=kitc11.txt

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[ EDITORIAL NOTE -- sa: 
This editorial note applies to all the docs in my set of KIT's:

I have chopped Kaivan's EKIT.EXE into seperate KIT's with a
Ctrl_C__Ctrl_V via Word 2000 and then as Save_As text_only. --
Since in Kaivan quotes are indicated not with "quotation marks"
but only with a different font -- blue and/or italics -- and since
that's stripped out in the convert to text_only, I have gone back
into those docs and put the quotation marks in my text_only set.
Also PVK remarks that when a quote is not attributed to an author,
it is by HIK.  I mark such quotes with '(HIK)' , without the
'single quotes'.  Often I mark them '(HIK, presumably)' or some
such phrase.  PVK never uses the abbreviation 'HIK', so when you
see 'Hazrat Inayat Khan' or 'Pir o Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan', it
is PVK who put in that attributtion.
PVK often does not include the Book from which the quote from HIK
was taken.  Sometimes citation of a book seems intended to cover
not only the preceeding quote, but the following quote as well. 
Sometimes PVK cites, not the book, but a section of the Book.
I usually CAPITALZE name of the (BOOK, SECTION, SUBSECTION) and
put the whole citation , author and book, on a new line. 
PVK often strings together in a single paragiraffe quotes from
various places in HIK's Books (which were in fact not books that
he wrote, but stenographic records of his lectures -- Sharif
Graham knows all available details of that Provenance ).
I however break each quote into a seperate paragraph, to make
citation clearer.  
I make no other changes in the text as presented by Kaivan, and I
assume he made no changes in the text he got from the SO.
I do however ofen interject witty quips , in [ Brackets ] of
course.  Typists get bored too.  Anyone who doesn't like them can
take them out, but please then retitle the doc, and note my
docname therein.  That's to leave a clear audit_trail. ]

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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 11
NASUT: WORKING WITH THE BODY

PREAMBLE

"What does it profit a man if he would gain the whole world and
lose his own soul." 
(Cf. MATHEW)                              

[ EDITORIAL NOTE (sa):  Best's I recollect, that's a precise quote
from The Gospel According to St. Mathew -- Revised King James
translation, I reckon -- and that it is makes it clear that in
these KIT's PVK at least sometimes uses the abbreviation 'Cf.'
somewhat incorrectly, not to mean 'Compare', but simply to cite
the book from which the quote was taken. ]   

[ Footnote (sa) kitc11 - 1 ]


"When man has to choose between his spiritual and his material
profit, then he shows whether his treasure is on earth or in
heaven."
(HIK),  (THE SAYINGS OF HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN)

"Renounce the world before it renounces you....It depends upon
your discrimination whether to renounce things momentarily
precious for everlasting things or everlasting things for things
momentarily precious. 
(HIK), (SOCIAL GATHEKAS.)                        
[ "Renounce the world before the world renounces you" is #1122 in
Collected Sayings.  -- sa ]

"Things that people take to heart will seem of little importance,
and he finds that all his life he has given his thoughts to
something which does not last, which does not even exist....So
long as you have a longing to obtain any particular object, you
cannot go further than that object." 
(HIK), (THE SAYINGS OF HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN)

Here lies the wager: is the surreptitious motivation spurring the
perennial adventure of the human mind in seeking knowledge -
assuming power?

If that power covertly coveted is personal power, then the
consequences to humanity and the planet - actually to the universe
- can inevitably but prove catastrophic and precipitate untold
cruelty and suffering. On the other hand, however much scientists
may be authentically motivated in their exploration of matter to
help humanity and upgrade the environment, they inexorably slip
into the pending bind: is there any way to avoid that knowledge
should open the lid of the Pandora' s box of terrors? Is there any
way to avoid that their findings will be exploited by the ruthless
for selfish purposes at the cost of the well-being of the innocent
victims of their greed?

Damage to the environment recently worsened, the effects on
weather by tampering with the ozone layers, acid rain, endangered
species, tampering with recombinant DNA, myxomatosis, the mad cow
disease, food pollution, the decadence in standards, drugs, the
computer virus, the threat involved in cloning, etc., the
appalling cruelty wreaked upon victims by crime, all evidence the
challenge to our wisdom and social responsibility triggered by the
momentous advance of our high technologies.     

The same bloated ego can and does escalate at a global scale into
power plays and ideological feuds between nations, as in the
terror in the Second World War, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, or lead
to the devastating follies of genocides as in the case of Nazism,
the Slavonik mass murder, etc.

Both Fermi and Oppenheimer were tormented by the use that could
and indeed would be made by mass human destruction from their
discovery of splitting the atom. Although Fermi contributed in Los
Alamos to the research on the super H-bomb (1000 times more
destructive than the Hiroshima bomb), which could escalate at an
inhuman scale to the point of mass suicide, he would consider its
use only at the last resort as a deterrent, and feared that it
could side-track falling back on conventional warfare. When it was
discovered that the Soviets had wrested the secret, and predicted
that they could harness it within 5 years (confirmed by the
explosion in Siberia on August 29th 1949) and that it could be
aimed against the very Government (USA) that fostered it,
Oppenheimer's uncompromising, unconditional opposition to pursue
further research on the H-bomb was considered by FBI Hoover as
suspected collusion with the enemy. It averred itself, however,
that it was Fuchs who betrayed the secret to the Soviets. 
Oppenheimer wished for the Allies in the Second World War to
arrive at a convention with the Soviet government to halt further
research on fusion-fission and forego the use of the H-bomb.

Here is a clear demonstration of how one can slip into the horns
of the dilemma: could knowledge of high tech know-how act as a
deterrent for wanton reciprocal suicidal extermination?  Bernard
Shaw: "Dare you wage war against war for the sake of peace?"

In the BHAGAVAD GITHA, Krishna instructs Arjuna to fight as a
knight to uphold right over wrong:

"Action imprisons the world unless it is done by sacrifice, freed
from attachment."
(BHAGAVAD GITA)M  (STANZAS 8, 9. TR. BARBARA STELLER MULLER,
BANTAM)  

Whereas Gandhi advocates non-violence, as, indeed, does Christ:

"Those who take up the sword perish by the sword." 
(Matthew 26-5)
[ CORRECTION of CITATION (sa), it's MATHEW 26:52 "all who take the
sword will perish by the sword" (Revised Edition) ]

This was precisely the dilemma that my sister Noor and I were
faced with as we heard the din of the advancing Nazi troops
bracing to invade Paris in 1939. We had been preaching the message
honoring all religions and races. Was this just lip-service to a
cosmic ideology? Now we are faced with the question: what are we
prepare to do to sustain it? How can we participate in upholding
righteousness against evil, in honoring all the achievements of
our great civilizations, without killing?

"No sacrifice can be too great a sacrifice for one's ideal."
(HIK, Presumably)

*Man gives his life when occasion arises to defend his nation, the
dignity, the honor, the freedom of his people.*
(HIK),  (SMILING FOREHEAD)

This meant volunteering for the most dangerous positions without
killing. 

[ Note (sa), As I recollect reading, PVK for the Royal Air Force
in WWII, and was trained, but then was washed out for inadequate
depth perception.  I think that also PVK says this in his video
interview, the portion that ZR screened at Zenith Workcamp '05,
but now intends to re_edit.          
As I recall reading, I think in an interview, I think at the
occasion of the dedicaiton of the Universel, that I have input,
PVK, who then served in the British Navy, as a junior officer I
gather, chose to serve on a Minesweeper, believing that he would
be involved only in defensive work.  But his ship was part of the
D_Day invasion, and PVK was placed at a gun.  He writes that he
found himself psychologically unable to fire it during the
battle.] 

"It is the sense of honor that teaches man self respect."
(HIK),  (Esoteric Papers)

"For a Sufi the sense of honor is not for his personality, he does
not give his person a greater place than dust and the central
theme of his life is simplicity and his moral is humility. Yet
remember that the Sufi breathes the breath of God, so he is
conscious of the honor of God."
(HIK, presumably)

"It is not by the servility of those around him that the king is
exalted; it is in the honor in which they hold him that his
kingship exists."
(HIK),  GAYAN

Knowledge can benefit humanity in the hands of the magnanimous
wise and destroy humanity in the grips of the egotist or despot.
The power of money through the know-how to deal with and juggle it
offers the temptation, if abused  (as is unfortunately often the
case), of subjecting people to one's will or fancy, or oppressing
people and constraining their freedom making them dependent .

*One sees a constant striving in the life of the adepts to make
themselves independent of outside things as much as possible." 
(HIK), (THE ART OF PERSONALITY)

The issue at stake here is what we mean by spirituality. Is even
our quest for awakening one more temptation for the personal ego?

This ubiquitous quandary lies at the crux of the human venture and
affects the lives of all of us, and indeed the feasibility of the
survival of our global civilization.

It flashed to our dim collective unconscious in the primeval myth
of the tree of knowledge wrested by Adam when finding completion
in encountering his twin-soul Eve, the legendary Sophia. It
erupted forcibly in the Faustian paradoxes. Spurred by the antics
of a celebrated sorcerer who claimed that he owed the miracles he
conjured to having sold his soul to the devil, the German poet
Goethe suggested that magic (divulging and applying the secrets of
the divine strategy) could lead to disrupting that very
programming, albeit freedom was a divine gratuity notwithstanding
its trail of untold devastation and suffering.

The Sufi NIFFARI had warned of the danger of divulging the clue to
the secret treasure.

"God warned me: Thou mayest not, and again thou mayest not, and
again seventy times: thou mayest not describe how thou seest Me,
nor how thou enterest My treasury, nor how thou takest from it My
seals through My power, nor how thou seekest the knowledge of one
letter from another letter through the Might of My magnificence."
(NIFFARI), (1935, P. 174)

And Hallaj was accused by Shibli of revealing that secret because
it was sacred.  All genuine spiritual revelation is at that price.

The decisive criterion as to deciphering the divine code is
therefore the motivation: if for selfishness or for service.

"The whole manifestation is a phenomenon of 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),  (THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS)

The purity of one's motivation from the concern about personal
gain opens the door to the revelation of the divine intention in
contrast with the pursuit of acquired knowledge where the personal
ego is spurring the mind unawares.

IBN 'ARABI:
"When your soul has been purified and its mirror has been
polished, do not consider the world as it appears in that mirror,
but turn your soul towards the dignity of the Essence in its
purity in the perspective of the cognizance that it has of
itself."
 (CF. VALSAN, ET 4-5/1952, P.129)

'AYN UL-QUZAT HAMADHANI:                           
"When the esoteric nature indicated by a man's inclinations and
faculties has become pure, he contemplates therein whatever is of
the same nature in the macrocosm." 
(CORBIN, 1978, P. 69)

The clue to that is in whether one identifies with the personal
dimension of one's being or one's divine dimension - in other
words: God consciousness.


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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY: 

(That means, Footnotes by sa: )

[ Footnote kitc01 -- 1 ]

OK sports fans, I'll stick with the King James translation.
That's what I heard as a young 'un at Shady Hill School, in
Cambridge -- best school I ever went to, and might still be, so if
you're living thataway check it out -- I bet you would find and I
could maybe show that it's written in better English than the
'Revised edition', tho I suposed that's 2nd_best -- 

So what we got us here is:

Revised edition:  "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,
in the days of Herod the king, hehold, wise men from the East came
to Jerusalem ... "

And what I recollect, I'm sure from the original King James, is:

"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in the days of Herod the
King, behold, there came wise men from the East, saying ... "  

Can you see how the King James has a better ring -- as one would
suppose, because in those days it would still have been almost
entirely oral literature, so you'd better give it good ring, just
like Homer had to -- 'after' has two syllables, and clunks a bit,
'when' has one syllable.  and 'there came wise men' rolls off
easier than 'wise men came'

My mother once pointed out to me that the Bible -- I'm sure she
meant, the King James -- is one of the great works of -- world,
though maybe she said, western -- literature.

She once wrote, and this was about 1933, 'Pound has not lost his
ear'.  That was in the Radcliffe Honors thesis for that year, so
you could find it there.
Pound wrote back and called her a 'poor bleating American
she_sheep', but invited her to stop by Rapello if she was ever
there.  I gave that letter to Radcliffe, so maybe they still have
it. 

That was Alice Steiner Amdur . ]

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