=kitc19.txt


[ CAVEAT (sa):  In this KIT, and starting with Curriculum 19
(=kitc19.txt) quotes are not italicized, nor set
off in any other distinguishing font nor color.  Now in most
previous KITs, PVK often includes quotes from HIK with neither a
notation that it from HIK, nor a notation of the book and/or
subsection from which it was taken.
So in this KIT, and henceforth , I will not put in quotes anything
which has neither notation. ]


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 19
IN SEARCH OF THE DIMENSIONS OF OUR IDENTITY
Cosmic / Peri-Personal Dimension

As we have seen in the previous lesson, our efficacy in achieving
our purpose is precariously suspended upon our self-esteem, and
our self-esteem is suspended upon our self-image which is an
insufficient estimation of who we are.

One's self image is what is called the ego. The word ego means me,
I, myself, who I am. Hazrat Inayat Khan considers our usual notion
of ourselves as a faulty representation of who we really are - our
real ego. He calls this notion of ourselves the false ego.

"Oneself as one knows oneself is a limited part of one's being."
(HIK),  SANGITHA I

"The false ego is one has wrongly conceived as oneself." 
(HIK), THE MYSTICISM OF SOUND AND MUSIC

"It is not one's true self that is limited; what is limited is
what one holds to be oneself."
(HIK),  THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS


PRACTICE:

Question yourself as to whether who you think you are (your self-
image) is just a notion that does not include your whole being and
gives you a sense of limitation, even inadequacy (what one calls a
poor self-image).

A poor self-image could likened to a two dimensional photograph
which is a diminished representation of a three dimensional
panorama. The lens of a camera reduces much of the detail of a
landscape in order to figure it on to a two dimensional
photograph. By the fact that the consciousness of the universe is
focalized in our consciousness the grasp of our ordinary
perfunctory consciousness is extremely poor and inadequate.

"The pure consciousness has gradually limited itself more and more
by entering into the external vehicles such as the mind and body
in order to be conscious of something." 
(HIK), SPIRITUAL LIBERTY

"Most men can only see the limitations of his human life and can
never probe the heights of his divinity; comparatively few can do
this." 
(HIK), THE UNITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS

SCHOPENHAUER:
"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision to be the limits of
the world."

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"We are as great as our spirit, we are as wide as our spirit, we
are as low as our spirit, we are as small as our spirit."        
(HIK), PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, MYSTICISM

"The world of one individual is as tiny as a grain of lentil, and
that of another as large as the whole world." 
(HIK), HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD


PRACTICE:

Having questioned the validity of your self-image, the chances are
that you might try to grasp your wider self. The key to doing this
is expanding your consciousness and lifting your consciousness.

JANE GOODALL: 
"The unitive world-view emerges when we shift our identity from
our personal dimension to its cosmic and transcendent dimensions."

Our self-image is a feature of slipping into a limited sense of
our bountiful identity. If we identify with our personal nature,
we fail to account for the fact that our being cannot be
segregated from the totality which is its seedbed, and of which it
is a manifestation and a unique actuation as each of us.

"If you dived deep enough in yourself, you would discover your
real ego, you would reach a point where your ego lives an
unlimited life." 
(HIK), GATHA I

"The ego itself is never destroyed. It is the one thing that
lives. And this is the sign of the eternal life. In the knowledge
of the ego there is the secret of immortality." 
(HIK), THE MYSTICISM OF SOUND AND MUSIC

How do you do this?

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN
"By losing the false sense of identification and identify[ing]
itself with its real self."
(HIK),  THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS

How can one discover one's real ego?

By attempting to make a definite change in oneself. And that
change is a kind of struggle with one's false self. The Alchemy of
Happiness

The way to achieve this is to create attunements that are
favorable to discovering one's true self. This change in oneself
would require one to overcome what may be ascribed to the false
ego: one's selfishness, resentment, hatred, unkindness.


PRACTICE:

We tend to justify attitudes in ourselves that are triggered off
by our false ego.
(i) In a first step reconnoiter your false ego. To do this,
confront your motivations and dismiss denial or justifications.
But be careful not to denigrate yourself. Realize that if you
really wish to change, you can.

(ii) In a second step, counter your false ego by realizing that it
stands in the way of identifying yourself with who you really are.

(iii) In a third step, having removed the obstacle incurred by the
non-comprehensive notion of yourself, make an attempt to identify
with the bountiful potential of your being.

By rising above this limited self, the false ego is broken and you
will rise over the limitations of life on all planes of existence,
and your soul will break all boundaries and will experience that
freedom which its deepest longing. Volume I, The Inner Life

When broken, the false ego needs to be replaced by the real ego.
This is why in Sufism fana, the annihilation of the false self, is
always compensated by baqa, reinstatement.

IBN 'ARABI:
"It is not their existence that ceases but their notion of
themselves".

Consequently our being extends into its seed-bed. We need to
consider this wider outreach of our being as the cosmic or peri-
personal dimension of our being. Dr. Grof's word peri-personal
does not mean around or outside; one might say it is the area of
one's being that overlaps and is co-extensive with the universe.
(Let us note: I am using the word universe instead of God, because
the universe is that aspect of God that is existentiated and
therefore God cannot be limited to that aspect alone).

The difficulty for most people is that our minds have been
conditioned by the belief systems of exoteric religion to
represent God as 'other.' Obviously, for our finite minds, the
alternative: that we are God, is untenable.

IBN 'ARABI juggles with this quandary. In a high state he says:
"You are not other than God."

Then back into his ordinary perspective, he says:
"Know whereby you are God and whereby you are not God."
(Ibn 'Arabi)

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN gives the key:
"Man is a condition of God like a wave is a condition of the sea."

In our ordinary thinking even if we acquiesce that we are part of
the totality of the universe, which is what we mean by God, we
would think that being a part of it is like being a section of an
orange. Whereas to understand the way mystics formulate their
experience we need to call upon a more advanced mode of thinking -
the holistic mode: each fraction of the whole (Dr. David Bohm uses
the word sub-whole) carries, potentially, the whole.

"Is it not then drunkenness on the part of man when he claims to
be an individual standing separate from all others thinking of
himself as an individual being separate from all others." 
(HIK), SANGITHA II

In fact meditation could be looked upon as the art of modulating
consciousness from its usual local and middle-range setting.

This could be illustrated thus: each cell of our body is governed
by the DNA of the whole body. (Paradoxically, it may be governed
by the DNA of the universe.) Yet in each cell certain genes of the
body's DNA are active while others are recessive. This makes for
the diversity of the cells so that they may cooperate to serve our
intelligence, rather than the uniformity that would result if they
repeated each other like patterns on frescoes or wallpaper do.
Likewise while the peri-personal dimension of our self is
ultimately co-extensive with the universe, only a fraction of its
bounty is actuated in our personality. These are the virtual
resources of our being waiting to be awakened and aroused. The
good news is the more we discover the qualities adorning this
wider area of our being, the richer our personality becomes. The
secret of discovering this is to acquiesce that it is 'me,' rather
than thinking that it is 'other.' This is the way of thinking that
we find in the esoteric rather than exoteric traditional religious
thinking. It is based upon experience rather than belief and is to
be found in the testimonies of the mystics of all the world
religions.

For example, MEISTER ECKHART was placed on the index by saying,
"There is something in me that is increatus (uncreated) and
increabile (uncreatable)," which means not other than God.

Another example is that of a vortex. A whirlpool, for example, is
a formation within the lake that does not have a boundary. All the
water of the lake gets drawn into its swirl. It is likewise with
our personality in which our total being converges. In the same
vein our consciousness is the focalization of the consciousness of
the universe like a light can be focused into a beam by a concave
lens.

PRACTICE:

Think of your being as not having boundaries so that the divine
qualities (the qualities of the universe) may flow, may converge,
as it. Can you see that the personal dimension of your being
merges into the peri-personal dimension of your being and that the
personal dimension of your being converges your total being? They
are not two separate realities but correlated. Just think that the
whole universe emerges as you as the whole ocean erupts as a wave.

The bubble is small as compared with the ocean, but it is not any
other element than the ocean. The Unity of the Religious Ideal

"God is the horizon, and one can neither touch the horizon, nor
God. The horizon is as far as one can see, and even further, and
so is God."
(HIK),  THE COMPLETE SAYINGS

The key to grasping this wider, cosmic dimension of our being is
being God-conscious.

The Sufi therefore tries to expand as he progresses; for it is the
largeness of the soul which will accommodate all experiences and
in the end become God conscious and all-embracing. Volume I, The
Inner Life

"Where are you to find God if not in the God-conscious?"
(HIK),  SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS

Divinity resides in humanity; it is also the outcome of humanity.

"The dervish is a king within a palace or in a shack."
(HIK),  IN AN EASTERN ROSE GARDEN

(Footnote (sa) kitc19__1 )

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN warns against megalomania or sanctimoniousness
by reconciling the poles of the puzzling antinomy of our identity.

"The aristocracy of the soul together with the democracy of the
ego." 
(HIK), SUFI TEACHINGS

The greatest pride in one's divine inheritance (one's real ego)
together with humility for one's iniquities (one's false ego);
authority together with the unpretentious touch.


PRACTICE:

At the end of your morning meditation, survey those areas in your
life for which you are responsible. This will close in to the
concrete things you need to do. The area for which you assume
responsibility is a measure of the stature of your being.

"Ever soul has a domain in life consisting of all it possesses and
all who belong to it. This domain is as wide as the width of the
soul's influence.
2
(HIK),  HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD
[ Typo, 'every soul' ]

EXPANDING THE NOTION OF ONE'S IDENTITY BY EXPANDING CONSCIOUSNESS

Our sense of identity is function of the outreach of our
consciousness. Therefore to encompass the vastness of your being,
it is helpful to expand the outreach of your glance.

We occupy as much horizon as is within our consciousness, or as
much as we are conscious of. Healing and the Mind World


PRACTICE:

With this in mind, represent to yourself your glance.

As you inhale, imagine that you are reading a text. In fact read
this text!

Now as you exhale look through the window or with eyes closed
imagine a vast panorama. Better still gaze at the stars at night
or with eyes closed imagine the starry sky. Ponder upon how vast
is the outreach of your glance - light years!

"The eye is the representative of the soul. If the eye can
accommodate so much space, how much more can the soul accommodate.
It can accommodate the whole universe."
(HIK),  THE UNITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS

You will thus confirm that widening the outreach of your glance
has the effect of expanding your consciousness, and expanding your
consciousness has the effect of expanding your sense of identity.

In a second step, reach outside from within.

"The soul of man who seems so small a being is incomparably great,
its space being within."
(HIK),  SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS

"There are some beings who are in themselves the universe.
Outwardly man sees their small earthly form, but within they are
as vast as the universe."
(HIK),  SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS

With closed eyes, as you inhale, turn within.

Now as you exhale, imagine that you can reach outside from within.
So now you feel as though you are connected with the whole
universe from within while before you thought that you were
connected with outside.

For example, you were swimming amongst water lilies, each a
separate flower. But now you swim under the surface and see the
water lilies from underneath. They are manifestations of a single
infrastructure: the network of roots. Multiplicity is emerging out
of unity.

Usually our consciousness is conditioned by our commonplace
concerns; but when it comes to evaluating the implications of a
situation or in general the meaningfulness of our lives in a wider
context, our ordinary thinking fails to make sense of these.


PRACTICE:

If you stretch your consciousness, you will find that you can
assess situations in their implications in a wider context.


WHO WE ARE BECOMING RATHER THAN WHO WE ARE

There is a whole further dimension of our being that we need to
account for. Who we are is only a static cross-section of a
dynamic process: how our personality unfurls in time. Rather than
identifying with who we are, we need to account for who we are
becoming.

Actually the whole ocean emerges as each wave. Although they
overlap, each wave displays its own specific configuration.


PRACTICE:

As you exhale expand your consciousness with the effect of
expanding your sense of identity beyond the personal dimension.

As you inhale, while still representing to yourself that the whole
universe manifests itself as your being, draw your attention to
the unique way it manifests itself in each of us - hence in
yourself.

As you hold your breath reconnoiter the idiosyncrasies of your
personality - the hallmark of your being.

You are actually processing in your personality the infinite
wealth of qualities, the potentialities, of the entire universe in
a unique way. You are not just the convergence, confluence,
conjugation of all those ingredients that have actuated themselves
into the confection of your being, but you are the congruence of
that whole process. You are the goal of the universe thus
composing itself as you. You are not just the albeit unpredictable
outcome of that inexorable process whereby the universe is
exploring its potentialities, but the objective of that process.

AVICENNA:
"His knowledge is not a consequence of the things known...for His
knowledge of things is the reason for their having being."
(Avicenna),  ARBERRY, 1951, P. 35

What is more you act not only upon the environment, but upon the
very formative process that configures you, affecting it as it
forms you thus participating by your incentive in your creativity.

God's creativity is perfected where man participates in his
creativity.

"In man the Creator has finished, so to speak, nature, but at the
same time the creative faculty is still working through man."
(HIK),  SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS GATHEKAS

"The mind is not only the treasure-house of all one learns, but it
is creative by nature. The mind improvises upon what it learns,
and creates not only in imagination, but it finishes its task when
the imagination becomes materialized."
(HIK),  VOLUME I, THE INNER LIFE

Therefore, while encompassing the cosmic dimension of our being,
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN also draws our attention to our personal
dimension.

"The soul of man is God, but man has a mind and body of his own. "
(HIK, presumably)                  

IBN 'ARABI:
"When God sent Himself down to the waystations of His servants,
their properties exercised their influence over Him. Hence He only
determines their properties through them. He does not determine
our properties except through us; or rather we determine our own
properties through ourselves though through Him." 
(CHITTICK, P. 299; THE SUFI PATH OF KNOWLEDGE?)

For the Sufis the personal point of view is not to be discarded.
It has a relative validity. Granted our personal assessment of
situations is biased. If you look at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
from one vantage point you get a limited representation of Notre
Dame as compared with looking at it from all 360 angles
simultaneously. But your partial view could not be questioned; it
has a relative validity.

The confluence of vantage points in the universe, owing to the
multiplication, proliferation, and diversification of the One
Being in a plethora of 'sub-wholes,' by being integrated
contributes an enriched encompassing grasp to the Whole. To wit:
the advantage in the cosmic programming of the individuation of
the Totality we call God.


SHUNTING OUR CONSCIOUNESS INTO THE VANTAGE POINT OF ANOTHER

Having encompassed the peri-personal perspective, you can now,
while being centered in your personal identity, shift your
consciousness into that of another person. You will find that you
can acquire some sense of how things look from the point of view
of another person.

"If one is able to expand oneself to the consciousness of another
person, one's consciousness becomes as large as two persons'. And
so it can be as large as a thousand persons' when one accustoms
oneself to try and see what others think."
(HIK),  HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD

See how the same situation that you are involved in with that
person is seen differently from the vantage point of that person.
This will alter your assessment of the situation dramatically. You
can now acknowledge that your assessment was limited by the
personal bias of your vantage point (just like the inconclusive
way in which Notre Dame looks from one angle alone).

One may distinguish two steps:
(i) I see that person through his/her eyes;
(ii) I see myself through the eyes of that person.

Now you can see that the chances are that that person's assessment
of the situation was faulty, biased by, not only his/her vantage
point, but his/her misassessment of who you are. This nevertheless
does not imply that who you think you are is right or that
his/hers opinion is right. The reason why these views conflict is
that both are biased. But if you include the opinions of more and
more people, then you get a many-faceted outlook which approaches
more and more to reality. (Incidentally we have been learning in
the process which we have been going through in this lesson to
evaluate in an all-encompassing perspective who we are). Now you
understand better why that person is doing to you what you resent.
You see this has a paramount contribution to psychotherapy. It is
therapy for resentment through understanding rather just dressing
the wounds.
There is a further stage: you do not have to shunt your
consciousness into that of another because that person's psyche is
somehow intermeshed within your psyche. There is osmosis amongst
beings. We can find people who we thought were 'out there' within
our own psyche. You learn to know yourself through others, and to
know others through yourself.

"You can discover yourself mirrored in another person and the
other person mirrored in you.
The reflection from his mind is mirrored upon their minds."
(HIK),  HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD

" The hearts are like mirrors and therefore the condition of
another person is mirrored upon your soul." 
(HIK), SANGATHA III

Now we can reverse our vantage point. 

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI said: "I thought I was looking at the
world, but the world is looking at me." 

This is why the Sufis make a difference between ya Basit and ya
Wasi.

***

One needs however to bear in mind that if the mirror is distorted,
the impression that has been mirrored is deceptive. Therefore the
Sufis persistently enjoin upon one to clear the mirror of the
soul.

According to the Sufis God sees Himself through our eyes.
Consequently we can only see Him/Her through His/Her eyes.

God speaking: 
"It is through My eyes that you see Me and see yourself." 
(IBN AL 'ARABI) CF. H. CORBIN, CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE SUFISM
OF IBN AL ' ARABI.

To see Himself through or rather as us, God assumes a form
gradually evolving to ever more adequately discover His Being by
manifesting to us His/Her Being. Consequently we see ourselves
through the measure in which we manifest the divinity invested in
our being: that which is trying to transpire through that which
appears.

"God describes Himself to us through ourselves." 
IBN AL 'ARABI

IBN AL 'ARABI:
"The Necessary Being whose pure essence is incompatible with all
form is nevertheless manifest in a form. Corbin, 1970, p. 197
Archetypal notions descend into perceptual forms." 
ETUDES TRADITIONELLES, 8/9 NR. 242, P. 406

"When meanings are embodied and become manifest in shapes and
measures they assume forms, since withessing takes place through
sight." 
(IBN 'ARABI, in: ) CHITTICK, 1989, P. 354


"Whenever the Real discloses Himself to you, within the mirror of
your heart, your mirror will make Him manifest to you in the
measure of its constitution and in the form of its shape."
(IBN 'ARABI, IN: )  CHITTICK, 1989, P.352

"Know that mirrors are diverse in shape and that they modify the
object seen by the observer." 
(IBN 'ARABI, IN: ) CHITTICK, 1989, P. 351

***

PRACTICE:

As you exhale, stretch your consciousness. That is let it be
defocalized, decentered. Simultaneously you will acquire a sense
of being impersonal, cosmic. Now imagine that you are looking at
yourself from the vantage point of the stars and galaxies, through
the immensity of space-time.

As you inhale envision that it is the universe that is looking at
itself through your eyes.

To do this, one needs to turn within.

"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. Therefore all seeing by this process is so clear and
manifests to such fullness that in comparison the vision that one
has before one's eyes is a blurred or confused vision. 
(HIK), THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS

Then more and more people are mirroring each other until you find
yourself wandering in what the Sufis call Aina Khana, the palace
of mirrors.

"This world is a house of mirrors, the reflection of one is
mirrored upon another. In this world where so many things seem
hidden, in reality nothing remains hidden; everything some time or
other rises to the surface and manifests itself to view." 
(HIK), THE ART OF PERSONALITY

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

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

(Footnote (sa) kitc19__1 )

Excuse me, but I prefer to refer to my present residence as a
Palazzo, not a 'shack', as_it_is_said, "Be it ever so humble,
there's no place" (USA saying, ca. 1940's), or "Plus me plait le
chalet qu'ont batit mes aieux / que les palais Romans du front
aducacieux" (Ronard)

And that too is a -- dimension, really -- of 'homelessness ''
again, a lack of a place to sleep is the least of it -- human
beings also need their own psychological space, and you can see
this continually in situations of overcrowding -- eg Zenith Camp.

Notice all the little devices by which people struggle to maintain
some private space.  Me, I wear a stocking cap pulled down almost
over my eyebrows, so no_one can meet my gaze unless I look up at
them -- I am more or less peeering out from under my hat.

A useful Jewish custom, though reduced to self_imposed tokenism by
those ridiculous kippot.  Ain't a hat and ain't not that.

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