=kitc17.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 17
LAUGH THERAPY:
The Smiling Forehead

"What makes my feeling heart to laugh and to cry?"
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN

Some Hindu sanyasins, Buddhist lamas and nuns, Christian monks and
nuns, schedule half an hour or one hour a day to simply laugh for
no apparent reason. Similarly, some updated doctors and
psychotherapists have been convoking their patients for routine
therapeutic laughter every morning.

Scientific research has demonstrated the physical effect of
laughter on the hormones administered by the endocrine glands down
the axis: pituitary, thyroid, cardiac, solar plexus, sub-renal and
reproductive system glands. Our mind then has a choice in
determining whether the outburst of energy thus catalyzed by our
wit or realization will lead to action, help us deal with
overstress, challenge ourselves to accept the unacceptable, and
whether we are able to process this boost to both our psyche and
body in exploring higher levels of thinking and realization.

?PRACTICE:

In order to relax - as a preparation for your morning meditation
by dismissing afflicting or angry emotions - choose a different
joke to read every day. There is a fair store of these in
magazines like "Reader's Digest" (although all are not that
funny!)

Norman Cousins gained remission of cancer, leaving the hospital
and spending his time watching Laurel and Hardy and the like. (I
cannot say they would amuse me.) But he died a few years later of
a heart attack. Could it be owing to an overdose of laughter while
denying psychological pain?

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"Should one laugh all the time? When there is a time proper to it,
then you talk and chum and laugh and joke. And then there is
another time, then you are in that attitude which is due to that
time." 
(HIK), (SANGATHA II)

The Hassidim spark laughter in their witticisms. The Sufis in
their Nazruddin tall stories (the subtlety of whose wit is mostly
questionable) expose incongruity.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"One can know the grade of a person's evolution by knowing what
causes him to laugh and what causes him to cry. Every person is
tuned to a certain pitch, and that which causes a person to laugh
or weep must be in some way in accordance with his pitch.
Therefore, that which makes a silly person laugh does not always
cause laughter in others, and what makes a simple person weep does
not make the slightest effect upon the wise."
(HIK), (SANGATHA I)

?PRACTICE: 

[ I guess these ?question marks are merely some sort of computer
glitch. -- sa ]

Better still: try to invent a funny story yourself. For example,
practice telling a hilarious bed-time story to your children (or
grandchildren) by plunging into their thinking. The unconcerned
joy of youth hands one the key to laugh therapy as one grows up,
as concerns build up and thwart that youthful spontaneity.?

Many a jester is a sage who can reach into the minds of people
that a guru could not reach and make a point digestible by
spinning a riddle.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:

?"The person who has wit and a keen perception, who can express
himself well, who understands quickly, that is the person who
attracts others around him and is liked by everyone. (Healing and
the Mind World.) Humor is the reflection of that divine life and
sun which makes life like the day. And a person who reflects
divine wisdom and divine joy, adds to the expression of his
thought when he expresses his ideas with mirth. 
(HIK), (PATH OF INITIATION.) 

"Humor is the sign of light; when the light from above touches the
mind it tickles the mind, and it is the tickling of mind which
produces humor. 
(HIK), (SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS.) 

"The mentality of the witty person can be called a dancing mind,
and to have a witty mind is a wonderful manifestation of nature;
it is a great quality. A witty person can make words dance; his
phrases can give us the joy of a symphony." 
(HIK), (PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND MYSTICISM)

However one does not have to depend for one's joy on a joke,
particularly as one rarely finds the joke (including one's own)
particularly brilliant. But if one laughs for no reason then it
does not matter if the joke is brilliant or not. In fact does one
need to have a reason? It seems so stupid to laugh without reason
that it is itself a banter upon one's ego, not taking oneself too
seriously to laugh all the same.

?PRACTICE:

Try to practice laughing for a few moments every day without
reason, however stupid it may seem - even deriding yourself at
that very stupidity.

One can laugh in resonance with the laughter of another even
though one does not find the thought funny.

[ And PVK once said, I think this was at a Zenith lecture that
I've transcribed, though maybe in Fatah MIller's 'Alchemical
Wisdom', which also I have input -- PVK said, "If someone laughts
at you, you can laught with them." And indeed, that is a form of
forgiveness, and forgiveness is empowering, for to forigve is,
surprisingly, to transcend the self_image that had been inflicted
upon one.   So in Judaism, in the prayer before going to bed. pme
says or thinks, 'I forgive all who have offended me, in word
thought or deed, and may none suffer ill on my accounz'  --
(recollected, this is not in all Siddurim, it's merely a custom,
not an obligation) ]


HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"We sometimes laugh without reason seeing the intensity of another
person's laughter."
(HIK),  (SPIRITUAL LIBERTY)

Sometimes the sheer unawareness in people's behavior, and more so,
realizing one's own incongruities, stirs one's mirth.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:


"Once I saw a Madzub, a man who pretends to be insane, who though
living in the world does not wish to be of the world, standing in
the street of a large city, laughing. I stood there, feeling
curious to know what made him laugh at that moment. And I
understood that it was the sight of so many drunken men, each one
having had his particular wine. 
(HIK), (THE PATH OF INITIATION; SUFI POETRY.)) 

"Everything made him laugh, the rushing of the people, so absorbed
and involved in their little fancies and interests in life, the
great importance that every person gave to the little things of
life which amount to very little in the end, and to see them so
excited and so absorbed in their little fancies, that was enough
for the Madzub to laugh and amuse himself. Anyone tuned to the
pitch, seeing from there how it looks, before him it was a doll's
play."
(HIK),  (SANGATHA III.)

"Was it not laughable? Every person thinking his particular point
of view to be the most important, pushing others away because he
finds his action the most important!"
(HIK, apparently)


Our humor is titillated when our minds grasp the absurdity of a
situation, ridiculous inappropriateness or pertinent violation of
congruity that is normally taken for granted, for example, in a
pun where similarities prove to be incompatible and the mind is
trying to force itself to reconcile ideas whose congruence is
misleadingly spurious. An example would be mixed metaphors: trying
to make a fact fit into a fictitious metaphysical framework.

One could say that laughter is spotting and debunking
contradictions, ridiculing flaws in consistency in which people
fool others or themselves. It is unmasking the hoax that is
precisely what is meant by maya. Its magic is in revealing the
truth that we had concealed or failed to grasp. That magical
moment is described as the instant when the penny drops. In fact
it is this that defines awakening. The password is "aha;" that is
the mantram of the future.

?PRACTICE:

Try to espy the contradictions in what a person says and does.
This will put you on the spurs of incongruities that try to escape
detection. If you are able to dismiss your ego sufficiently to
flash the beam of your insight into unavowed reaches or your own
unconscious, you may uncover covert, concealed contradictions
undiscovered so far. No sooner you have reconnoitered them, you
will exult in a most wonderful sense of freedom from something
that had been bugging you up to this crucial moment of truth. You
are enjoying a foretaste of awakening.

What is more serious is that a large percentage of jokes are
satires: deriding others. Some people pride themselves in scoffing
at others and their inconsistencies and naivety. It is unkind to
wreak derision in a smirk on fellow beings awkwardly trying to
validate themselves in a way that verges on the ridiculous.
Moreover, beware of slipping into frivolity or facetiousness. An
example given in Nazruddin Sufi stories is cutting the branch of a
tree on which one is sitting, or lying on a branch the whole night
whereas the ground is only a few feet underneath one. Sneering at
others for one's own ego-satisfaction is not the most savory
humor. It is called cynicism; in fact it is sadism, insidious
cruelty.

Laughter is a physiological response to a strong emotion triggered
by judgment. However, if one laughs and still respects one's
fellow beings, one can be aware of their inconsistencies without
being judgmental because one recognizes the selfsame incongruities
in oneself.

?PRACTICE:

This is really important to do every day as a meditation theme.
Recognize the flaws and inconsistencies of people around you
without being judgmental of them.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:

"This does not mean that the sage becomes critical, that he sneers
at life. No, he sees the funny side of things because the sneering
world is always ready to laugh at what it does not understand.
(Social Gathekas.) Then he becomes as a little child, eager to
play, ready to laugh, happy among children; he shows in his
personality childlike traits, especially that look one sees in
children." 
(HIK), (THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION.) 

"If we do not attach ourselves seriously to things then those
things laugh at us." 
(HIK), (HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD)

It is difficult to enjoy carefree joy while being aware of the
sufferings of thousands of people in the world being incarcerated
and tortured today in concentration camps, sometimes owing to a
miscarriage of justice, or considering the plight of refugees,
millions suffering from starvation, misery, or mental aberrations,
or hearing of women and children abused or murdered for lust -
unbelievable barbaric brutality in atrocities beyond the pale.

Most people carry a wound in their heart, some more painful, some
less, perhaps together with a modicum of joy. Some are in despair
for having to put up with unbearable situations from which there
is no escape. Some are tormented because they feel that they have
failed to fulfill the purpose of their lives. There are numerous
causes for the wounds of the heart.

I keep on continually thinking of that beautiful, noble,
idealistic being, Noor, my sister, our little mother when my
mother was ill. She played the harp, wrote children's stories, and
planned to create a magazine called "Nouvel Age" (New Age) shortly
before we heard Hitler's voice on the radio saying, "My patience
is exhausted. I am declaring war."

Can you imagine how terrified you would be finding a Nazi hiding
in your room, waiting to arrest you, drag you away with manacles,
trap you in prison in chains - alienated from your friends,
starved, without heating, then tortured to death - all of this
because you had compassion for the Jews who were subjected to
outrageous atrocities?

As I get older, I increasingly put myself in Noor's place and
relive more details of her ordeal. If I am hungry I can eat; I
imagine her being given a bowl of soup a day made of potato peel
that burnt her stomach. When I walk, I imagine her trying to walk
dragging her chains. If I have pain, I can take a painkiller; she
could not. I can have a warm bath, she had a cold faucet and no
heating in the cold winter. I can communicate with people, loved
ones; she was isolated in a cell. In the concentration camp at
Dachau, she had to sleep lying on the concrete floor in the cold
without cover. The Gauleiter kept on kicking her with his boots.
Then she was shot in the head and was still moving when she was
thrown in the furnace.

Today there are many political prisoners subjected to like
cruelty.

I have been reasoned with many times: she is now liberated and
exulting in a world of light. But the unconscious does not fit
into reason when one carries a wound in one's heart.

Admittedly, to relive those horrors seems like a counter-
productive thought, while one can well imagine that she has
overcome it. The wounds in one' psyche need to be dealt with
painstakingly. Extreme grief is one of the causes of cancer. (I
hope you will forgive me for bringing up something so acutely
personal. I am talking from personal experience since my dealing
with cancer is real, not pedantic theory, and may prove
significant for others.)

Can laugh therapy heal in this case? Can one enjoy bliss when all
around people are suffering?

Why have I been resisting laughter, particularly when it seems
facetious? Actually I found that I could joke for the sake of
giving joy to others but found it difficult to apply it to myself.
The answer flung up: because it seemed to be disloyal to my
mourning for Noor and my mother (and the tragedies of my own
life).

Yet even the slightest flash of joy is a safety buoy from the
darkness of despair.

GANDHI:
?"Divine guidance often comes when the horizon is the blackest."

SULEIMAN GROSSLIGHT:
?"Against the dark wrapping the finger-prints may appear
luminous!"                 
[ There should be a comma after 'wrapping' -- sa ]

It is just like when a beam of sunshine breaks through the clouds.
This is the message that came through in Dachau when, sharing with
Ophiel, I was conducting the B-Minor Mass of Bach. The picture of
Noor was right in front of me. I asked myself whether she is aware
of what we are doing. In fact, the question whether one survives
death was rife in the soul-searching of many minds. I thought, "If
only you would give us a sign!" The effigy on the picture seemed
to me to move into a Mona Lisa smile. I cautioned myself whether
this could be wishful thinking. "Please give a more tangible sign
irrespective of my personal bias so that everyone can witness it!"
This was just as I was conducting the Resurrexit of the Mass. It
was a grey day. All of a sudden a beam of light flashed through,
breaking through the clouds, just for a short while.

The secret is to bring a glimpse of heaven in hell.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"It [the outlook on life] can turn hell into heaven, it can turn
sorrow into joy." 
(HIK), (SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS GATHEKAS). 

"The condition of the soul can turn any place into heaven. Not
only the earth but even hell could be turned into heaven."
(HIK),  (SPIRITUAL LIBERTY)

Bringing heaven into hell happened when a priest celebrated mass
in a concentration camp, was beaten up by the Nazis and, crawling
back wounded, maimed, continued celebrating the mass with even
more fervor. It is here that the helping hand - the therapy - is
to be found.

Are there limits to suffering and distress? We may assume that we
have reached limits in our own pain or suffering. But can we have
any idea of the suffering of a person who is tortured in prison?
Our thoughts are filled with horror. However, there is a threshold
where suffering is released into ecstasy that one could only
experience for having reached those excesses of horror and terror.

I met a lady who had met Noor during the resistance, and who was
so badly battered by a Gauleiter - her skull trepanated - that she
was thought dead and thrown in a morgue. Here she was smiling as
she talked to me, the happiest person I have ever met in my life.
She said: You look at your torturer from another dimension and
think, how stupid you are that you think you can hurt me by
torturing me. Islam says: They thought they killed Christ, but
they only grabbed his body. One has turned the tables on despair
and pain has sparked joy.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:?
"Ecstasy is freedom from one's dependence upon one's bodiness,
one's ordinary thinking, one's personal emotions and one's
identity."

"When I laugh then I cry."
(HIK),  (NIRTAN)

One might equally say: Joy is my saving grace when the sunshine of
a smile erupts through my tears.  

[ Some chick at Zenith Camp 1999 spoke of "a rainbow day' --
laughing through tears" -- sa .  She had long hair one year, but
in 1999 she had gone to India, and came to Camp with her hair
shorn off.  "Big deal." (USA slang, ca. 1950's et. seq., meaning,
"No 'big deal' " -- ie, "Not important" ] 

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"A person who is able to cry and not able to laugh - that person
does not know mastery. The mystic rises beyond the tears after
shedding enough."

Pain may aver itself to be the catalyst that triggers off joy.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"The cry of agony which comes from the depth of the heart may be a
sound of the greatest beauty.... There are moments of intense
feeling when pain and joy meet, and one cannot distinguish where
one ends and the other begins; they have their meeting place in
the heart of man. Pain is like the herb in the hands of the great
Transmuter, the divine Alchemist; falling on the melted silver of
the heart it turns it into the purest gold, and renders the heart
of man more fitting to be the altar of God." 
(HIK), (SUFI TEACHINGS; SPIRITUAL HEALING)

Do we realize that the beauty of the mountains is born out of
dramatic convulsions, the heaving of the earth in its travail, and
that the splendor of the galaxies is born out of incredible
disturbances, collisions of galaxies, humongous space-ranges
defying our mind. We are born out of the cosmic drama and often
discover beauty emerging out of the pangs of childbirth. So it is
with our psyche that can become beautiful through stress and
unfavorable circumstances or could alternately become bitter if
one does not realize the importance of stress and distress.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
?"Death is my live, indeed, when I live, then I die." 
(HIK), (NIRTAN)

[ EDITORIAL NOTE (sa):  OK, the preceeding is an exact quote from
HIK.  So that shows that these '?question marks' in this KIT are
merely some sort of computer glitch, and were not put there by
PVK, and do not indicate any doubt about the accuracy of the quote
nor of the citation. ]

[Toenote, sa, kitc17__1]

One could equally say, "When I die to my illusory self and when I
unmask the illusion that causes my self-pity, that is when I live
for the first time." When one has overcome one's self-pity, one
has turned the tables on despair. Now one can laugh with abandon.
Pain in sympathetic resonance with suffering of another purifies
the heart. Self-pity can make one bitter, resentful, cantankerous.

?PRACTICE:

Cross-examine yourself. If you can judge that people are behaving
badly, selfishly, unscrupulously, can you ascertain that no matter
how they behave you handle things beautifully.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"If somebody behaves selfishly towards one, one may take it
naturally, because it is human nature to be selfish, and so one is
not disappointed; but if one appears oneself to be selfish, one
should take oneself to task and try to improve."

THE ULTIMATE THERAPY

Now, once on the laugh azimuth, spurs into further horizons of
laughter lie open. The therapeutic laugh is to realize how stupid
one has oneself been. The fine point of wit is to laugh at one's
own stupidity, naivety, and inconsistencies. Please excuse the
forthcoming upfront witticism - no offense - we are stalking
laugh-therapy.

?PRACTICE:

This is the ultimate test on one's ego. Have you overcome your ego
sufficiently to have the courage to do this? Keep uncovering those
situations in one's life where one handled situations in a way
that reveals how inconsistent one was. Now one can laugh at
oneself instead of others.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"If one does not attach oneself seriously to things, then those
things laugh at us." 
(HIK), (HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD).

How could one know that one was stupid unless one had been stupid?
Therefore it is even more stupid to regret one's stupidity; rather
one should rejoice that it was one's stupidity that sparked one's
realization!

The trouble is that in one's jubilation at discovering how stupid
one has been (which bodes well for reforming one' s ways in the
future), there is a catch 22, because the ultimate stupidity is to
assume that, having realized how stupid one has been, one presumes
that one is not stupid anymore! Acknowledging how ludicrous and
counterproductive were one's inappropriate handlings of situations
in the past does not guarantee one will be aware of the same in
the future. That is why Zen masters declaim as the ultimate,
utmost stupidity, claiming to have attained illumination.

PS. It is intriguing that in the process of stalking humor, for
the purpose of therapy, an uncalled for choice joked to spark my
laughter, urging me to really apply the laugh therapy that has
snuck into the wheels: when reading the text on Laugh Therapy
dictated to my secretary, I noticed that she typed 'Love Therapy'
instead of 'Laugh Therapy!!!'

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

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

"Do you know the Women's Movement has no sense of humour?"
     "No, but hum a few bars and I'll fake it."
                    
Used as a cartoon on the cover of Ms. Magazine, 1970's

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

The king wanted to built a system of moats, but was unable to find
anyone willing to work for him.  Eventually, however, he found a
bunch of labourers in Harlem who took a liking to him and agreed
to do it, saying, "All right King, we dig you de moats."
                                                      
Steve Slaner, entry in the Competition 'A Pun my Word'.

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

"The cat is on the mat but I don't believe it."
Moore's paradox, quoted by Wittgenstein in PI Part II.

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

OK, IHT fans, here's a review of the IHT Comic Strips:

DOONESBURY is genuinely funny, and often the best political
analysis available.  That and Maureen Dowd's columns are often the
only things worth reading, though most of the reporters, and at
least half the columnists -- not counting the Bushie Flacks --
seem reasonably honest.
		
CALVIN & HOBBES is genuinely funny, and very gentle humour, about
a family of good people -- "a kind mother, a compassionate father"
as HIK says -- and/or conversely  ("a loving mother, a kind
father") -- much better than 'Denis the Menance' was -- 

'Dogbert' or whatever it's called is distasteful and pervese;
something only for folks who must work under an arrogant CEO; it
should be put on the Business Pages.

BEATTLE BAILY is unimainative and repetitious, a one_joke pony.
So is GARFIELD.
DAGWOOD, for all its attempt at update, remains 1950's conball,
harmless but routine.
        
PEANUTS is "cute and sweet" as R. Shlomo would say, but it's all
re_runs now, and might as well be retired and published in a set
of books to put on the cofee table, to be appreciaed and glanced
at from time to time, but not read.

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

[Toenote, sa, kitc17__1]
Yabbadabbadah , as Buffy the Vampire Slayer would say -- and what
a perfect title that is -- it perfectly captures the ironic fact
that those of us who would quite happily continue leading trivial
lives -- "I could have been a sorority girl and stayed at home
painting my toenails," said Breindel Swirsky, of Moshav Mevo
Modi'in, who makes movies etc. documenting the recollections of
Survivors of the Shoah. ]                             

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

'laugh azimuth' -- try to say that 10 time in a row -- or 5 times,
since only a yogi can count to ten -- "One, Two, Three, Many", to
take the title from a book by George Gamov -- 

"The xixth sheik's sixth sheep's sick."

                                 
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