=kitc03.txt

CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER
Teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan,
Parallels with earlier Sufis,
Comparative religion,
Comments,
Practices
LESSON 3
TURNING WITHIN
PART I

Note: if not otherwise stated, the quotes in italics and indented
are of Hazrat Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, the commentaries are by
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, the reference of quotes by ancient Sufis
and other esoteric schools are appended to these. Instructions on
practices corresponding to the sayings follow these. 
           
[ Note (sa) -- I find no idents in the Kaivan version of this
doc.]


We have seen in the previous lesson that our usual sense of
personal identity has the effect of encapsulating ourselves in a
limitation - with the consequence that we fail to fulfill the
purpose of our lives which is to realize and unfurl the divine
perfection invested in our being. The method advocated by Pir o
Murshid Inayat Khan was to explore the wider dimension of our
being in our participation with the totality by overcoming the
habit of contrasting our sense of "me" from what we represent as
the universe (or God) as "other." This we called "the cosmic
dimension" of our being.

In the present lesson, we are working with an alternate dimension:
"turning within." Very often meditation is considered as "turning
within." Meditation consists not just in turning within but also,
as we have seen, discovering our outreach and, further, as we will
be exploring: our "transcendental dimension."

"Turning within" opens up an infinite perspective upon our being,
one which Pir o Murshid emphasizes significantly in his esoteric
teaching. Normally we are only aware of a sliver of the bounty
that we are immersed in.

"When a man looks at the ocean, he can only see that part of it
which comes within his range of vision; so it is with the truth."
(HIK) BOWL OF SAKI.

We are in search of ourselves and our relationship with the
universe, in all its dimensions (which we represent as God), in
our longing to grasp the significance of our life.

"Man, with the maturity of his soul, desires to probe the depths
of life. He desires to discover the power latent within him, he
longs to know the source and goal of his life, he yearns to
understand the aim and meaning of life, he wishes to understand
the inner significance of things, and he wants to uncover all that
is covered by form and name: he seeks for insight into cause and
effect, he wants to touch the mystery of Time and Space, and he
wishes to find the missing link between God and man - where man
ends, where God begins."
(HIK) UNITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS.

PRACTICE:

Let us at this stage make a start in our meditations and ask
ourselves whether we feel that we are missing out on grasping the
meaning of our lives, of our relationship with the situations in
the outer world.

"What man knows is generally the world that he sees around
himself....What he knows is to express outwardly and to receive
from this same sphere as much as he can receive by himself....but
there is something around themselves beyond that which they
realize."
(HIK) MYSTICISM OF SOUND.

As we ask ourselves these questions, we wonder whether it would
not be easier to call a halt for a few moments from our
commonplace life style - whether we are not missing out on
grasping areas of ourselves not commonly experienced.

"If we respond to the things of the earth so much that our whole
life becomes absorbed in earthly things, then it is quite natural
that we do not respond to those riches which are within us, and
yet are far removed from them." 
(HIK) SOCIAL GATHEKA, ART.

We hope that if we follow a method based upon instructions devised
by beings who have clinched a more meaningful sense of life in
general and their own life, we will gradually gain more insight
into our own lives.

Having explored wider areas as in the previous lesson, we have a
hunch that there is a whole area to explore inside.

"How one wanders all one's life in search of something which can
only be found within oneself." 
(HIK) GATHEKA 11.

"Instead of finding it within he always wants to find it without."
(HIK) SOCIAL GATHEKA, THE POWER OF THE WORD.

Before we look deeper into this, can we be clear as to what we
mean by turning within?

One commonly takes for granted that all that lies outside one's
skin-bound body is the "world" whereas what lies within this skin
is "myself." Turning within cannot be reduced to simply becoming
aware of what is happening within one's own body. Moreover it is a
misconception to think that the mind is "in the body" - in the
brain.

"To a material person 'within' means in the body, inside the body.
In reality 'within' means not only inside, but also outside the
body. This can be seen by the light inside a lamp: the light is
inside the globe, and it is outside the globe too. So is the soul;
it is inside and outside too. So is the mind; it is inside and
outside, it is not confined inside the body." 
(HIK) MENTAL PURIFICATION.

What Pir o Murshid means by "within" is not included in the three-
dimensional space that evidences the limitation in our middle
range mental faculties.

"They might think 'within oneself' means inside one's body; but
that is because man is ignorant of himself. Man has a very poor
idea of himself, and this keeps him in ignorance of his real self.
If man only knew how large, how wide, how deep, how high is his
being, he would think, act, and feel differently; but with all his
width, depth, and height, if man is not conscious of them he is as
small as he thinks himself to be."
(HIK), IN AN EASTERN ROSE GARDEN.

"There is another space, within which this space is contained."
(HIK),  SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS. METAPHYSICS.

"Within us there is space too; the space within extends in another
direction." 
(HIK), SMILING FOREHEAD.

This could be illustrated by our dream world:

"In the physical world, you are here and everything is without
you, you are contained in space; in the dream, all you see is
contained within you."
(HIK, I presumes)

"We have experience of this world of mind even while awake, but
the contrast between the world within and without makes the world
without concrete and the world within abstract." 
(HIK), METAPHYSICS.

Furthermore, it includes:
(i) Occurrences, events;
(ii) What is enacted behind our problems, which is often masked by
our assessments of our problems;
(iii) Particularly, the virtualities of our psyche, whose outer
face is our self-image - our identity.
(iv) Intuitive hunches;
(v) Creative imagination - inspiration.

Since we are so used to taking for granted that the objects in the
world are "discrete entities," it is difficult for us to imagine
how everything could be intermeshed (like radio waves or, if this
were possible: a piece of paper so crushed that every part was in
contact with every other part). 

That the world appears different according to one's perspective is
a theory in physics. Dr. David Bohm contrasts the way things look
in our commonplace perspective which he describes where things are
perceived as unfolded (like the piece of paper) or alternately
enfolded (explicate versus implicate). 

"Each part of the holograph is an image of the whole object. The
light from all parts of the room contains information about the
whole room. Therefore every part contains information about the
whole object....Information about the whole is enfolded in each
part of the image. Information about the whole object is
dynamically enfolded in each part of space while the information
is then unfolded in the image." 
(DAVID BOHM, UNFOLDING MEANING, P. 10)

"The order of the world as a structure of things that are
basically external to each other comes out as secondary and
emerges from the deeper implicate order. The order of elements
external to each other would then be called the unfolded order, or
the explicate order." 
(IBID. P. 13)

"So all the aspects of the mind show themselves and are enfolding
each other, and transforming through each other through enfoldment
and unfoldment. Mind and matter may consistently be related
without adopting a reductionist position. Perhaps they both arise
from some greater common ground or perhaps they are not really
different. (p. 19) The state of the whole is such that it
organizes the parts. (p. 7)
(DR. BOHM, I presume.  Ibid loc. cit. that, Hepcat.) 

It is heartening for the meditator to see the way that the views
of Hazrat Inayat Khan, already foreseen by his Sufi predecessors,
are corroborated in the findings of a modern physicist.

"This space of three dimensions is reflected in the space that is
in the inner dimension. What exists in the inner dimension is also
reflected in three-dimensional space. In reality what the mystic
sees in space is something that is within, but when he opens his
eyes, he sees it before him."
(HIK, I say)


"For the mystic everything is connected. There is no condition
that is detached from another condition. A mechanism is always
running in relation to another mechanism, however different and
disconnected they may seem. To gain insight, the mystic enters
into the depth of the whole mechanism of the universe."
(HIK again today, or so I prophecy. -- sa)

"All things and beings on the surface seem separate from one
another; beneath the surface, they approach nearer to each other,
and in the innermost plane, they all become one... The closer one
approaches reality, the nearer one arrives at unity." 
(HIK), SMILING FOREHEAD.

"Those to whom unity is revealed see the absolute whole in the
parts. (p. 7 & 8) Yet each is in despair at its particularization
from the whole. (p. 17) Behold the world entirely comprised in
yourself. The world is a man and man is a world. (p. 15)"
SHABISTARI: E.H.WHINFIELD,  MAHMOOD SHABISTARI'S GULSHAN I RAZ
(1880)

"Is it not then drunkenness on the part of man when he claims to
be an individual standing separate from all others, thinking
himself to be a single entity when he is already many within
himself?" 
(HIK), SANGITHA II

PRACTICE:

While exhaling, with eyes open, you can see the objects perceived
as separate entities; for example the trees. Now closing your eyes
represent to yourself a forest where all the trees, windswept in
one direction, seem to be various expressions of a basic reality.
Or again bees as the diverse expressions of the global reality of
the bee swarm. Or again bubbles as ephemeral expressions of water.

"When I open my eyes to the outer world I feel myself as a drop in
the sea; but when I close my eyes and look within, I see the whole
universe as a bubble raised in the ocean of my heart....as the
bubble is small before an ocean, and yet it not of any other
element than the ocean."
(HIK, whom I presume)     

Another metaphor is the wave and the sea. This realization will
help us, because to understand what we mean by God it is helpful
to see ourselves as a wave in the sea.

"Man is a condition of God as a wave is a condition of the sea."
(it's HIK who beckons, I reckon)

Instead of emphasizing the contrast between these two
perspectives, now try to grasp the correspondence between them.
While perceiving the outer world, you still keep in mind that it
is an expression of what you have now grasped as its deeper
reality, so that you may feel acommunion with all existential
things instead of deeming them as "other" than yourself.

"This process takes place in two directions: outwardly by being
one with all we see,  and inwardly by being in touch with that one
Life which is everlasting, by dissolving  into it, and by being
conscious of that one Spirit being the existence, the only
existence."
(HIK, presumablay)

"The one who looks within finds when he looks without, that all
that is within manifests without." 
(HIK), MENTAL PURIFICATION.

"The only way of wakening to the life within, which is most
beautiful, is first to respond to the beauty outside."
(HIK, no doubt today)

Let us now try to correlate those two dimensions: cosmic and
within. As you exhale WITH OPEN EYES,[ underline, PVK ] imagine
that all that one perceives in the environment or conceives in
one's ordinary thinking is just what appears at the surface of a
reality, grasped as you inhale WITH CLOSED EYES,[underline, PVK]
that is so complex, so intermeshed, that one cannot with one's
ordinary reason make sense of it.

As you inhale represent to yourself radio waves that are so
intricately interwoven and which we could never extrapolate. As
you exhale now imagine that they are processed through our radio
into sound that makes sense to our ordinary minds. To this
purpose, they need to be reduced. So what we are listening to on
the radio is a reduced expression of the bounty of the
audiosphere.

Another example would be the way that an idea can configure itself
as a form: As you exhale, imagine that you are swimming at the
surface of a lake and enjoy the view of the water lilies. Now as
you inhale think of the network of roots in the depth of which
they are the expression. Better still the genetic code of the
seed.

"As the seed is sufficient and capable of producing another plant,
so man is the product of all planes, spiritual and material and
yet in him alone shines forth that primal intelligence that caused
the whole." 
(HIK), SANGATHAS p. 37.

Thus then, try to sound the depth below the threshold of your
grasp. Here you may espy that "secret treasure" that we would like
to decode and which according to the Hadith of Prophet Mohammed
"loved to be known." However, while it is known, albeit
inadequately, by inference thanks to the clues perceived or
conceived, one may venture into that mystery on condition that one
gives up one's middle-range logic and stretches one's mind beyond
its usually limited outreach.

Sufis often call upon the metaphor of the mirror.

"There is a quotation of a great Yogi, who says, 'in order to see
what is before you you must see within yourself.' And that means
that within yourself there is a mirror and it is that mirror which
may be called the inner world."  
(HIK), THE INNER LIFE.

This illustration is not altogether exhaustive since the image in
the mirror has a profile whereas the images in the depth of our
psyche are like Kirlian photographs.

"Forms seen in mirrors, just like imaginary forms are not
imprinted materially either on the mirror or in the imagination.
No, they are "bodies in suspension"... These non-spatial forms in
the intermediary world have places where they appear (epiphanic
places), but they are not contained in them." 
SUHRAWARDHI (VIDE CORBIN, 1977 P 127 & 1973, P.127)

The comparability however is valid in that it is represented as
being "outside" one's body.   

"This mirror is two-sided, its two sides facing opposite ways; one
facing within, the other without; and the secret of working with
it is to close it from one side in order to make it take the
reflection from the other. Esoteric papers. It is in this mirror
that all that is before you is reflected. But when the eyes are
looking outside, then one has turned his back to the mirror which
is inside, but when the eyes are turned inside, then one sees in
this mirror all that is outside reflected." 
(HIK), SOCIAL GATHEKAS.

Pir o Murshid adds a further metaphor: the photographic plate
rather than the mirror, because the imprint of an impression, or a
friend, can become adamant (like gold) rather than remain "in
suspense."

"That reflection only depends upon the object being before it. No
sooner the object is removed, the reflection is gone. But the
reflection on a photographic plate is like the reflection, but
becomes an impression, which then can be developed by a certain
process in mind."
(HIK, I presume)

But, Murshid sees the value of not simply storing inside
impressions that have accrued from outside albeit
quintessentiated, but how this enrichment can spark creative
thoughts and the unfurling of our personality emerging from within
towards outside. The impression finds its fulfillment by growing
and being productive, by acting as a catalyst for our creativity.

"A reflection on a photographic plate remains, but does not live;
the reflection upon the mind lives, and therefore it is creative.
It does not always live, but it helps one to create within oneself
the same thing." 
(HIK), MIND WORLD.

 By the power of unconditioned love we can find our friend
unfolding in one's own self and thus contributing to one's own
unfoldment.

"The real awakening of his sympathy is on that day when he sees
his friend and says 'this is myself'. Then the sympathy is
awakened, then there is the communication within one's self."
(HIK), MYSTICISM OF SOUND.

 P.S. These studies on "turning within" will be continued in
Lesson 4 (Part II of Turning Within: Discovering the Sacred
Through Prayer) and Lesson 5 (part III of Turning Within: Dealing
With Our Psyche, Ego, Sense of Identity, Assessments of Problems,
etc.).

[ The preceeding P.S. is by PVK -- (this not was by sa, you see) ]

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