's say the root of one's personality would be one's true self. And the other would be one's countenance. I used to use the word eternal but that doesn't seem to be right. And celestial--a lot of people don't quite understand that word celestial. So perhaps one could say your more real--the countenance of your more real self than your adapted self. But I must say that the word eternal has some relevance here because it's like it's like more fundamental and therefore has a perenity about it as compared with one's adapted self which is very transient. So and of course there's a sense of that's what I was prior to my birth but that is--well that's OK., that's what we think it is. But we are still in that state now, but somehow it's much more difficult to understand that. So I wonder whether you can do that now. I'm just going to mark a pause. I don't think you want to go and sit in nature now, so we can meditate together here rather than going out. So just do that. See if you can, for one thing, what is your personality if it is not concerned with adapting itself to the environment. What is your real person? And secondly, could you visualize your real eternal celestial countenance which is hidden behind your physical face. I say your physical face is a distortion of that real countenance that is hidden behind it. I won't speak for some time now so we can do this. (Pause for meditation) We said it's the core of your being that is not concerned with adapting itself to the environment. (Yes, thank you) But we tend to think of it as more stable and permanent than our personality or even our face that changes--expression changes according to our mood. But the fact is that this at least the celestial self or countenance--effigy--it does change. In fact it's changing all the time according to our attunement. And therefore this is a practice that I recommend when you are working with wazaif--with the wazifas--that you try and represent to yourself, even your physical face, if you totally attune to a particular wazifa. For example, if the wazifa is ya wali, which means mastery, how would you look if you were let's say you are really in charge now you're what ever it is you are doing--skiing, hand gliding, driving a car--whatever it is that you are doing--conducting an orchestra--where you need to be totally in control of the situation. So your upper lip stiffens up a little bit and your whole--there's kind of a consistency in your expression that bespeaks of that quality that attunement. If you think of a person who is suffering, who's just had an accident or is ill and is a beautiful person who suffers terribly or has just received really bad news and a person so distressed or a child that is distressed. And so the expression on your face is not going to be the same as when you are in charge and controlling the situation. It will be different. And so it's not just your physical face, but if you could sense the countenance of your inner self. Now I find it helpful--and maybe it's just advice but anyway at least I find it helpful--if you imagine that your celestial self--or eternal self or real self what ever it is that you call self let's say--is molded in the fabric of light, that it is your aura. And you could even start by thinking of the physical aura and I am really convinced that one of the features of the aura instead of being just the intensity the you know the photon count that it definitely has a configuration. And maybe it is not a it doesn't have a profile. And for this I think the best example is of course the best illustration is Walter Chappell who as you know photographs flowers with ultraviolet light and you can see the corona around the profile of the flower. And what is more you can see flowers in transparency behind one flower you see another flower and so on. So they seem like gossamer like translucid. It's a very beautiful illustration of our aura that seems to extend beyond our skin and yet it seems to intersperse the cells of our body and it--truly enough different wave lengths of light may pass not only in the spaces between the electrons in an atom but even within the proton. Imagine a crystal and light is able to pass in the space between the molecules of the crystal. Something like that. OK.? So now but however that, so the light of the aura is not just around your skin like what they call a corona, but you can actually feel it inside your skin let's say within your skin. And so on and your body has light that is intersperses the well the cells if you like to think of it that way or the molecules or the atoms or even let's say the protons. So that's the second stage working with light. But the third stage would be realizing that this internal light has a configuration that matches your attunement and your realization. And so this very interesting work I've done myself and I know how very helpful it is in a retreat. And that is, as you are thinking of a wazifa--like as I say, ya wali for example ya rachman or whatever--that you think you try to feel the sense, it's not feeling really, sensing the configuration, it's not the profile, configuration of the light of that inner light well maybe it's not the inner light after all the inner light is very diffused or rather it is the way the inner light takes shape into an outer light into a light that can be seen. And so you're really fashioning your body of light as a sculptor would do. But on the strength of the attunement of the wazifa rather than in a fanciful way. It's much more solid. So there's no end to this. Of course you could apply this with every wazifa. We have something concrete to work with. So for the Sufi's this is your celestial counterpart. However, it's a little more complicated than this. Because you know you can't really make a clear cleavage between your inner self and your adapted self. These are concepts of the mind but in fact it's all one self and also between the universal and personal dimension of yourself and the personal one it's not like two different entities. But what I'm talking about is a little more difficult to understand. That is that the initial celestial self is as Pir o Murshid says embryonic. Like a child, it's not embryonic, but still it gives you some sense of immaturity, but the consequence is realness, authenticity, defenselessness, beauty, splendor, and very naturally without any pretense. So that is really the core of your core being. When I say the core I'm not thinking spatially but I'd say more the essence of your being which, and this is very important, which can not be tarnished by the impressions upon it or by your own guilt. So that one's guilt or one's impressions from that one the kind of contamination that one gets by the interface with the environment spill over. That that can not effect the deeper core of one's being the essence of one's being. And so sometimes one needs to really take refuge in this core of one's being against one's self denigration and sense of inadequacy. And know that in the depths of our being we are absolutely immaculate and consequently manifest what we call the nature or what we call the holy spirit--sense of sacredness. We've already worked with the temple of light in order to be able to enhance our sense of sacredness and as I said, we like to go to church or what ever to get into an atmosphere that is conducive to our (end of side one). And so we have a kind of a paradox because well because the voice of Caruso is not different from the voice that we hear on the bad recordings. It's just that it is distorted by the bad recordings but it is present within its distortions. And so our real being the essence of our being is present--not like separate from its distortions or defilement--it is present within it. That's difficult to understand. And the consequence is that if you dive very deeply in yourself you find such exquisite beauty and you realize how inadequate your self image is because normally it had deterred you from getting deeper into yourself where you could discover who you really are in your essence of your being. (Brief pause) Actually of course Murshid does make a clear differentiation between the celestial beings who have not yet incarnated and the those beings who having been incarnated have, how can I say, shed their body and are--I know it sounds actually it's not really correct to say have returned to the celestial spheres because one has never left it, it's just that one was not aware of one's celestial counterpart. So anyway, there's a distinction between let's say the child in us and the mature person and most of us think that the child is not there anymore. And the fact is that if you dive deep enough you'll find the child in you. The child is the idealist, is defenseless. The child is the optimist that believes in the impossible possibility. And the child is the spontaneous in you that does not try to conform to the external situations. And which doesn't even understand responsibility, control, mastery--all of that is totally foreign to the child. But on the other hand, very easy--an ability to facilitate the need of the soul for glorification for the sacred for not being manipulative. No guile. And if you find that in your being that is what I call the core of one's being. It's there but as I say it's within its distortion so one has to really dive very deeply to find it. You can't extract it from its distortion as someone tries to do with the voice of Caruso. There would be some kind of artifice in it whereas you can find it, there it is, right there, in its distortion. And of course we don't have to interpret this with our minds. OK. So, now I must say that I will have to leave, I have commitments and I don't know how to advise you. You could stay here and continue meditating on your own or you could go to your tents or whatever, that's up to you to decide. But you know the format of a retreat is that the retreat guide gives you some themes, highlights certain attitudes of the mind and of the heart and then you go off on your own and carry this out so that it becomes a real experience rather than just in the mind. And then you start again. So that's the way this can be done. So therefore I would advise you now to try to meditate on exactly the things that we've been working with and well, how you do it, whether you stay here or go to your tent, that's up to you. (End of tape) The Sufi method: i.e., attunement, wazaif, to know the celestial, eternal self Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan Tape # 4 At the Abode of the Message Mureeds Retreat August 1995 AUG 11, 1995 Tape 05 Well I believe Qahira's been working with you on the practice Kasab. Of course there are several versions, the Yogi one and then the Sufi one. I think perhaps we ought to at least know what the difference is. The Yogi one one breaths in alternately between left, inhale left, hold the breath, exhale right. Then inhale right, hold the breath, exhale left. And then inhale through both nostrils, exhale through both nostrils. And that you can do as many times as you like, three times for example, three times each. So that would be nine breaths. The rhythm used in Yoga is 4,16,4. That means 4 inhaling, sixteen holding and, I mean 8 holding, and 16 exhaling. Yes, that's right. And the advantage of that is that one gets rid of all the polluted gases by extending one's exhaling. And then one doesn't need to take so much time inhaling, and then one can hold one's breath a little longer. But it is a practice only recommended if one does what they call (abandas) so that one is able to reinforce one's diaphragm and also the muscles in one's throat to contain the breath. otherwise the lungs would extend and press against the pancreas and liver and even the heart, and so on. One could sustain some damage by forcing oneself to hold the breath because the Yogis hold the breath for very long. Now in fact they can hold their breath,sometimes a standard I would say would be 5 minutes. And there are some who can hold their breath for a half an hour, something like that. So the Sufis do not recommend that. What is more I think the purpose of the Sufis is different. It's not gain mastery over an autonomic function to make it fall under one's control. That is Yoga. And therefore I, what one wants to do in the Sufi method is to associate the breath with some kind of thought or realization, or three different kinds of realization. And so in that case it's much easier. The rhythm is 4,8,4. And so it could be 5,10,5 or 6,12,6. And the way I do it is I like to start with a number. When I say 4 or 5 or 6, what I mean is seconds. But if you can do this it's very wonderful. If you can feel your heart beat or at least the pulsing of your blood in your arteries, then that can be your metronome. Then you can inhale on 3 or 4 heartbeats for example, then hold your breath on 8 heartbeats, then exhale on 4. That's wonderful if you can do that. What I do is I start like that. Then I increase it the next time. And I breath in the right nostril and out through the left. And I do it 5,10,5. Then I increase it again when I do the left nostril. And I do 6,12,6. Then when I inhale through the left nostril it gets to 7,14,7 and so on. Each time I move up one echelon. Gradually. It's a wonderful discipline, concentration. You get used to it, then you don't have to think of it a lot. The Hindus use the index, sometimes, index finger on the third eye. And then the right finger on the right nostril, and the middle finger of the right hand on the left nostril. And the Sufis have the thumb of the right hand under the chin, and middle finger on the right nostril, and the palm of the left hand on the back of the right nostril and the thumb of the left hand against the left nostril. I, it's nice because it gives you a certain amount of feeling of control, consistency, concentration. I do it both ways. Sometimes one way sometimes the other. Now I want to say that the practices are just the catalysts for realization. And therefore, as I say, we often associate breath with a thought. There is a wonderful Tibetan saying which is that says The mind rides the wind. That's a wonderful saying because whatever our mind is whatever it is, our realization, our consciousness or yes or our mode of thinking. And the wind is energy. So you can consider the different modes of energy that you encounter while averring your breath as Pegasus. Let's say the infrastructure that is carrying your mind into different degrees, different dimensions of realization. Sometimes, in some cases, Pir o Murshid really gives a wazifa for each, for the inhaling, for the holding of the breath, for the exhaling of the breath. And we could do that but, as I say, I'm very wary of just repeating words. And I think that the realization, the word is just a signal for a mode of realization. So let's go a little more into the detail of what Hujwiri is saying. I repeat the words of Hujwiri, Time, that is the instant of time. That's not to be confused with either the process of becoming or the moment in time. It's also a break and apostrophe. is a sharp sword that cuts the guilt of the past and the prefiguration of the future. Now one would like to jump to that as think, Well if that were a way of freeing my guilt it would really be wonderful. But it doesn't work quite that way. However it is an indication that will help one to deal with one's guilt. So you know that for some reason that I don't quite understand, that one represents, at least in graphs in physics for example, one always represents time as moving from left to right. Now just think of that. So then think that as you're breathing in through the left nostril you are recollecting the past. And there are several ways of doing it. One simply tries to remember the events of one's life in a chronological order, which is very difficult. One generally represents the more salient aspects of one's life without some kind of chronological order. But still, you get used to it. And if you can it really gives you a sense of the progress you've made in life, if you really have made progress. Then you remember two things, two progressions. One is the sequence of events, chronologically. Like when you were a baby, depends on how early you remember events when you were a baby. Then as a child. And so you remember the events. And then you remember the kind of personality that you had, and your personality has unfolded. And so it's a very good thing because then instead of thinking of yourself as, let's say identifying yourself with your present personality, you see yourself as a process in becoming. And so you're not sclerosed into your image of yourself as it is now. And of course the past does give some indication of what the future might be like. But of course it is the interaction of those two which is important. But at first you might try and see how the events, or an event, had an impact upon your personality. Like from the time that I had that accident I've been more cautious. Or I was let down by someone and from that time, I'm always more careful in revising my opinion of a person. And so on and so forth. There are some qualities in one's being, for example I encountered this rishi who was sitting peacefully in the Himalayas. And from that time I found peace in myself which I thought I never had. Things like that. You know. Events. And those events could even be an imparting point of view. For example I was very, how do I say, hermetic, energetic as a child and my father said, " To cross the Atlantic you need a heavy ship". Now that changed, had an impact on my being because sometimes an event or something somebody said or an experience is going to trigger a whole difference in your being. Actually it really, it awakens something that is there. The heaviness in me was there, but I didn't think I had it. So it is reasonably easy to see how events had an impact on your being. It's much more difficult to see how your being has an impact on the events. So that would require some concentration and work on yourself. And I think it's very important if meditation is to have some effect upon lives, on the way of conducting our lives, the realizations we gain in our lives, then the realization that we get in meditation should, we should work with our realization in meditation. Because then consider meditation as a preparation of life, as a rehearsal for life rather than a retreat from life. In fact I don't like the word retreat. One should never retreat. I prefer the word treat than retreat. So this is a treat. So you do that as your inhale. So there is a lot of preparatory work to do before your do the breathing. And then you do the breathing. And then perhaps you go back to that groundwork. And really train yourself to look at your life and see how things evolved and how you've changed and how the events have changed as you've changed. For example a very clear indication of the impact of your being upon events is for example to be able to look back and think, "If I had been then what I am not, then this wouldn't have happened". And you see very well how your realization effects events. That you really, it's saying a lot, that you can attract situations which one thinks were due to fate or destiny. It's rather amazing or enigmatic. Jung said that, he said that if you don't deal with your shadow then it will come to you in the form of your fate. It's a shattering thought. Everything is connected in some way that we don't understand. So that is, those are the kind of thoughts that you entertain as you inhale from the left nostril. Then you hold your breath and as I said now, somehow in your mind you're interrupting the process of becoming and so time is standing still, what I call the instant of time instead of the moment of time. And if that is so, in your mind of course you understand that, you feel that, then you are suspending the effect of causality. So I can see how that would affect one's sense of guilt. Then the causal chain is somehow interrupted. I said that this morning. Like the wave in the sea, one thinks that it is a continuation of a previous wave, but really that is true. That is one element. And the other is that the whole sea, whole ocean emerges as each wave. So there is both. One is causality, one vector let's say. And the other that intersects it is not generally, in fact is undetermined. That's exactly what Prigogine is working with now is the undetermined which is very surprising in science because science was always based upon the predetermined or the predictable. Ex nilo. That's the meaning of ex nilo,unexpected, spontaneous. Nilo means nothing, so out of nothing. So the sense that it emerges out of the void. To give you an idea of what we understand void is degree of so it really doesn't matter what, it's just at the moment that these new qualities, they're not new qualities, but they're qualities that are lying wait in our being and they all of a sudden become known to us, and so they are reinforced by our awareness. That is important. So we have to watch as one watches the crocuses in January and February breaking through the snow, if you live in a place where there is snow in winter. Thank you. I'm very spoiled in the oven. From the frige to the oven. Yes so this is a very precious time, let's say precious instant, precious instant. It's quite extraordinary that one can be changed in an instant. It might have taken a long time of incubation. But all of a sudden there is that breakthrough, like the bird is breaking, broken through the shell. There's a word of Murshid, he calls it the broken heart when one's soul is born. There is that sense of rebirth, rebirthing. As I said before, the Universe has a way of self organizing itself, so this happens without doing anything about it. In fact we could spoil things by interfering. And remember that one, for example scientists, physicists can never know an electron. Because to know an electron one has to manipulate it. So you never know what it's like if you don't manipulate it. So that which is born in you is something that you would spoil if you were to scan it with your awareness. But at a certain point when it declares itself to you then it needs support, just like a little sprout or a tree for example, needs some protection so it may grow without being hurt by nature, by animals, the same way. So you need to protect this new growth. There are of course wasifas for this, muhaimin for example, protection. But as I say there is a moment when there's a transit from the self organizing of nature and your own incentive. And if you don't use your incentive at that moment, then the new birth may be still born. So awareness of the impinging, of the new self in us is extremely important. And, as I say, in it's early stage we don't know it. And then there's just a certain moment when yes we're beginning to grasp that something new is coming in our being, emerging. And now the reinforcement is the pledge. And if you don't make that pledge, it won't really happen. I think it will be still born. So that pledge, I've already said that this morning. I forget now whether Hujwiri mentions a pledge. But I say that that is really the characteristic of Sufism which is a (Futu Hut) which means chivalry. And chivalry is basically a pledge. So during that moment, actually it's an instant where you hold your breath, make a pledge. I think the word Ya Fata is very appropriate, it means, it is the word of the knight. In fact it has the same etymology as Futu Hut, fata. And so this is where you could apply a certain, I mean earmark a certain wazifa. For example, if it is Ya Wali, for example you could think at that time,"I'm not going to do this fore example, and I'm going to do that. I'm not going to smoke cigarettes". You probably already passed that, I mean crossed that line anyway, hopefully. But then it could be something else and you decide you're not going to do that any more. And the other one is positive, " I'm going to this or that or that". So that is already prefiguration for the future. So in that instant you are breaking from the past and prefiguring the future. You're just at the threshold between the past and the future. It's, I know you might say, " Well it does have some duration." That instant you say "It has some duration". And it's true that the pendulum, when it moves to the end of it's swing, it's very difficult to measure of course what the duration is when it's in suspense. But the state of suspense has some duration. We can't exactly measure that frontier, the boundary. So I would say that before doing this practice one needs to prepare oneself in one's mind. One mustn't think that just doing a practice is going to do anything for you at all. You have to really prepare yourself. And that preparation, it's wonderful really, it's asking yourself very pertinent questions like,"What are the things that I really value in life?"and "What am I doing in life?" and "Am I, is what I'm doing going to lead towards being able to fulfill what I think is of value? Or am I just going along with the Joneses because that's what life requires of me?" As I say, if you don't know that you don't have much self extreme. You have a feeling of failure. And of course you identify yourself with your adapted self. You never know your real self. So this is, you see when you turn within, our objective here is to get to know our real self. As I said this morning we're trying to have that sense of "This is me and this is my eternal face or celestial face". Yes but as we say it is like the life of your life, the ground of the ground of your being, the root even at the root of the root of your being. So it is less personal than what appears at the surface and so this is a wonderful opportunity to dig deeper. So there don't seem to be any kind of limits to the depth to which one can go. Something that we have been working with during this training. Taj came up with a thought which was like the ability to get very deep, so that almost it's like tearing away one after the other, the veils, unveiling. And one gets deeper into, how can I say, that nakedness of the reality of one's being. And the way to do it is to peal away all the layers that we build with our thinking. So, we've already been working with, well how we deal with our random thoughts. But now it's like being able to get to a place where our thinking has absolutely no impact upon our consciousness. In science there was a very interesting experiment that was made by Boehm (Arakanalf) if I remember well. But what they were doing is eliminating the electromagnetic field from a system. Because the electromagnetic field is very strong and this determined the condition of the system. And so you get to the rock bottom of a system that is immune to the electromagnetic force. It's what the Sufis call Kemal state. That state has often been described as the state of an airplane, for example,that is about to stall, or a bicycle that is beginning to topple over. So it's a very, it's a state of unstable equilibrium. A central theory of Dr. Prigogine. That that's were creativity has its origin, in a state that\'s not determined by different factors. It is totally spontaneous. A very good description to be found in a tug of war. When you two teams pulling a cord. And if those forces are exactly equal so that there is no motion there, and yet there's potential energy there, So where there's thought there's motion or where there's emotion there's motion. But here you get to a point, you might call it peacefulness, but it's, I think it has more significance than what we understand as peacefulness. It's like being nothing. The word of St. John on the cross,"To be what you are you have to be nothing". And I think that is the real meaning of Fena, being nothing. And therefore you lose your sense of identity. And so I think that the pledge comes afterwards. I think you first have to reach that point where the Universe is right there at the edge and you are not really the Shahid, you're not the witnesses of the Universe. As St. Francis said,"The Universe is looking at me instead of I'm looking at the Universe". So you don't have to be the spectator anymore at this stage. I mean you're not the spectator. And that's the only way that the new birth can take place without the intervention of your will, and therefore represent the divine will. And you can see that by stopping your breath you are creating circumstances that are favorable to the condition because it's not an emotion any more. That is a state of awaiting. It's always used by one of the Sufis (Abdul Nafari). Wakif and Maukif. He says, Before you have access in a new mukum, that means a new stage in life, you are kept in suspense by God in a state of awaiting. And no use being impatient, there's nothing you can do about it. And you would like to get on with your life. And we're all concerned with improving ourselves and so on. But there comes a time when you realize that there's nothing you can do. And if you did, you'd just spoil things anyway. And then according to Nafari, those are the conditions in which realization is revealed to you. Because you are not achieving it, acquiring it through your volition, through your consciousness. I'm sure it has happened to you that you see something you hadn't seen before. And you couldn't have grasped it as much as you tried to figure it our with your mind. So you see when we are meditating, at first one does tend to try to understand what's happening in one's life. Not just random thoughts. The thoughts are not just random. There are some consistency in the thoughts. One is concerned about how one could improve one's condition in life, how we solve some of the problems and so on, and one's own personal problems with one's self, anger whatever. Of course these are concerns. And as long as you stay in that state you have not yet reached the state of contemplation. It's just a preparatory . It's what one might call introspection, but it's not really turning within. Turning within is when one has suspended any action of the mind. Now this threshold state is sandwiched let's say between the past and the future. And there is a moment where one becomes aware again of well let's say one's programing, or one would like to know something about the programing of one's life what we call one's destiny. And now one makes plans. And generally when you're on retreat you tend to make plans because you can't do things we haven't planned. And in our planning there's always some kind of trepidation whether it will materialize as we wish. So we are in some measure we are really dependent upon circumstances, and feel very precarious in our planning. So at this stage one needs to know, and remember this because it's really essential. It's a word of Ulam, who's a scientist. I'm not sure, I think he might have been a mathematician anyway. He said The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. It's one of the slogans with which I live. The pull of the future is stronger than the push of the past. So when you look at your life, you may be aware of causality. You may say, "Well I'm in this situation because of what I did, because of what somebody did to me" for example. People go to a psychotherapist for therapy because they feel they have been abused or whatever and have developed resentment. And so they have been damaged. And so that thought is connected with, I would say even, let's say elementary sense of causality. This is the result of that . You see that is causality. The placing in physics, one calls it the placing causality. Determinism. So one thinks that one is determined by God, a kind of fatalism. And even that one's program has been preordained in advance. These are very simplistic thoughts. But somehow you find them in a lot of people. And that's the reason Pir o Murshid said, Think of God as an artist who keeps on changing his picture. So don't think that God is limited by his/her programming or wish it is to limit you by his/her programming. So I think we have to be clear about that. Now it's only until the last few decades that science has begun to realize retrocausality, that is how the future can affect the present. I won't got into that. I'd like to, but think that what applies to you is that the way you could be affects the way you are progressing now. So it pulls you out of your subjection to the past. And that's the reason why, you remember I think it was yesterday. It's happening very quickly. I think we started by trying to represent a master who would impersonate our ideal to reinforce our ego self, not our ego self, our adaptive self. And then we turned within and we tried to discover God as the Master as a teacher, revealing to us our emergent self. And therefore in order to do that instead of imagining our teacher there and we're sitting in front of him/her, we had to get into the consciousness of that teacher and experience what it was like to be that teacher. And now we're reaching a further state where the representations that we are going to entertain is not a master or prophet or saint known or unknown, or even getting into the consciousness or the attunement of one of those teachers, but is ourselves as we could be. And that's the meaning of the wazifa Dhul Jelal wa'l Ikram or Khanoon Jamil wa'l Ikram. That's the kind of, it's the way that we could be. No it's rather the way God would becomes as us or would become as us, if we would keep on progressing in infinite regress. So that would be, if we say in infinite regress, we're not saying that there is an end point at which this ever accomplished. It's like as Pir o Murshid says, The horizon keeps on moving as one advances and lures one forward. So that is a very powerful thought, the way you could be. And you'll find that it is more helpful than prefiguring a program. Because the success of that program does depend upon how you are going to progress. So that is a way of working with the wasifas is to imagine, earmark a particular wazifa. And then imagine oneself as embodying this wazifa in a much better way than one has done so far. That's got to lure one forward. otherwise one gets stuck on one's self image. So that you do as you exhale through the right nostril. Moving or turning towards the future. And you feel the pull of the future that gives you some reprieve from the pressure of the past. And your pledge is the passport to this new chapter in your life. Now we breath in through the right nostril and exhale through the left and hold the breath in between. Now something else, a further realization crops up, and that is that first of that our programming, our projects do limit our freedom. And we might miss a chance by having committed our whole self in a project. I find this all the time. But then you have to honor your commitment. But it's good to know that your project limits your freedom. Although, as Pir o Murshid said, By accomplishing something you develop a power with which you can accomplish something greater. But somewhere is the words where Murshid says, Everything which is achieved in life is the consequence of interest. But detachment and indifference gives you more power because your objective limits your power. And if your objective is not for your personal being, then your power is unlimited. It's a very great principle. And it is that which makes the difference between the person who is in the world and the person who is rather of the world and the person who is not of the world. So can you just feel the kind of freedom, not just from the past, but from your prefiguration of the future, from what you expect of the future, freedom from it, marvelous freedom? It might go so far as to come to the conclusion that even if everything breaks down, it's OK. That's a difficult thought. And if everything turns out to be a disaster it's OK. I think of my sister, disaster. What do I mean by it's OK? Something is gained by the breakdown. It's compensated by an equivalent gain. See the tremendous spiritual advance of people who have gone through torture. As Pir o Murshid said, " Those who are crucified on earth well be free in the heavens. And those who are free on earth will be crucified in the heavens." So things are not the way that we see them. That's a kind of realization. It's a very extraordinary realization, because it's exactly the opposite to all the kind of rational thinking that we have, that we entertain. And that's why Al Hallaj said,Thy abandonment of me is proof of thy love because thou testes most those that thou lowest most. That's what happens when you hold your breath after inhaling through the right nostril. So you find this, now you have found freedom in your mind from the thought that you are absolutely subjected to the determinism of the past. And in your mind your subjection to your hopes for the future, even dependence for one's self esteem upon one's success in one's operation in life. And to come to the conclusion that even if you have failed a thousand times, it does not mean that you're no good as a person. Do not establish you self esteem on the strength of your success. Because you're resting your self esteem on a totally unreliable foundation. Then when you exhale through the left, then you see that it is not just your pledge that is pulling you out of the past. But the past that has really changed, you see we think that the past is still the way that it was, but it has changed in us in our realization, in our pledge somehow we have changed what was there and it's not there any more. Just like you've sown a seed and not there is a plant. The seed has become a plant now. It's not still a seed not so things have changed. The stars you are looking at, most of the stars we're looking at don't exist anymore. They've changed, they've become scattered photons. Now some of them are bombarding your eyes. You're looking into the past when you're looking into the sky. Now comes the real brunt. I afraid we're running our of time. But this seems to be so important. What happens when you breath in through both nostrils then out again and hold your breath? Well you encounter a different dimension of time. It's not becoming and its not suspense, an instant of time. But it is eternity, eternity in contrast with becoming and even with the instant in time. It sounds like metaphysics but in your experience you come right across this enigma of the balance between what we think is our destiny and our free will, but is really the divine programming and the way we influence that programming. So it becomes very difficult for our minds to reconcile these two things that seem so contradictory. They interact with each other. The consequences of this are enormous because it means that our free will influences the divine programming. The reason is because our will is part of the divine will. It's, we tend to alienate our will from its ground which is divine will. The whole, the fulfillment of the spiritual path is of course to find that connection between the branch and the tree as Pir o Murshid says. So that it's not two different things, the divine will and our will. But somehow if we alienate our will from the divine will there is a split. But it doesn't mean let thy will be done. It means let thy will become my desire. There's no way of talking about this. I'm trying to but really there is not way. But this connection is of the utmost importance and I've come to see it's enormous value or relevance in life when studying Buddhism and comparing it to Sufism. Buddha makes a very clear distinction between being and becoming. And he says this becoming has no contribution to my being. And that's really amazing. So the clue to this is in the words of Jelaluddin Rumi who says,Tonight the stars give birth to the life eternal. That means that our lives have relevance, that is the nitty gritty of our lives have relevance to the divine software. There is a bridge. And hence awakening beyond life is not the answer because one is discarding what is achieved in life. That's the reason why the purpose of the Sufi practices is not samadhi, but is awakening in life. But then we will have to really go into this and try to really explore what that means, awakening in life. Pir o Murshid says in a lecture. There was a wonderful philosopher, Mr. Hoyak, who wrote a lot of books or philosophy. And he came to Murshid's lectures. And he was really amazed by Murshid and the teaching. One day Murshid said "God first creates the world and then the heavens". And then he said,"Pir o Murshid, did you mean what you said?". "Yes"."Yes but generally we've always have learned the opposite." "Yes of course I know that." Now if you go deeper into what Murshid is saying is that, at some level at the celestial sphere our being is embryonic like a child. Like even before a child of course. Called a Bastima. And that it gains maturity. And so the maturity that it gains through incarnation on earth, it enriches the heavens. So what is gained by existence on earth, that's what we value and even celebrate in our Sufi work. So when you are meditating, while you want to see things backstage of the Universe of what appears at the surface, remember a adage which I think really says it. It's while in the traditional Hindu and Buddhist transmissions. The physical world and well let's the existential level is deceptive. In Sufism that is where God becomes reality. Where as if we look in the opposite direction it is God as a virtuality, but God becomes reality in us as us in existence. It's the opposite of all the things that we assume. That is the most amazing realization. Now we will keep it in our mind while meditating. So I've gone beyond the time, but I wanted to complete this whole different types of realization that we're going through doing this practice. OK, so I think you need a little break now. We've been going on for a long time. So would you like to stand up and stretch a little bit? And we have all of a sudden we're transiting form the retreat concentration into a totally different format, the opening of the heart. AUG 11, 1995 Tape 06 Yes, I think it's good to start every morning meditation with a practice with light, however short it might be. And a simple one. Like for example just being aware of the light in one's eyes, two beams of light, as I already did I think yesterday. I also think that this light is, of course it's greatly enhanced by the fact that we turn our awareness towards it. It'll be further enhanced if we represent to ourselves a very beautiful scene or a landscape of the soul, as one says, of light, like the one I described in Chamonix with various hues of the clouds, and the various colors of the sun and the glorious sun in the middle of it. I want to note that our power of imagination is a very great power is the way that we customize the power of imagination of the Universe. And everything that ever is ever materialized in the existential world starts as imagination. And in imagination we find a whole different scope of our freedom and our creativity. I'm thinking of that statue of that Chinese monk. The statue is in the Golden Gate Museum in San Francisco. He is looking, and his whole face is absolutely transfigured by this, by the glory that is coming through his vision of splendor. So the splendor, maybe he is projecting into a scene, landscape of the soul as I say,the splendor that is dormant within him and awakening by projecting. And in turn it inspires him and enhances his own splendor, perhaps a kind of mirroring takes place. And carrying on beyond the rather trite, let's say range of reality that we are normally inveigled in. That's the way to start your day. Now from there of course you may start to become aware of different dimensions of our being. I hope you remember these stages and practices of light. So we'll go through them very quickly so that we can remind you of the stages. But we're going to look at it a bit differently now. For example you've become aware of, if you identify with your body, then of course you may feel that you're absorbing light which is exactly what the body does, and that your are emitting light which is what the body does. But one usually thinks that this light is just physical light because it's the only kind of light one knows. And so somehow in one's experience in meditation, one is limited by one's very simplistic representation of the Universe that one learns at school. And therefore I'd like to put forward a thought that should open a new perspective, which is that physical light such as we conceive of is typical of a cross section of the Universe which is the kind of cross section that we perceive, that we are able to live in,. Just like two dimensional insect could only conceive of a cross section of a three dimensional world. It would be his or her two dimensional world like a sheet of paper. And then it would become quite absolutely convinced that the world is the way that he or she is experiencing it. In the same way let us not confine ourselves to the very limitation of our very mental representation of the Universe which is in some way associated with our senses, with the programming of the human being. We are invited to reach beyond the limits of our existential humanness by meditation. So let us not remain stuck in that very narrow perspective. So if you think that way, then your body is one of the dimensions of your multidimensional being, or one of the layers of your multi tiered being. And so when you're, it's not just your body that's absorbing light, but your aura. At every level of your being there is a convergence of the light of the Universe at all levels. The opposite of course, effulgence, radiance, alternating between the two. Of course what we call our aura is, I'd say cross section of this total reality that is a little bit more falls a little more within our understanding, within the purview of our understanding. So we get to the second stage when identify with being a being of light, rather than our physical body. In that case,because identifying with our physical body is just a very limited sense of identity. And so if we do that, then the sense of our boundaries and the ocean of light that is the Universe,that is totally altered. So that now we can't think of ourselves as having boundaries and radiating beyond those boundaries. We might think of ourselves much more like a vortex, whirlpool that would like to keeps on pulsing. So you could think that there is some kind of fluctuation in the whirlpool so that it alternates between the onrush of water toward the center, and the way that the water flows out towards the periphery and then gets filled in from within. Anyway so the fluctuation. If you do that then of course it alters totally your sense of being the subject experiencing the Universe. You discover yourself as being the Universe that is discovering itself as you. And that is exactly what Sufism is about. It's looking at things from the antipodal standpoint from your own standpoint. And therefore discovering that what you thought was you is really the being of God who is discovering him/herself in every, how can say, manifestation or expression of his/her being. You're (blank spot) but not a Sufi. Now remember that we discovered a different mode of light which Pir o Murshid called the all pervading light. And it's a nature of light that does not radiate from a center, from a source of light which is located in a definite location in space. And the reason is that we are talking about the implicate state of which Dr. David Boehm speaks where everything is interspersed with everything else. One or more demonstration, commonplace representation of the Universe is only one perspective, and a derived one. Whereas a deeper one is that condition of the Universe where everything is interspersed with everything else. And that is, in terms of light that is what Pir o Murshid means by the all pervading light. And then what he is saying is that the aura, for example, is something like the light that we perceive from a star. The star is able to converge the light of the Universe, and I think he means the all pervading Universe, and then radiate it forth. So think of yourself as converging the inner light. It's called the inner light, not the outer light. And then radiating it forth as outer light, as your aura for example. Now the clue to this is to be found in a totally novel form of breathing. Because when we breath we are used to thinking that we are drawing in the oxygen, but actually we are drawing in the energy of the Universe. And then sending it out, broadcasting it out. Where as if you try this new way of breathing, as you breath in just think that you are drawing energy from a kind of subliminal world, subjacent to our physical world. As I said, think of the physical world as, the physical world that we are used to, familiar with as being cross section of a multidimensional world. So it's something like a white hole. A new energy is emerging in this cross section of the Universe from the totality of the Universe. See how it feels. And then as you exhale then you could expand this energy, life giving energy, so that your breath is no more, you're not just simply boomeranging back the energy that you converged from the environment but you are a transducer, that is converting an all pervading type of energy into a type of energy that can be handled at the physical level, that makes sense at the physical level let's say, can be make use of. Of course there is not doubt that in order to do that you have to have practiced turning within, as we've been doing the last few sessions. Now you could do something a little more, something else. We could make another step, and that is that when you exhale you do the same thing. You, as Pir o Murshid says, imagine that there is a barrier between you inner self and your outer self. So that now you cannot radiate the energy outward as you exhale. So somehow or other it replenishes your inner being. I don't quite know, I must admit that I don't quite understand how this works because your inner being is so co-extensive with the inner world. I don't quite see that relationship. But if you do it, you will find that you develop a kind of inner power. So you really have then when you start recontacting the outer world you feel as though you are a lamp that is illuminating all things. And in your practices, especially when you are doing the zikre, you can turn your body to the left and to the right. And you have the feeling as though the light of that lamp is turning to the right or to the left as you turn your body, being oriented towards the left or to the right. I think of this picture of Christ, his heart is a lamp. And he's protecting his lamp against the storm. It's just that kind of feeling that you have, that your heart is like a lamp. It gives you a kind of, I would say it gives you some kind of asset, that's the word I was looking for, some kind of asset in dealing with the outer world. otherwise one is so much subjected to the impact, the challenge of the outer world. You're meeting the outer world armed with this inner power that you could visualize as the light of this lamp. Now we may start working with different levels of light. I often use the word transcendental dimensional light. We are of course not talking about anything that makes any sense in physics. But then of course physics is limited by its, has limited itself by its own programming. Levels of light. I'm thinking of, perhaps you could try it doing what Hildegard of Bingin was doing. She said if you concentrate very intensely on this, these kind of landscapes of light that I described. Like starting with something more tangible like for example this beautiful scene of a dome, and the dome in the high mountains with clouds of various colors. But that is just a starting point. At a further point you are so carried by the splendor coming through. The beauty there, the expression of splendor is beyond form. And somehow that splendor enlists your ecstasy so that you feel "This is my home. This is where I belong." I'm an exile on the physical world. It brings you very close to what we imagine the heavens to be like. Of course it may be imagination. But then imagination is, you know one can't imagine something that does not have some foundation, but then we distort it. But behind it there is a reality there. We're trying to reproduce in our imagination something of which we have an intuition in the depth of our being. So, as I say, it starts with this sense of I would say the way that the divine splendor becomes perceptible to us through the medium ship of physical matter, where the physical matter seems to be transparent, where it allows something to come through which seems rather different from the kind of thing that we imagine the physical world to be. Like having profiles. Where you don't have profiles,for example these clouds, you can see them intersperse, so that they don't get the same sense that you have looking at a tree where you see the definite profile of the tree. That kind of envisioning carries you beyond the commonplace representation of the physical Universe into what one might call a transfigured Universe. For example, if you could see the corona of the flowers you would feel that you were beginning to look into a transfigured Universe. Now what Hildegard von Bingen says is that she finds herself absolutely enthralled by a world of light. That light permeates her being. She is totally in that world of light. So I would say that one is downplaying consciousness of one's body, or at least what one imagines one's body to be like. And also random thoughts or any kind of thoughts so that the act of one's creative imagination is so overwhelming that one is carried in it beyond the physical world, or what we call the physical world. Now you can go, what she says is that this world of light opens up. It avers itself to be a like a gate that opens up into a further world of light even more magnificent and overwhelming and her ecstasy is heightened even beyond where it was before. Of course, naturally, instead of thinking of it as a gate that opens up, I think it's like, one sees in transparency something beneath, below, I mean beneath the layer. There's one layer after the other. You shift you perspective so that now you pick up something that was hidden behind your first perspective that you could almost espy in your, because there's some kind of transparency. And then you shift your perspective just like you shift your perspective looking at a cube on a blackboard. And you could look at it one way or the other. So you shift your perspective. And it is your be wonderment that helps you to shift your perspective, that is to downplay a previous perspective and highlight another one. Now what is more, as one does that one seems to recover, one has a feeling of déjà vu, as they say, a sense that this is familiar but one had lost sight of it. So it's like recalling one's state prior to one's birth and conception, at least that's what one thinks. In fact it's as though one functions at several levels. One of those levels is what we call the celestial level. We are still, at some level of our being we're still functioning at that level but it's much easier to think that one remembers the condition prior to the formation of one's body but one is in fact functioning at several levels at the same time. But one isn't always aware of that happening at those higher levels because one is caught up in the physical world. It's all a matter of perspective. So it's really like discovering levels of oneself that had fallen out of perspective. But it is true to say that those levels seem to have a a perinity, a much lengthier perinity than the transiency of one's physical body, let's say contrasting with the physical body or even one's aura, physical aura. So one is touching upon eternity. So one could stay in that state without wavering. Of course it embodies one's ideal and one loses one's faith in one's ideal because one is conditioned by the nitty gritty, and is extremely concerned about dealing with the challenges of everyday life, let's say the support system takes over. So one loses a sense of all those things that are meaningful to one. One says to be kind to one's soul. Now there is a further, another practice which you could do. I've done it myself. It's called (kasinna), the practice of Buddha under the tree. In fact it is one of the practices that lead to illumination. In fact the practices that we are doing lead towards illumination. So if you imagine a red disk, no, if you look at a red disk and then close your eyes, then you see a green disk. Now, so that's called the reflexive image. So imagine a red disk with closed eyes, and then shift your consciousness in such a way that all of a sudden you really see a green disk. And I'm not quite sure of what I'm saying now. But I think that if you concentrate on the green disk, then you get into an orange one then a violet one. I'm not sure about that but you try it out and see. But what Buddha is doing is simply imagine colorless light but physical light, and then you shift the way you would be doing with the disk. You shift your consciousness. And you begin to visualize the reflex of that physical light. Then you continue of course. Starting from that reflex of physical light you do the same thing. And then you reach into a further level of light and so on. You keep on moving, shifting. So you see that instead of saying there are different levels of reality, that's still metaphysics, but here you have a clue, we have a sense of what we mean by levels although our mind doesn't understand. But somehow you're experiencing levels of reality. What I'm talking about when I talk about the celestial spheres otherwise it's a concept, but somehow I'm trying to sense what that means to us in terms of self discovery. otherwise we think well we ask silly questions like where is the heavens? Is it out there is Venus or Jupiter? Because we're so used to always thinking in terms of location in space. Where as here we have departed with our identification with our bodies because somehow in our minds our bodies are located in space and time and vary with time, change with time. So there is a level of, some of our thinking is connected with time and space with what the body does. The thinking of an athlete is certainly within the framework of time/space. Thinking of a philosopher for example does not involve space in any way because it does not involve matter. Space and time is only meaningful where there is matter or with regard to matter. So if we shift our identity from identifying with our body, then we discover levels of our body that, in which space is totally irrelevant and that's why it gives a sense that we're not inveigled in space/time, in space but also in the time situation. So we discover what Pir o Murshid calls the deathlessness of our being, that part of our being that is not subject to the process of becoming, a sense of eternity. We get messages from let's say the physical plane but now we have this kind of overview. So we don't have to shunt back into the physical level but we can get messages from the earth plane. As though you were in outer space and people on planet earth were sending you messages. So our bodies send those messages in our higher self telling us that the body is uncomfortable, or that in fact some of the thoughts that bug us when we try to meditate, we call them random thoughts, are in some way connected with bodiness with our sense of the physical world or that kind of perspective that we normally got into. And of course all those kind of impressions tend to pull one down. But I think one of the ways of resisting being pulled down is to consider that they represent a very limited perspective. And here we are, our perspective is a sense of freedom. It is not curtailed by the limitation of the usual identity, sense of identity. This kind of attunement, focus, let's say attunement of our consciousness leads towards visions of let's say the galaxies. You find the words of Jelaluddin Rumi, the atoms and the shoreless sea, and the galaxies, and the dance, and his God who dances in the middle of this choreography. These are visions that give us a sense of awakening form the limitation of the commonplace vantage point into a kind of cosmic vision of the Universe, and of ourselves as being part of it. Not like a fraction of it, but so much a part of it that we can't really tell the difference between the observer and the observed. If you can do that, if you can make that step, then you see that this spectacle of light, or let's say this vision of light is just the way that we project that aspect of our self that is the nur into forms seen other than ourselves. And so it you see that, you realize that, all of a sudden your highlighting the subject rather than object, the observer rather than the observed. And so you get a totally different sense of light, not what the Sufis call the light that can be seen, but the light that sees. Because normally we represent our consciousness as, in fact our eyes, we think that our eyes are simply passive, picking up information from the environment. In fact they pick up light. It's called the process of fluorescence. Those light signals are transmitted to the brain and the brain processes them into images and all kinds of mental representations. But we started this morning with becoming aware of the active light that is cast forward through our glance rather than thinking of our eyes as being receptacles. And so this practice leads at another level of our being, leads us into a further realization, and that is what the Sufis call Nur Akle, the light of intelligence. That projects it's light on all things rather than the act of consciousness which is picking up information which is passive. We make a quantum leap into a whole different way, kind of realization, whole different way of looking at things. But then the trouble is that we're so used to thinking of our individual, so it takes a further step to realize that the light of intelligence cannot be fragmented. Consciousness is polarized or focalized, the consciousness of the Universe is focalized in each one of our consciousness. But intelligence cannot be fragmented that way. And therefore it is really what we understand by divine intelligence. It was a word of Newton who said," I think as God thinks". It wasn't just wishful thinking. We realize that if a human being has any sense of how the Universe works, it's because we think the way the Universe thinks, in a limited way, but still in a holistic way in the same manner. So I think that is the moment of illumination when one identifies with the light of divine intelligence. I think that is awakening beyond life in a kind of samadhi. A samadhi of life if one might call it so. And now there is just one more step. And that is to awaken in life instead of beyond life, and that is to enlist the impact of the light of intelligence upon our aura. And that is what is meant in the Koran by a Light upon a Light. All of a sudden a breakthrough of realization is like a kind of, it triggers off a kind of explosion of light in our aura, if you can experience that. Like I often illustrate it by that child who all of a sudden sees that pixie in that puzzle in the tree. And all of a sudden says,"Yes,Mummy!" And at that moment his or her face starts lighting up. 1 AUG 11, 1995 Tape 07 .....putting you through an experiment because what we've been doing is not the customary thing. Normally one sets a few days aside to go on retreat. Then tries to get out of that retreat to get back into life again. But if indeed what we call a retreat is really a rehearsal for life, then it's good for us to exercise ourselves to be able to introduce that extra-territorial carpet which is beyond time and space, right in the middle of life. Then we know how to relate back. Maybe I could put it this way. When one is training to be a pilot one learns forced landings so one is prepared for the need to contact the world. You might be in a samadhi state someone forgot to take the telephone hook and somebody has a very important message for you. Unless you are prepared to make that transit you'll get yourself very confused. So what we want to do now is to be very clear as to what it means to awaken beyond life and what it means to awaken in life. Not in theory but to do it so it's a reality not just in the mind. Because we are using words for example, my spiritual purpose is to awaken. And we don't even always know what we mean by awaken, and how does one awaken? So is it just in the mind, just theory or how do we do it in practice? The theory is of course that we downplay one perspective and open another, that we shift our perspective. But then that's theory . Like for example the word awaken, you awaken from sleep into diurnal consciousness. So that's a shift of perspective. Then you awaken from diurnal consciousness into sleep. Maybe that is also an awakening. And maybe one awakens from sleepless dreams into deep sleep. Maybe that's also an awakening. So I think we have to consider awakening as a sudden, like a quantum leap, a sudden shift of perspective. Like as I've often illustrated a cube on a blackboard. You can see it this way that way, change your perspective. Or you look at a hologram. You look at it one way and you see it a certain way, and then you change your perspective and you see another perspective. And that means two things, one is downplaying, that is letting go of a perspective and highlighting another. And both are important. So that downplaying, that you find illustrated very much in Yoga, the thought that the world is illusion will cause you to downplay the gravity pull exercised by the world upon your consciousness. You know we have a practice for that and we've done that practice. It's for example what we did this morning, being aware of your glance. Then if you open your eyes you see the physical world exercises impact upon your glance. I call it gravity pull. And then if you able to maintain your glance, then the world appears rather like a blur. So that shows you just to what extent the physical world exercises an impact one's glance. Well it does the same thing with one's consciousness. So the only way to awaken is to let go of that pull because otherwise you're caught in it. It doesn't let go. And that is detachment. And as you know detachment really goes counter to interest. And detachment is the way of the ascetic, and we're saying,"Well our way is not the way of the ascetic". But what I'm saying is that we have to be able to muster all the different faculties in our being. And amongst them, or even all the different persona, facets of our personality. So in us that is the knight, and there is the ascetic, and there is the prophetic, and there is the mystic, and there is the householder and there is the father and the mother or the sister or the brother or the child and so on. All these aspects or the boss or the assistant. All these things are to be found in us and they can be awakened in the appropriate circumstances. So let us not, by placing the accent on the need to awaken in life, let us not neglect this aspect in ourselves which is awakening beyond life, which is what one means by samadhi. Pir o Murshid himself was three days at least before he came home, all we know is he way three days totally in samadhi. You couldn't speak with him. He was right out there for three days. Three days and nights I mean. That was reported by one of the mureeds. That was in London in England in Newforest in the early days. Murshid was always in a state of like awakening so that it has that kind of an effect on people. If you're in the presence of someone who is awake , it's, it works on you. It does something to you to be in the presence of someone who is awake. So on one hand therefore letting go. Now of course if you're awake in everyday life you don't let go of the perspective every day life. It's awakening beyond life. What I'm trying to teach now is to awaken beyond life first and then awaken in life. So we're going to do the two, in my mind, maybe it's an opinion but at least it's based on real experience, I don't think that one can awaken in life without awakening beyond life. And if you do, then it becomes really you're slipping back into everyday life. And you think that it's special like getting down to the nitty gritty and thinking that's a big deal. And there's nothing to it at all. In fact it's very boring I find. One's missing out on the glory of the Universe. You're caught in that cross section of reality that I talked about this morning and thinking that's awakening in life. However it's true, as above so below. If you are able to reach that very deep point, then of course it's true that one is awakening in life and not in the usual sort of commonplace perspective. So right, so on the one hand there is letting go, which is called detachment, vairagya, and which is the attunement of the ascetic. I said that we have that in us, but it is true that it would be very greatly helped if while we're sitting there in the woods if we try to represent to our selves an ascetic. I don't know, I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting in the presence of ascetics, of living as an ascetic myself, of getting into that, I can't tell you what kind of attunement it is to be a pilgrim and to have left the haunts of humans. Of course the place where the people are just praying and chanting in the temples and ringing bells and things. And then reaching up in the high mountains and occasionally you'll find an ascetic sitting right in the middle of nature in contemplation. The whole feeling of that is just absolutely incredible. After that you walk in the streets of New York and you think,"Good God, what have people made of the planet?". So that is a fact of people who are in that state, Mt. Athos. I've sat in the presence of ascetics who were living in a little, well it was hardly a hut. It was more like a dog's kennel that they built out of bits of wood. There they were in a state of ecstasy. So what we're trying to do is almost the impossible possibility. It is trying to introduce that, how can I say, that slot within our world. It doesn't seem to be really, at first sight at least it seems to be impossible. And what we're trying to do is to make the impossible possible. Because if it's not possible then that means that we can, living, assuming our responsibilities we would never be able to do it, or even to have a taste of it. We'd be missing out on something so important. I don't want to accept that. Therefore I want to see how we can introduce that somehow in the middle of our rather perturbed lives. It's an ideal, maybe it's just very difficult. However, we'll do what we can. So that means in our attitude towards the world somehow trying to adopt the attitude of the ascetic, the basic attitude which is not being dependent upon circumstances. So we are, civilization has offered us such a wonderful infrastructure. You know, how can you do without a frige? And how can you do without a car, nowadays? How can my mind present a work Keeping in Touch without a computer. One becomes dependent upon the infrastructure. Like for example you can't, you know you have these base camps. You spend so much money and time and effort in building the base camp that we imagine a situation that all that energy has been spent and there is no more energy to reach the top. And that's what we're doing all the time. The infrastructure takes over. Then we denigrate ourselves, we get frustrated, and we think, Well if only I could live in circumstances that would enable me to unfurl my personality and give food to my highest aspirations. Well then that happened, but in these circumstances that can never happen. I'm saying well yes however one can create circumstances that are more favorable. So at least let's do the things we can do. And one is to start editing one's thinking. To start by finding a way of not being dependent upon cigarettes, that's a very clear case. Drugs of course, need I say. But you know addictions, there are a lot of addictions, even just watching TV is an addiction. Ice cream is an addiction I mean there are lots of addictions. Chatting with people, feeling that one needs the support of people, even a teacher, the need of a teacher is also an addiction, dependence upon another person. So it's a frame of mind that is embodied in the words of Christ, they are in the world but not of the world. In India it says of course, it's not being of the world or in the world. But Christ said is being in the world but not of the world. It's a way of thinking, an attitude. That will develop a kind of detachment which will certainly have an impact upon one's psychological make up. For example as Pir o Murshid said," One is tested in one's indifference". He says that detachment and indifference are the wings that enable one the soul to fly. For example that if things go wrong you're still, you're not totally stymied. You don't break down. You don't depend on circumstances for your inner being. If you're not successful in your life, you don't, as I said yesterday, you don't found your self esteem upon your success or nonsuccess. And then we feel, there is a kind of adulation that takes place. Like we have resentment for someone so we go to a psychotherapist because we hope that the psychotherapist is going to give us support for our hurt feelings. Like you go to Mummy because of you've got a wound on your knee. So there is dependence. And one is even encouraging this dependence. Whereas the ascetic doesn't depend on adulation or being looked after or taken care of. Takes care of himself or herself. And the consequence is that your self esteem goes right up. There is a tendency in the Sufi Order, I must say that, in the States not in Europe, the States are always ahead of Europe, of like loosening a little bit, how could you say, the challenges of the spiritual life. Like at the end of St. Francis's life there were a lot monks who joined and they had a meeting and they asked St. Francis if he could make the rules a little bit less stringent because they were a little bit too hard. So you know, just take it easy. And don't force yourself too much and get over stressed and so on. Come on pull yourself together and be strong! The more you're dependent on care the weaker you get. So I hope there is still room for mastery in the Sufi Order. It's being questioned a lot. You let go you know, things happen. So that's detachment. Detachment will enable the divine power to come through you like the power of the dervish. If you're leaning upon something, it will never come through. If that's what you want, that's what you get. Just depends. You have to decide what you really value in life and what you really want. And that includes dependence upon one's self image. Like one want's to prove oneself to oneself. If one has failed to prove to oneself what one would like to prove to oneself, then one loses one's self esteem. So even that has to go by the board. You remember the saying of Murshidwhich is very important when he says that by achieving something you gain power and with that power you can achieve something more challenging, but don't over stress yourself. That's quite right. I think we're realizing that. We mustn't over stress ourselves. But up to the edge you know, and not beyond that. 'ver stress yourself then, of course, it's counter productive. But then he says you see detachment gives you power because your objective limits your power. I've already said that. So what I'm talking about then is the power of detachment. And I think that it is related to a way of thinking that must not become dogmatic. We have to be careful. It could easily become dogmatic. Like in the play of Murshid, at the end of one of his plays he hands his succession to his son. He was a kind. And then he says,"I'm seeking another kingdom". And Christ is talking about another kingdom. And Judas was very conscious of the fact that the Jews were under the power of Rome. They thought well another kingdom, the kingdom of Israel. What does he mean another kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. They didn't understand. It's a way of thinking, more than a realization. their values than the the earthly values we're so used to now. We've got dependent upon these earthly values. But then the answer is well then do you mean that we have to become ascetics in order to attain awakening beyond life. And what I'm saying is that that is the way it has been so far. But we're exploring ways of spirituality that are totally novel and therefore much more difficult than those that were offered before. And so what Murshid says, and we really have to dwell upon the words. He says,"Loosen the ties with the world". He doesn't say break the ties because then you become an ascetic. You break the ties altogether. Perhaps you know the story of the Gordian Knot. There was a knot in the village. And there was a kind of legend, I guess it was so difficult to unravel that anybody who would be able to unravel that knot would be able to conquer the world. Alexander of course went there and became impatient and cut it. And of course he never conquered the world. So now what are those ties? Are relationships with people? Well the ascetic cuts the ties with any kind of personal relationships with people. But that is not honoring the importance of life on earth. It means involvement, what is gained by involvement with people, with life generally, responsibility, family. So, loosen, what would it mean? I think that in the depth it really means not being emotionally dependent on another person. Then there is that beautiful, as Kahlil Gibran says, a beautiful azifier between two big trees. He says two big trees don't grow too close in the forest. there is that place for the wind to blow. The relationship can be even greater, because there are some trees that grow in a coupled relationship, the (pipal) tree for example in India. But somehow that relationship incorporates the kind of freedom that one gives each other out of respect so that one isn't crushing the other person, weighing upon the other person by one's will or what one wishes the other person to be and so on. Well that would be perhaps an interpretation of loosening the ties. We mustn't misconstrue what Murshid says here. And so we do have ties. I prefer thinking of it in terms of responsibility. So one can be detached and yet love at the same time. It's a wonderful formula. We find it amongst, I think it was Fariduddin Attar who said, "Renounce the world, renounce yourself, and then renounce renunciation out of love". It's very powerful. It's the way of the Sufis. So that's one thing. 'n the one hand detachment. And on the other hand, what Pir o Murshid says is a "Passion". He uses the word passion. I would have used the word nostalgia. But he uses the word passion and it's very powerful. "for the unattainable". That word again is very significant because if you think, well this is it and I want to get there, no it's always further. That's why Murshid says it's like the horizon. The further you advance the further it recedes. But it's a kind of emotion and your will won't do it. It's the kind of emotion I hope you felt you felt when you were envisioning these scenes of light and so on. And there was alway something further and further. It does something to one's emotions, uplifts one beyond the emotions that confine us to the earth, or attachments and dependencies and so on. So those are the two basic facts. He does say that in order to be able to experience samadhi, foster samadhi, one needs to create circumstances that are peaceful, away from the crowd. The best is of course, ideas is in the forest, in the woods, or in the mountains. That's what ascetics do, of course. That's not always possible. How can we do this when were right in the middle of a city for example, and we have three days holiday. It would take three days even to get to a place in nature, and we'd like to make a retreat during those three days. So yes, I've tried that in fact because I realize that question can arise. And so I have made a retreat right in the heart of Paris. Most people would think it can't be a retreat. One can find a kind of inner space within the turmoil. Just like Buddha while he sat in the middle of a storm and it was peaceful where he sat. You can do that. It just depends on your own attunement. You don't let yourself play ball with the challenge from the outside. I exercised it in Ajmer because I had to go on retreat. At first I sought, I went to that cave of Hazarat Moinuddin Chisti at the top of the hill. Then I found that there were people coming there to pray and so on. I just tried to find a place a little bit further. I found a wonderful garden full of birds and idyllic fro a retreat. And somehow I thought well I should try and do the same thing when there are a lot of people around. And so I sat there at the darga of Hazarat Moinuddin Chisti, right there where a lot of people are coming and children are playing and so on and so forth. And I found that I could even get into a deeper place of peacefulness just because of the turmoil around me. Alright so, I believe that in order to awaken in the samadhi state, which I call the transcendent, one needs to turn within. And so all the practices we've been doing so far were a preparation for awakening beyond life. So we don't have to come back on all the things we have done. Learning how to turn within, the vortex, getting into that. Yes I think, well I hope these stages are clear in your minds. I hope it's clear that we project our psyche upon the situations. We assess situations under a certain bias. We project a certain bias upon our assessment of situations in which we are in relationship with other people. And therefore our assessment is not correct, and that we carry this false assessment all the time. So there has to be some correction of that false assessment in our psyche. That is Yoga. This is one of the first steps of Yoga. Secondly, that we are ingesting the world, not just experiencing it but we are ingesting it. And therefore we have to protect ourselves and not just with sentinels at the doors of perception, but also we need to transmute the impressions so that they can become digestible. So that's a further step. And then if you remember, then when we were reaching within then we were not placing a real barrage between the inner and the outer. But we were looking at the outer, or we were even expanding from within and reaching the outer world, but from inside, reaching the lotus or the water lilies from the roots instead of looking at them from above. So I hope you remember all that. And then we got to a point when we were stripping the veils which were constituted by mental constructs and emotional attunements one by one. If you remember, I illustrated that by an experiment by Dr. David Boehm and ( ) who eliminated the electromagnetic field to see what was behind a deeper layer of reality. And so if we do that, then we reach a point where we touch upon the divine presence. That was a word that was evoked in one of the questions. The divine presence. What does it mean? So know what you mean by the word presence? There are no qualities. If you say the that a person is present you're not saying that person is strong or compassionate or beautiful. You're not saying that. You're just saying that person is present. And so it is a layer of reality beneath the movement of the mind the emotions of the mind. Now I'm using the word mind, our thinking. So let us say that for each mode of identity there is a mode of thinking. So if you identify with your body, then you thinking the way most people think. If you turn within, your thinking is different. You see things in a context instead of granulated as separate entities. It's like the roots behind the water lilies. You see relationships that normally you will only see through your personal vantage point. I'll use an example, a solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse is only significant from the point of view of planet earth. But that situation between the sun and the moon does not look like an eclipse if you're somewhere else in space. So if we see things from our personal vantage point, the world looks as though it were made of discrete objects, but when you see the whole context and not just what things mean to you. So it's a whole new discovery. And as I say lower down, beneath the mental level, there are different mental levels, you get into the state where there is no mind anymore, there is just divine presence. And that's what we do when we say Hu, ila 'la Hu. Where we already prefigure it in the illa. How then do we try to ascend from turning within in order to waken in the samadhi beyond life. There are several techniques that have been developed by different schools. I have often taught these techniques, Yoga for example, or Buddhism. And now I find that, then I was teaching the Sufi way and there seemed to be some kind of contradiction. Now I would rather not teach the Yoga way or the Buddhist way, but try to see how they all fit into a more general view. I'll give you an example. So let's follow a few stages based on Buddhism. What Buddha is dealing with is our identity. And to awaken beyond life you have to shift your sense of identity as I said. And we have a lot of ideas about reality, about what we are and so on. For example our body, we do identify with our body. And we have this preconceived idea of what we think is our body like it ends with our skin and so on so forth, and this is me this is my body. It's one of the most basic illusions but we take it for granted. So Buddha deals with each of these steps one by one, starting with the body. And to take away that identity, ownership of the body by, of course by detachment. So consider the body to a formation that happened. The planet earth and has molded itself into these human bodies. So why do you think that this is my body? So that's the first step. And of course it sounds quite convincing until one questions it as I have questioned it. And I said to myself, "Well a tree is also a body but I can't move a tree with my will as I can move my body. I can schlep my body about in the street. So how is that possible that this lump of matter that I have such a relationship with it that I can really move it? So it's not quite true to say that it has nothing to do with me. And what is more I can really transform it." Some of the practices that we do have an effect upon the body, have a very definite effect upon the body. For example you can release beta endorphines by concentrating on the pituitary gland. You can, certainly concentration on peace has an effect on the balance of the parathyroid and the thyroid. All kinds of effects, the adrenal glands, everything, the hormones. So you can't really say the body is just a formation that has nothing to do with my person. And what is more the expression on one's face alters according to with one's attunement and to one's realization. So one does have an impact on the body. So that's where I beg to disagree with Buddha with all due respect of course because Buddha has meant a lot to me. But I think that these are, this is kindergarten for beginners in meditation. Then the mind, I shouldn't have said that yesterday. Again it's formation, let's use the word thinking if you like, like not a definite discrete entity, but it's a formative construct, configuration. And it's true that we think like we have been conditioned to think, so we can't claim absolute copyright on our thoughts, ownership of our thoughts. It's good to know that. Krishnamurti was one who warned people to the extent to which they are conditioned in their thinking. And when you know that, then of course it gives you some freedom from your opinion. In fact one of the strong points in Buddha's teaching was freedom from opinion. People go to kill each other for their opinion, go to war for opinion and so on. So if you think that your opinion is not really your opinion but is a result of your conditioning, well then you awaken from a point of view which can have a dramatic consequences. But of course, I mean it's obvious that one does have an impact on one's thinking. It's not just conditioning. So that's where I can't go along with Buddha all the way there. But it's true that we identify ourselves with our thinking. That's why we have difficulty meditating is because we are caught in these thoughts. So from the moment that you see that these thoughts are conditioned, it will give you a certain freedom from the impact of these thoughts that force themselves upon you. You can't meditate because you are under impressions all these random thoughts. In the realm of emotion you say the same thing. It's a little more difficult of course. Like anger for example is of course a conditioned reflex. Somebody has insulted you and you get angry. That's what wars are about. So you look at yourself and you say,"There you go again". So then somehow you disidentify if you say "You" to yourself. That means that you don't identify with that which you call "you". It's that part of yourself that's been conditioned by, maybe you can put the blame on your ancestors. We've been conditioned and we don't want to be just subject to that conditioning. Then, of course, our personality. And I think it's true to say that we really are absolutely convinced that we are our personality. And we are convinced that other people are their personality. So we say I like this person, I don't like that person. I like this person because they are nice, or compassionate, or they are intelligent or whatever, they are charming or whatever.(tape turns) Whatever it is in you that's realized it doesn't matter. The fact is that you realize that you're looking at things from a personal bias. It comes to the same as what Yoga was saying. Later on this was illustrated by ( ) I don't know whether you know the Buddhists were practically kicked out of India by the Hindus and then politics and finally ( ) came and he really adopted the and incorporated the Buddhist teaching into Hinduism and called it Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta. It was already there but I won't go into the theory. But what ( ) said that you're walking in the forest and you see a snake and then at night time. And daytime you pass by there and you see that it's a rope. Then the next night you pass by there again an you see that yes it really does look like a snake but now I know that it's a rope. So that's an illustration of what one calls Maya. So consider that your consciousness acts like a lens. We also have a lens in our eyes. And that you are seeing things in a distorted manner but however, you, that is, when your consciousness is focalized in a focal center, there is a distortion rather similar to that of a lens. But if you withdraw your notion of being the spectator into the more impersonal levels of your being by disidentifying with the personal levels of your being like your body and your mind and so forth, then you begin to see things differently. And that's awakening, the secret of awakening. So the secret of awakening is first in altering one's identity with one's body. I would put it in a much more, in a different way of course, I would say it would be like, well in our modern way of thinking like the way that our awareness has an impact on the cells of our body. Instead of identifying with our body, I have a headache or I have a tooth ache, you know. It's like really seeing how consciousness has evolved as matter evolves. Matter has facilitated let's say the progress from the inorganic to the organic has facilitated the awakening of consciousness in the very cells, in the matter, in the cells of the body. It's a totally different way of looking at one's body identity. And the same thing one's thinking, like I already said, there's a cognizance that is born out of one's experience. Then there is a kind of inborn cognizance that doesn't depend upon experience. If you look at it that way, then you don't identify with the mind. I'm using that word again. As in Buddhism where one questions that one considers the mind is just a formation. I hope you follow me. Same think as our personality. So you come to the point that you see things differently because you don't see things from your personal vantage point. That means you have questioned your simplistic identity and have awakened levels, no have awakened the impersonal dimensions of all of your being, not just your consciousness, but your body, and you thinking and your notions and your personality. Now I want to end by what could be considered as a real demonstration of what he says, because he's not just saying it he's doing it, or what he is saying is a consequence of what he is doing. And he can prove it. He says, " When consciousness has been carried beyond the the limits of the personal self", that lens if you like, that is me as the spectator. When consciousness has been carried beyond the limit of the I, the notion of the personal I,"the memory of the Universe comes back". That is we carry the memory of the Universe within us, but our programming favors the memory of those things that impinged upon our consciousness after our birth, because we wouldn't be able to handle it all. And now if we do not limit ourselves to what we think we are, then that wider memory comes back. He proved it. He said,"There was a time that there was no smoke on planet earth". I mean even the thought planet earth, I mean in those days there was no idea about planet earth, I mean the stars were just decorations for people on planet earth. And no smoke, that means that there were no humans. In those days they had no idea that there was a time when there were no humans. How did he know? And he said that there was a time when planet earth didn't exist. It's only quite recent that astrophysicists have been saying, well it wasn't that recent but still. He said there was a time when this physical Universe, this physical Universe. didn't exist. That is only in the last decades that people know that. Then said that there was another Universe before that and then it broke down and there was a new Universe. These are views that even, only very few astrophysicists are beginning to see that as a plausible theory. And Buddha knew it. So he proved that indeed consciousness is capable of realizing things which are not based upon everyday experience. So let that be. There are a few practices that you could do and I hope that will help you to awaken beyond life. ================================================================================ NEXT CONSECUTIVE DOC BEGINS: AUG 11, 1995 Tape 08 THIS ENDS DOCNAME =pvk9597a.txt , which is the first section PirTapes from /Infobases on the SKX HIK CD Those transcriptions continue on =pvk9597h.txt, which I rename =pvk9598a.txt I will start that document by going back to the Start of Tape 08 of 11 Aug '95 Sa, Campra, 31 Oct '05 - HallowE'en, but we don't talk about that anymore - 29 Tishrei - last day of Ramadan, most likely Stars still out, not too cold ===============================================================================