=kitc13.txt

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 THIRTEEN
AWAKENING DORMANT FACULTIES

PREAMBLE

Normally we only use a few of our faculties. What are the 'dormant
faculties' that Hazrat Inayat Khan declares we can arouse by
awakening them? Are they physical? Or psychic? Scanning Hazrat
Inayat Khan's teachings, they are both.

It would be a simplistic assumption to reduce these in the
physical realm to magnetism and in the realm of the psyche to
intuition. But these are working propositions to start with.
Actually HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN points out to the interrelatedness and
inter-connection between both.

"In matter life unfolds, discovers and realizes the consciousness
that has been so to speak buried in it for thousands of years."
(HIK, presumably)

PRACTICE:

Imagine that consciousness, the Universe, is conscious of itself.
And that you're consciousness is part of that consciousness. And
that consciousness tends to awaken in matter, that is, in your
body.

As you exhale, if you expand the outreach of your consciousness,
you'll feel that the consciousness of the Universe seems to flow
into your consciousness as, for example, the sea flows into the
waves. That will give you a sense of vastness, of immensity. These
are conditions that tend to make you lose the sense of your
individuality. That is the way of the ascetic.

As you inhale, just imagine that in fact you are absorbing the
Universe, not only in your body but also in your consciousness,
and at all levels. You have a sense of convergence of the Universe
as you, of the cognizance with the holistic paradigm: every
fraction of the totality carries within it, potentially, the
totality. 

Imagine that, because there is so much bounty, one would not be
able to take in all the bounty. To start with, think of the
galaxies and that your body started at the time of the big bang.
It was like an explosion of radiance and the planets were formed.
Eventually your body was fashioned out of the fabric of the
planet. Somehow the past of the Universe is there in your body.
The consciousness of the Universe is trying to awaken in you, as
you. 

DR. DAVID BOHM (physicist):
"If we go to infinite depths of matter, we may reach something
that is very close to what we reach in the depth of the mind.
(UNFOLDING MEANING, P 90.) 

"Perhaps something analogous to mind might exist in matter. The
mental and material are two sides of one reality." 
(David Bohm), (IBID P 20)

Since consciousness awakens in matter by arousing dormant physical
faculties, we need to discover, study and arouse these. And since
matter and body functions are within the expertise of physics and
biology, we need to inquire in what way our meditative practices
affect our body functions. [SEE: ADDENDUM] [ Note by PVK ]

BODINESS

What then are the body functions that we are not using and could
arouse? What influence do they exercise upon our mind, our sense
of meaningfulness, 'awakening?'

One could list a few that come to one's mind: hibernation
(triggering off samadhi); the ability to enhance body heat (tumo);
the ability to enhance the configuration of cell structures by an
electro-magnetic coil (the research of Dr. Becker); fashioning our
subtle bodies, including the aura, by the impact of mind upon
body; developing magnetism by working with the chakras (Dr.
Motoyama); body radiation (i.e. the Kirlian corona), most
importantly, our body magnetism and bioluminescence. These are
often ascribed to higher bodies (the subtle body and the aura).

According to physics, magnetism is a condition of matter, and so
is light. However, in our experience there are degrees of energy
ranging from the 'telluric' (earth magnetism) to what we call
spirit. And since scientists acquiesce that all that they know of
light is the way it interacts with the laboratory equipment or the
way the experiment is devised and therefore do not know how light
is if we are not perceiving it or experimenting with it, our
question is whether we are, in our meditative explorations,
stalking light beyond its physical expression. This means that we,
in our meditation cells, are exploring levels of reality (perhaps
including subliminal levels) that complement the area explored by
scientists in their laboratories.

PRACTICE:

Let us try to become aware of the magnetic field of our body.
Remember having poured metal filings around a magnet at school? A
beautiful, complex pattern is seen surrounding the magnet. If we
could see inside the magnet, we would ascertain that a
complementary structure is in place within the magnet.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"Man is constituted of three aspects of body: a gross aspect of
the body, a finer aspect, and a causal body - or a controlling
body, which directs activities.... I do not only exist as a
physical body which I always see myself to be, but I also exist as
a magnetism, an energy by the touch of which the body lives."
(HIK),  (PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM: SELF-KNOWLEDGE)

Now try to 'feel' this magnetic field around your arms, shoulders,
back and head. If you 'feel' your magnetic field, you will notice
that it does not have a boundary and consequently overlaps and
intermeshes with other magnetic fields to form what physicists
call a 'wave-interference pattern.' Dr. David Bohm distinguishes
this perspective which he calls the 'implicate state' from the
usual one in which the world is seen as fragmented - made of
'discrete' objects (the 'explicate state').

In a further step, notice different centers in your life field,
which correspond to the plexi of the autonomic nervous system.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"The mechanism of the body shows the nervous system as principle
battery in which magnetism is prepared by the action of breath."

"There are inner and finer parts of the physical mechanism which
the mystics have called centers. When these centers are not used
for many years, they become blunted."
(HIK, presumably)

Try to 'feel' the magnetism radiating from your heart chakra, (the
cardiac plexus). Compare it with the way magnetism is resorbed in
the void through that gate: the solar plexus, and renewed in the
heart chakra. Now try to 'feel' the magnetism of the Hara (a
chakra connected with the adrenal glands often concentrated upon
by Zen masters). Now try to 'feel' the magnetism of your third eye
(pineal gland), and even the magnetism overarching your head whose
center is the pituitary gland.

The intensity of the magnetism of each chakra has been measured by
Dr. Motoyama who has ascertained that by being aware of one's
magnetic field, and more particularly by concentrating upon
exploring the magnetism of each chakra, one enhances its power.
This effect confirms the 'mind-body' impact.

"The real existence of these chakras and meridians was made clear
by myself in a series of physiological experiments using an
electro-encephalograph....The data (measurement of the electrical
potential and frequency) recorded in the case of electrodes placed
in proximity to a chakra easily emitting energy through the
subject's will were remarkably different from those data obtained
when the electrodes were placed near a chakra not readily emitting
energy through the will of the subject."
(Dr. Montayana, I suppose)  (Cf. FUTURE SCIENCE, DOUBLEDAY, NEW
YORK, 1977, P 444, SEQ.) 

To nurture the realization of our inter-connection with the entire
cosmos, as you meditate, in a first step, represent to yourself
that your body is made, basically, of the fabric of the stars and
galaxies and therefore is a fabric that existed since the
beginning of time. 

Yet if you look deeper, you will learn that the fabric of the
stars made a radical quantum leap at some dramatic moment in
cosmic history to evolve into biological matter as our bodies.
Suddenly, the crystalline inorganic macro-molecules that duplicate
each other like frescoes begin to vary so as to be able to
cooperate as organic matter, providing consciousness with a much
more efficient infrastructure in order to foster the evolution of
the awakening of consciousness in matter that had been incubated
in the course of the eons of times, as Hazrat Inayat Khan pointed
out.

The fabric of our body is a more evolved stuff than that of which
the stars are made, as SCHROEDINGER points out:

"The difference in structure is of the same kind as that between
an ordinary wall paper in which the same pattern is repeated again
and again in regular periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery,
say a Raphael tapestry which shows no dull repetition, but an
elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced by the great
master."
(Schroedinger, I guess) (WHAT IS LIFE? MIND AND MATTER,CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1944, P 5)

To be truly self-organizing, the Universe needs to explore
unforeseen possibilities; and likewise ourselves.

ERIC JANTSCH:
"In an evolutionary spirit, creative processes ought to be
permitted to interact freely and to find their own order of
evolutionary structures. Dunn calls this approach "evolutionary
experimentation." " 
(ERIC JANTSCH), (THE SELF-ORGANIZING UNIVERSE, PERGAMON PRESS,
1980, P 271)

CHUANG TZU:

"He who wants to have right without wrong,
Order without disorder,
does not understand the principles
of heaven and earth.
He does not know how things hang together"
(CHUANG TZU), (THE GREAT AND SMALL)

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"All activities of life are connected with one another, and if one
thing is put in order another goes wrong." 
(HIK), (SOCIAL GATHEKAS)

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN:
"Then at a given moment, after a sufficient lapse of time, those
same waters here and there must unquestionably have been writhing
with minute creatures. And from that initial proliferation stemmed
the amazing profusion of matter whose matted complexity came to
form the last but one of the envelopes of the Planet: the
biosphere." 
(TEILHARD de CHARDIN), (THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, HARPER & ROW, 1965,
P 78)

But we must not stop here. The evolutionary advance marches
further to serve the awakening of the consciousness of the
universe (called the divine consciousness in Sufism): the
deployment of the noosphere.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"As matter evolves, it shows signs of intelligence. When one
studies the growing evolution of the natural world, one will find
that at each step of evolution the natural world has shown itself
to be more intelligent, reaching its height in the human race. But
this is only the predisposition of matter which is manifested in
the end. Everything in nature, even in the vegetable world is the
seed of which the root is the evidence. Thus intelligence which is
the effect is also the cause."

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN attributes this further quantum leap in the
evolutionary advance to:

"...the power acquired by a consciousness to turn in upon itself,
to take possession of itself as of an object endowed with its own
consistence and value: no longer merely to know, but to know
oneself...."
(TEILHARD DE CHARDIN)

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"In man this consciousness of being reaches its culmination."
(HIK),  (MANIFESTATION)

Now in the same sentence without a transit, TEILHARD's mind itself
makes a quantum leap anticipating the next step:

"...no longer to know, but to know that one knows."
(TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, LOC. CIT. SUPRA.)

Compare JAMI:
"...to be aware that one is aware."

This corresponds precisely to the 4th Satipathana of Buddhism;
BUDDHA expresses it thus: 

"Having dismissed the "illusory 'I'," (p 175), the meditator
reaches "the point where consciousness can no more be the
consciousness of an 'I'." 
(Cf. EVOLA, THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING, LUZAC, 1951, P 189) 

"It is not an I.... He looks at himself again and again before
performing an action, saying a word, harboring a thought...."
(IBID P. 171)

BAGHAVAD GITHA:

"He "sees the self in the self." "
(BHAGAVD GITA), (VI 20 - 23)

This takes place by freeing the mind from sensations, vitarka, and
representations, vikara.

This does not simply announce the advent of homo sapiens, but
clearly marks the leap towards realization - the ultimate step in
the evolutionary advance.
                                                 

Here we distinguish two steps in meditation: (i) to reconnoiter
dormant physical faculties and arouse them, (ii) to watch your
consciousness reconnoitering body functions and awakening them.

ADDENDUM

Some observations about the relation between meditation and
science by a physicist Dr. MICHAEL-DAVID CLARKSON who is
practicing our meditations:

[ The following is not italicized, but seems to be the words of
Dr. Michael-David Clarkson, presumably written for this KITc12: --
sa ]


Since some of the points of view arrived at by meditators fall
within the purview of the research of physicists and biologists,
an in-depth study of the domains where there is an overlap is
warranted. We have reached a point where networking the know-how
obtained in various fields of human endeavor has proven mutually
enriching; perhaps what the scientist and the mystic have most in
common is the importance they attach to experience. In fact,
scientists and contemplatives share a common set of values in the
sense that the ultimate test in both cases is that of experience;
the difference is that the physicist manipulates matter and
matches it with his experience of events outside himself, whereas
the mystic works by triggering off physiological processes in his
or her body, which require of the mind to explore unfamiliar
territory.

A meditator in our day and age, conversant with some of the
publications about the update in physics, biology and psychology,
is bound to be enthused by reading in these parallels with his/her
own views attained in the meditative state. Indeed we are
interested in knowing whether what we are experiencing in our
bodies, or about our bodies, is corroborated by or corroborates
the findings of scientists. However the contemplative experience
stands on its own ground and need not be validated by science,
just as scientists would not seek validation for their findings in
the utterances of mystics. Science provides invaluable models that
may be called upon to make some sense of the unusual, sometimes
paradoxical experiences of contemplatives practicing their
meditations.

As meditators, we are interested in understanding the phenomena
that we encounter when modulating our consciousness in our
contemplative practices. On the other hand, valuable information
as to the nature of our thinking, culled from exploring the impact
of experience upon our consciousness as we modulate the field and
level of our consciousness, may open some clues to physicists,
biologists and psychotherapists in their efforts to account for
phenomena. By the same token, by providing us with a topography of
the uncharted reaches of the psyche, these findings facilitate and
encourage our meditative practices.

While scientists are manipulating matter to answer specific
questions, contemplatives are modifying their perspective of the
environment and their self-image by modulating consciousness and
altering some physiological functions.

There is a parallel between the mystic and the physicist in that
progress is made by uncovering modes of thinking that are not yet
known. Both are challenged into exploring the nature of our
thinking, and extend it beyond the commonplace middle range in
order to make sense of the observations thus acquired beyond what
was considered acceptable in the past. The role of such
fundamental qualities of our universe such as locality, causality
and reality are currently being very carefully scrutinized
(D'Espagnat), and perhaps we might even ask if contemplatives
might have a contribution to make to this kind of thinking as we
all try to create an "imago mundi." Perhaps this is not so
surprising: these are precisely what we encounter in meditation,
i.e. non-locality or ubiquity, the acausal, synchronicity,
vacuity, the non-determined, negentropy.

Professor Motoyama measured the energy emanating from the chakras
of a meditator as compared with a person who does not practice
meditation.

The data (measurement of the electric potential and frequency)
recorded in the case of electrodes placed in proximity to a fully
awakened chakra easily emitting energy through the subject's will
were remarkably different from those obtained when the electrodes
were placed near a chakra not readily emitting energy through the
will of the subject. There was also a marked contrast in the data
when the subject was in a quiescent state. 
(Dr. Clarkson I presume, though maybe Prof. Montoyana)
(Cf. FUTURE SCIENCE, ANCHOR BOOKS, DOUBLE DAY, 1977, P 445)

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