=kit_c05.sxt

CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER
The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis
LESSON 5
TURNING WITHIN
PART II

"Man, with the maturity of his soul desires to probe the depth 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 know the
meaning of his 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 and God begins." 
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN (THE UNITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS)

Our objective in this sequence to the previous study of turning
within, is to explore Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan's instructions
against the background of the ancient Sufis as to how to apply the
practice of turning within to gaining insight in our problems and
by the same token awaken qualities in our personality lying in
wait as potentialities unbeknown to us.

"For the secret of all knowledge that one acquires in the world,
whether worldly knowledge or spiritual knowledge, is the knowledge
of the self."
(HIK, presumably)

PRACTICE:

Observe that when we try to meditate we tend simply to regurgitate
the impressions of the physical and psychological environment,
assuming that this is what is meant by turning within.

"It is the situation we are in that makes us believe we are this
or that."
(HIK, presumably)

"What man knows is generally the world 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....He overlooks
that there is something beyond that which he realizes around
himself." 
(HIK), (MYSTICISM OF SOUND)

"The source of the realization of truth is within man; he himself
is the object of his realization."
(HIK, presumably)

The world continues to live in our psyche distorted by our
personal bias reinforced by personal emotions.

Try to earmark the impact of your being upon your situation rather
than the situation upon your being.

"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: POWER OF THE WORD)

Now downplay the impressions accruing from outside by highlighting
those that emerge from within. This will throw new light on our
assessment of our problems.

"And by the study of human nature, one realizes the nature of life
generally.... "
(HIK, presumably)

SELF-ANALYSIS

PIR O MURSHID INAYAT KHAN points to self-analysis as the first
step in meditation:

"One should learn one's condition, the condition of one's spirit,
of one's mind, of one's body, one's situation in life and one's
individual relationship with others."
(HIK)

"A person asks himself how all he sees affects him and what is his
reaction to it all. First how does his spirit react to the objects
or the conditions he encounters, to the sounds he hears, to the
words people speak to him. And the second thing is to see what
effect he himself has on objects, on conditions, and on the
individuals he comes in contact with."
(HIK, apparently) 

PRACTICE:

Close your eyes. Turn your attention away from the noise of the
environment; also away from your memory, or concern about social
or psychological circumstances, having acquiesced that your
assessment is bound to be biased, and therefore is not reliable.
Imagine that your eyes are turned within.

"Close the eyes and the mind from the outer world and, instead of
reaching out, try to reach within." 
(HIK), (MENTAL PURIFICATION)

"When the eyes are turned inside, then one sees in the mirror all
that is outside reflected. (Social Gatheka) And when this light is
thrown within oneself, then the self will be revealed to a person.
He will become enlightened as to his own nature and character."
(HIK), (MYSTICISM OF SOUND)

If you now peer deeply into yourself, then your personality will
appear to you as the outer manifestation of a deeper, more cosmic
reality.

"When the soul goes further on the path of knowledge, it begins to
find: "Yes, there is something which feels the inclination to call
itself 'I'." There is a feeling of "I-ness," but at the same time,
all that the soul identifies with is not itself."
(HIK, presumably)

A UNIVERSE IN ONESELF

"One finds a kind of universe in oneself. And by the study of the
self, one comes to that spiritual knowledge for which one's soul
hungers."
(HIK, presumably)

"Man is born in this world ignorant of the kingdom which is within
himself."
(HIK, presumably)

No sooner we scrutinize ourselves, the question emerges, "Who am
I?" One questions one's previous notion of one's identity and
cannot identify oneself anymore as a 'discrete entity' because one
sees oneself inextricably intermeshed with the whole reality.

"A person needs to analyze himself, and see, 'Where do I stand? Am
I a remote, exclusive being?'"
(HIK, presumably)

"To know the self is the most difficult thing in the world,
because what man can perceive first is a part only of the self, a
limited part.  When man asks himself, "What is it in me that is
I?" he finds his body and his mind, and in both he finds himself
limited and apart from others.  And it is this conception of his
being that makes man realize himself as an individual."
(HIK, presumably) 

PRACTICE:

Dive deep in yourself, and try to reconnoiter the cosmic roots
emerging as your personality rather than identify with your self-
image which is an inadequate - in fact, delusive - notion of whom
we are.

But to declare that the world or one's self-image is maya does not
take one very far; it is not good enough to unmask the hoax of
maya. This is a negative proposition; rather one would like to
discern what one really is camouflaged by the self-image.

"The world may be an illusion, but behind it reality appears."
JAMI

This is where Islam advances a complementary view to the Yogic
maya theory: what appears at the surface are clues through which
the reality thus revealed may be inferred.

"God shows His signs on the horizons and in the human psyche."
QUR'AN 51:21 (my [ ie, PVK's -- sa] translation)

"All that we know of Him is through ourselves.... Since we know
Him by ourselves, we attribute to Him all that we attribute to
ourselves." 
IBN 'ARABI (FUSUS AL-HIKAM)

Thus the features of our self-image, however deceptive, yield
clues as to our true being.

"Do you not see that the Absolute appears in the attributes of
contingent beings and thus gives knowledge about Himself, and that
He even appears in the attributes of imperfection and blame?" 
IBN 'ARABI

Compare PIR O MURSHID INAYAT KHAN:

"Man does not know that there is nothing that is not in him. A
person who says to himself: "I do not possess that faculty" shows
his lack of understanding what he is."
(HIK)

Moreover it is our resentment that traps us in our self-image
which is a faulty representation of whom we are. Ascertain that it
is our identification with our self-image - our ego - that is
victimized by the blows, unkindness and abuse from the egos of
people. And therefore if we knew who we are, the arrows of our
abusers would fall on the shield of our psychological immunity.

"Anger is power, but the willpower is greater. Therefore the right
to develop willpower is the right of the superior man."
(HIK, presumably)
                                                   
[ Footnote (sa) kitc05 -- 1 ]



What is standing in the way? Denial. The ploy that conceals our
true being behind our self-image is indeed smart, albeit mostly
unconscious: it is denial of one's flaws.  Our validation of
ourselves is so precariously suspended upon our self-image, so
that we are safeguarding it as best we know by either parading an
inflated psychological demeanor or lying low to evade
confrontation - humility as inverted tentative pride. Little does
one know most times that one is not only deceiving others but
oneself.

Once that smoke screen has melted away, one's true being reveals
itself. Therefore the method of what is traditionally called
annihilating one's ego (fana) is actually unmasking this ploy of
the ego and correcting one's self-image so that it may tally with
one's true being. Granted the real ego, of which our "false ego"
is just a sliver, is what we mean by God, then it becomes clear
that to discover who we are, we need to reverse our sense of
identity to its antipodal pole (God) as the impersonal dimension
of our being and therefore see our ephemeral image as a condition
of the totality which is the ground of our being, and which we
call God.

It is owing to our limitation that we cannot see the whole being.

[ The preceeding 1_semtemce paragraph is in italics in the Kaivan
KIT, and so I assume it was in the original mailed hard_copy, 
Hitherto I have taken everything in italics as a quote, and if
unsigned, as a quote from HIK.  But it might be that this line was
by PVK and was put in italics only for emphasis. -- sa ]


PRACTICE:

Now dive deeper still.By turning inside you may come upon the
immaculate core of your being. It is only if you touch upon non-
being in the void of being that you may espy the secret treasure
in you: your real self.

"How dare man claim that he is God!  Only the emptiness in which
the echo is noise is found in a heart that can claim such
greatness as that.  The true emptiness is filled by the divine
light, and such a heart it is which in humility is turned to
nothingness, so that that light shines out.  Man's ego is a globe,
and the spirit of God is the light.  "Poor" is said in the sense
of thin; and when the ego is poor, or thin, the spirit of God
shines out. (Morals: Blessed are the poor in spirit)" 
(HIK)(?)

[ Note (sa): Again, as I (sa) remark in the preceeding note, I
think that hte preceeding paragraph, which is in italics in the
Kaivan KIT, is a quote from HIK, but I'm not sure. -- sa 
Again:  No quotation marks are used in the Kaivan, and so I assume
none were used in the original KIT's (except for
'quotes_within_a_quote'.  So in this text_only input, I (sa) put
all paragraphs that are in italics, in "quotation marks".   Then,
on the next line, I put the author of the quote, in CAPITALS. 
Where no author is explicitly indicated, I make the notation
'(HIK, presumably)'.  

THE EGO

Hence the importance of the light thrown by Pir o Murshid upon our
representation of our ego. In our meditation, attention will be
drawn to correcting our self-image by seeing it in its context
with the totality of our being.

"What is meant by concentration is the change of identification of
the soul so that it may loose the false sense of identification
and identify itself with the true self instead of the self-image."
(HIK, presumably)

Our self-image is an incomplete and hence deceptive notion of
ourselves.

"The false ego is what that ego has wrongly conceived to be its
own being. It is not that the false ego is our ego and the true
ego is the ego of God; it is that the true ego which is the ego of
God has been reduced to a false ego in us."
(HIK, presumably)

On the other hand, clearly, our false ego is a device of the
cosmic planning of our defense system - our boundaries.

"Vanity is the power that can lead man to either good or bad."
(HIK, presumably)

Therefore it should only be weaned with sagacious care lest one
incurs psychological withdrawal symptoms. 

"If you started in life with self-effacement you would never
become a self. What would you efface? Effacing comes afterwards.
First you must be a self, a real self that is worth being. He who
arrives at the state of indifference without experiencing interest
in life is incomplete and apt to be tempted by interest at any
moment; but he who arrives at the state of indifference by going
through interest really attains the blessed state. Indifference
gives great power; but the whole manifestation is a phenomenon of
interest. All this world that man has made, where has it come
from? It has come from the power of interest. The whole creation
and all that is in it are the products of the Creator's interest.
It is motive that gives man the power to accomplish things.  But
at the same time the power of indifference is a greater one still,
because although motive has a power, at the same time motive
limits power."
(HIK, presumably)

ANNIHILATION (FANA)

Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan points to a frequent error that has
often been made in assuming that to find one's real self (the real
ego in one) hidden behind one's self image (the false ego) one
needs to annihilate the ego (fana). Indeed there is even a danger
that one prides oneself by one's "false humility."

"The soberness of the ego is divine vanity and the intoxication of
the ego is the conceit of man." 
(HIK), (ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS)    

The solution that PIR O MURSHID advocates is:

"If in anything divine origin is seen it is in the aristocracy of
the human soul, it is in the democracy of the human ego. In the
world we see that there is aristocracy and that there is
democracy, but in spiritual unfoldment these two become one,
culminating in real perfection."
(HIK)

By acquiescing to the virtual presence of the Totality (God) in
each  fragment thereof (one's ego), one can see how the total
Being gets squeezed and reduced yet exemplified in one in a unique
way. The advantage of the individual dimension of the cosmic ego
is that each ego, by communicating to each other the features in
which the totality of the Universe (God) is homonized, is
enriching the entire cosmos.

"There is a spirit that collects and accumulates all the knowledge
that every being has had."
(HIK, presumably)

PRACTICE:

Represent to yourself your ego as the tip of the iceberg and the
divine ego as its foundation.

"If man dived deep enough within himself he would reach a point of
his ego where it lives an unlimited life. It is that realization
which brings man to the real understanding of life, and as long as
he has not realized his unlimited self he lives a life of
limitation, a life of illusion. When man in this illusion, says
"I," in reality it is a false claim. Therefore everyone has a
false claim of "I" except some who have arrived at a real
understanding of the truth. This false claim is called in Sufic
terms Nafs, and the annihilation of this false self is the aim of
the sage. But no doubt to annihilate this false ego is more
difficult than anything else in the world, and it is this path of
annihilation that is the path of the saints and sages."
(HIK, presumably)

"By effacing oneself one does not annihilate oneself. It might
seem so, but it is not so in reality. Really speaking, it is the
finding of the self, a self which is perfect.... The ego itself is
never destroyed, only the illusion is lost. It is the one thing
that lives. In the knowledge of the ego is the secret of
immortality."
(HIK, presumably)

Compare:

"Most of those who seek to know God make a ceasing of existence
and a ceasing of that ceasing as a condition of attaining the
knowledge of God, and that is an error and a clear oversight."
(HIK, presumably)

"It is not thy existence that ceases but thy ignorance."

IBN 'ARABI (Whoso knoweth himself....)

[ I (sa) assume that Ibn 'Arabi is the author of the prceeding
quote ]


THE PARADOX: GOD IN MAN, MAN IN GOD

The difficulty is accepting in our minds that we are both a
"discrete entity," and at the same time the totality is
potentially inherent within the fragments of the whole.

"There is no way of getting proof of God's existence except by
being acquainted with oneself, by experiencing the phenomena which
are within one." 
(HIK), (MIND WORLD)

At some point Ibn 'Arabi declares:

"Thou art not thou; thou art He, without thou, not He entering
into thee, nor thou entering into Him...thou never wast, nor wilt
be, whether by thyself or through Him, or in Him, or along with
Him....Then if thou knowest thine existence thus, then thou
knowest God; and if not, then not."
IBN 'ARABI  (Whoso knoweth himself....)

Then he seems to contradict himself:

"Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God."
IBN 'ARABI

At an advanced stage, the human mind reaches into more
sophisticated modes of cognizance: complementarity - the
conciliation of irreconciliables.

"God can only be known by the synthesis of antinomic
affirmations." 
AL KHARRAZ

PIR O MURSHID Inayat Khan advances the most understandable
paradigm:

"Man is a condition of God like a wave is a condition of the sea."
(HIK)

By identifying ourselves with the personal dimension of our being,
we fail to realize the bounty of our potentials and ascribe this
to God as "other." If you think of God as "other," then you can
envision that the archetypes of our form are only present in God.
If you consider that all is God, then of course the divine
perfection is latent in us.

PRACTICE:

Try to imagine that, while you are used to thinking of yourself as
a discrete entity in the immensity of the world, the whole world
is potentially present within you.

"The Creator is hidden within His creation."
(HIK, presumably)

Compare:

"Behold the world is entirely comprised in yourself. The world is
man and man is a world.
Those to whom unity is revealed see the absolute whole in the
parts. Yet each is in despair at its particularization from the
whole." 
SHABISTARI (THE MYSTIC ROSE GARDEN)

"When the subtle nature, owing to man's inclinations has become
pure, he contemplates within himself whatever is of the same
nature in the cosmos." 
'AYN UL-QUZAT HAMADHANI

As we have seen in the previous lesson, PIR O MURSHID shows that
it depends upon one's perspective:

"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."
(HIK)

ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE VERSUS REVEALED

Since to do this, the personal vantage point of our consciousness
needs to be bypassed, this is not a mode of cognizance that can be
acquired. If we cease to try to grasp it with our consciousness,
it will gradually be revealed (revealed knowledge instead of
acquired knowledge - the "significatio passiva" of Martin Luther).

"No one knows what is within himself until it is unveiled to him."
 IBN 'ARABI

Compare PIR-O-MURSHID Inayat Khan:

Revelation is the disclosing of the inner self. The consciousness
throughout manifestation, facing towards the surface, turns its
back to the world within, the sight of which is therefore lost to
it. But when it begins to look within, the world unseen is
disclosed.

===============================================================
==============================================================

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

"and what is it he sees / The Georgia Militia / eating Goober
Peas"

(USA Civil War Confederate Army song)

(I want to say, the Peanut Gallery is the cheap seats in one of
those great old Movie Theatre's -- poor man's palaces for a few
hours  -- there was almost always a double_feature -- plus a
cartoon or two, a Newsreal -- very important before TV -- and
Previews of Coming Attractions [ Grace Kelly, with her perfect
grace, uses that as a line in Hitchcok's 'Rear Window', as she
holds up a nightgown before retiring to her room to change.

There was the University Theatre in Harvard Square in the 1940's,
and the Metropolitan on Tremont Street in Boston, which did
survive as the home of the Boston Ballet.

But I reckon the 'Peanut Gallery' was mostly in Vaudeville
Theatres -- that was the 1930's I suppose, I never saw it.  I did
go a few times to the Old Howard Burlesque Theatre in Scolly
Square, but that than was built around Strip_tease, and interludes
of off_colour jokes.  Quite a come_down from real Vaudeville I'm
sure. 

-----------------------


[ Footnote (sa) kitc05 -- 1 ]
[ N.B. /(sa) 'the superior man' is the standard term used in the
standard translation of the I_Ching, to indicate any reasonably
competent pilgrim on the spiritual path.  
So one need not read into it a presupposition of class_ism.
If I recall, the I Ching was published in German translation in
the 1900's,
So even poor old Nietzche the Nerd might not have intended
anything arrogant by it.
That's like blaming Jesus for Georgie Bush. (sa)\ ]          


----------------------------

General Comment (sa):  

In my present opinion, PVK, nor for that matter HIK, gave
conventional religion its due.

No doubt the notion of Deity as transcendent -- "we miserable
worms down here" as PVK often said, parodying that notion -- is an
illusion -- but it is a darned helpful one.

And as T.S. Eliot said, "humankind cannot bear much reality"

For most of us, it is only by postulating Deity as transcendent,
as Other -- an Idealized Other, necessarily (and that necessity is
the essence of my 'transcendent ontologic proof' -- we cannot but
conceive of Deity, and so, in accord with the the verifiablity
criterion of meaningfulness ( if you can't conceive the contrary,
then its meaningless to say that it don't exist) -- Deity must
exist, in the Kantian sense of 'transcendental realism' [ I forget
whether Kant called it transcendental realism, or transcendental
idealism, -- whatever, it's what's deduced by his transcendental
deduction -- the sense in which his Categories of Pure Reason
necessarily exist -- because we can't even imagine a world in
which they don't -- though I must say, science fiction writers
make a darned good try at it -- Zelazny, eg, envisions in the
later Amber books, the realm of Chaos, in which casuality does not
exist but everyone does their best to carry on under somewhat
disorienting conditions -- 

But I really did digress.

What I started to say is:  If I don't assume Deity is
transcendent, how can I pray -- surely not to myself, for it I did
not need to transcend myself, I would not have needed to pray -- 

Remember, prayer, that is, petitionary prayer, is only an
exceptional situation.  "There are no athesists in fox_holes" (the
trenches of World War I warfare) -- and darned few theists in the
Supermarket.

So it is to transcend oneself -- or one's 'false self_image' if
you prefer, although a Schmendrik really is a Schmendrik, whatever
else he is -- and Ciel Metoyer once said to me, speaking of all
us, 'You are not your craziness' --  She also once said, 'To live
is have regrets' -- that one prays, to invoke for one's own
hopefuly noble if not altruisitc wishes 

-- ("Oh LORD won't you buy me / a Mercedes Benz / My friends all
drive Porsche's / I must make amends / Worked hard all my lifetime
/ no help from my friends / Oh LORD won't you buy me / a Mercedes
Benz "  Janis Joplin said, highlighting precisely what proper
prayer is not -- 

I think it is fair to say that Sufism is elitist -- and Buddhism
too --  and that Judaism is a code of conduct, as Chrianity is a
code of emotion, for everyone, aimed at "the lowest [
constructive] common_denominator" --

One can also say, Judaism is raja yoga, intellectural, where
Christinaity is bhakti yoga, emotional.

Which is not doubt why they conquered he world, starting with Rome
and ending up with Georgie Bush -- as Doonsbury carricatures him
in the single image of a Roman helmet -- and why we ain't got much
more than a bunch of guys on an eternally recurring picket line in
front of the White House -- 

Oy, getting on toward dawn and then some.                      

I'm getting bored with Swiss granola.  They don't even bake it,
just take a few scoopfulls of oats out of the horse trough, swipe
a few dried nuts and berries from the squirrel's winter
provisions, wrap it in tamper_proof plastic that even a bear
couldn't tear apart, and sell it back to you for a few dollars a
handfull.  Serve with ultra_radiated incorruptible milk, a dash of
brown sugar, and a bananna that was caught and pulled back
half_way out the door to retirement.

Sure could use a 3_egg omlette, heavy on the cheese and anything
else that don't run away from the frying pan.  

But PVK used to say, long before we read it in the Herald Tribune,
that fried foods ain't good for you.  So at the Abode in the 70s
everything was wok'd instead.

Satchmo Paige said it too, back inthe 50s I suppose -- fried foods
rile up the system, he said, or something like that -- but who
listened to a Negro in those days, for all that he was one of
greatest relief pitchers in baseball.

He also used to say, "Don't ever look back, something may be
gaining on you."

Chianti.  Chantilly.  Shiskabob.

"She had an Audrey Hepburn haircut -- a shiksabob." (sa) ]


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a power that one dare  not acknowlege as one's own 

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