=kitc25.txt

CURRICULUM OF THE SUFI ORDER INTERNATIONAL

The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis

LESSON 25
IN SEARCH OF THE DIMENSIONS OF OUR IDENTITY
COMPARISONS BETWEEN BUDDHISM AND SUFISM
THE JHANAS

THE JHANAS

Amongst the Buddhist practices one could list three steps: (i) the
Satipathanas, (ii) the Jhanas, (iii) the Arupa Jhanas.

So far in the Satipathanas we have been observing the different
constituents of ourselves objectively, but now in this next step,
the Jhanas, we observe other than ourselves (the world) while
unswervingly holding onto the consciousness of our consciousness,
"bodhi," in daily life.

Caution yourself by this thought: this is the way the world
appears within the constraint imposed by the focalization of
consciousness due to my notion of myself as an individual.

The breakthrough is fired when you realize that the personal focal
center of your consciousness, previously the observer, is now that
which is observed. The personal vantage point has merged with the
consciousness of the universe.

The consequence is that in the awakened state, the objects,
scenes, and events you remember having perceived in the scenario
of life through the personal vantage point now appear as they
would through a lens; that is, as a distortion of the way they are
viewed from the impersonal, all-encompassing vantage point.

PRACTICE:

Rather than identifying with your consciousness as the witness,
push your consciousness to its limits where it is functioning
beyond the point where it is a personal vantage point. It merges
with the transpersonal dimension of consciousness. You watch your
consciousness as it watches an object, your body, a thought, etc.
The witness is impersonal. One does not identify with it.

Sufism does corroborate Buddhism in that, for the Sufis the
observer is not the person - God is the observer.

IBN 'ARABI:
"By Himself He sees Himself and by Himself He knows Himself".

"He is not only the Perceiver but also the one through whom He
perceives."
(Ibn 'ARABI)

"He does not require a creature nor a subject because He is the
Creator and the created." 
(Ibn 'ARABI), FUTUHAT AL-MAKKYA, P. 13

The difference is that Buddha would never formulate an assumption,
which is a dogma. His teaching is based upon experience. Yet he
does declare a credo:

"Monks there is a non-become, non-formed, non-perishing. If it
were not for the non-become, non-formed, non-perishing there would
be no refuge from all of this."
(BUDDHA)

EXPLORING DEEPER ZONES OF YOUR BEING

The Jhanas aim at disengaging the central principle of one's being
standing apart from all of this.

"...to unclutch the root, as it were, of one's being...reaching
into deeper layers of one's being from its unfoldment in one's
congenital identity." 
EVOLA, THE DOCTRINE OF AWAKENING, LUZAC, LONDON, 1951, P. 162.

We grasp a deeper stratum of reality, which, according to Sufis,
is "that which transpires behind that which appears."

"To life Buddhism opposes that which is beyond life." 
SAMYUTT., XXII , 57

This perspective can be applied to psychotherapy: we may grasp the
issues behind facts and circumstances.

"Consciousness is free from perceptions and images. Consciousness
maintains itself without resting upon psychical functions,
perceptions, images, thoughts or emotions."
[ Opus not clearly noted to us ]  ( p. 186)

Dismiss the supports of consciousness (vitarka and vikara) without
passing into the subconscious or into sleep.

How does matter, how do events, how do the thoughts of other
people, how do the emotions of other people, how does the
personality of another person, how does the consciousness of
another person appear from the vantage point of consciousness
carried beyond the point where it is functioning as a personal
consciousness? That is in a state of awakening, "bojhanga?"

PRACTICE:

In order to achieve this you need liberate yourself from habitual
faculties. Moreover you need to not only avoid your usual
identification but even identification with the super-sensible
dimension of your identity. An example of how one is able to
maintain the overview holding on to the vantage point of the
consciousness of your consciousness: ask yourself when walking,

"Who is walking? Who is breathing?" 
DIGHA P. 357

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"True exaltation of the spirit resides in the fact that it has
come to Earth and has realized there its spiritual existence."
(HIK),  THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS

"The soul manifests in the world in order that it may experience
the different phases of manifestation, yet not lose its way, but
regain its original freedom in addition to the experience and
knowledge it has gained in the world."
(HIK),  THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION; THE SOUL WHENCE AND WHITHER;
VOLUME 1

"The purpose of life is fulfilled in rising to the greatest
heights and in diving to the deepest depths of life, in widening
one's horizons, in penetrating life in all its spheres, in losing
oneself, and in finding oneself in the end." 
(HIK), THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION; VOL. 1

I. Matter will now appear to you as actuating the mind.

BOHM:
"The more you explore matter the more you discover something of
the nature of the mind." 
(David Bohm), UNFURLING MEANING

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"Consciousness awakens in matter where it was so to speak buried
for thousands of years."

II. How does the thinking of people appear when consciousness has
extended beyond the point where it is functioning as an individual
consciousness?

"The ascetic causes the awakening of mindfulness derived from
detachment, from dispassion, derived from ceasing to involve
oneself in the flux of becoming, ending in renunciation. He causes
the awakening of investigation, of enthusiasm, of equanimity, of
concentration."
 MAJJH. LXX VII

"This should be considered as realization, bodhi, rather than
cognizance. - the great awakening, PITI SAMBOJHHANG."
 MAJJH CXXV

ABU BAKR AL WARRAQ:
"Knowledge is of things with regard to their forms or
characteristics, whereas realization is of things in their deeper
reality, HAQA'IQ." 
  (Cf. KALABADHI, 1981, p. 68 )

You will discover that there is disparity between the real world
and our representation of it - our theorems. This is the very
foundation of maya.

BASTAMI:
"God deludes you in the markets of this world and will delude you
in the next." 
  ZAEHNER

"God's guile encompasses them in a way they do not understand."
 (BASTAMI, presumably, in:)  ZAEHNER, APPENDIX P 223

"I saw the tree of oneness. Then I looked and I knew that all this
was deceit." 
 (Dude cit. I bet, in:) ZAEHNER, 1960, p. 95

IBN 'ARABI:
"The signs alert us to what they manifest, what they reveal. He is
known through the things." 
  CHITTICK, 1989, P. 225

QUR'AN:
"We will show them our Signs in the furthest regions of the earth
and in your own souls." 
QUR'AN 41: 53, TR. YUSUF ALI

IBN 'ARABI:
"So there is a real and a created representation. If you witness
your representation, you will not see the real; and if you witness
the real, you will discard your representation thereof...."

IBN 'ARABI:
"He is known through the things. Things are like curtains over the
real. When they are raised, unveiling takes place." 
CHITTICK, 1989, P. 225

Our consciousness does not grasp the real; it is veiled by our
representation of it. Ibn 'Arabi: Knowledge is a veil on the
known.In his quest for reality BASTAMI goes through a deep
process:

"Then He annihilated me from my own existence and showed me His
Selfhood unhampered by my existence."
(BASTAMI)

Finally came the moment of truth.

BASTAMI:
"Thou art my sight in my eye, and my knowledge in my ignorance. Be
Thyself Thine own light that Thou mayest be seen by Thyself. There
is no God but Thee." 
ZAEHNER, 1960, P. 206

III. How does the consciousness of people appear when
consciousness has extended beyond the point where it is
functioning as a personal vantage point?We are unaware that we do
know the real. We are not conscious of this knowing - it is
apprised by our intelligence.

DIANA ROBERTSON:
"We may explore the universe and find ourselves or we may explore
ourselves and find the universe." 
SHARON BEGLY, INSIDE THE MIND OF GOD, TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PRESS,
LIONHEART BOOKS, 2002, P. 29

ABDULLAH ANSARI:
"I searched for God and found myself and I searched for myself and
I found God."

JEAN-PAUL RICHTER:

"The unconscious is really the largest realm in our minds. And
just on account of this unconscious, its unknown boundaries may
extend far away. Why should everything come to consciousness that
lies in the mind since, for example, that of which it has already
been aware, the whole great realm of memory, only appears in it in
small areas, while the entire remaining world stays invisible in
the shadow? And may there not be a second half world of our mental
moon which never turns towards consciousness?" 
(APPARENTLY QUOTED IN:) ARTHUR KOETLER, THE ACT OF CREATION,
PICADOR, PAN HANDBOOKS, 1970, P. 151

What Richter is saying is that we store cognizance in the
unconscious of which we are not aware, but it is acquired
unbeknown to us. It is an acquired knowledge that accumulates in
our unconscious memory and therefore is not to be confused with
protocritic knowledge though it does affect our knowing
implicitly.

If you could grasp reality you would be shattered.

NIFFARI: 
"Why seek for the known when you could know the Knower?"

IBN 'ARABI:
"Thou knowest this world in the degree of which one can know the
shadows; and thou art ignorant of it in the degree of thy
ignorance of the person on whom the shadows depend." 
CHITTICK, 1975, P. 63

This is the clue to awakening.One espies the manifesting as the
existential world, but more importantly, the intention behind the
blueprint.

At a certain level of our thinking, our psyche touches upon a
level prior to causality.

ANDREAS SPEISER:
"It is an initial state which is not governed by mechanistic law,
but is the preconditioning of law, the chance substrate upon which
law is built." 
(SPEISER), UBER DIE FREIHEIT, BASLER UNVERSITAETSREDEN, 28, BASEL,
1950, P. 18

How is this possible? Perhaps the greatest miracle is that our
brain, configuring the fabric of the stars, serves as a transducer
to grasp the software that manifests as the stars. Actually the
fabric of our bodies is more sophisticated than that of the stars,
because in the course of the evolutionary process the inorganic
matter of the stars has organized itself as organic matter.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF ASTRONAUTS:

The perspective of astronauts has opened up a completely new
horizon fostering the upgrading of our thinking. Viewing Planet
Earth from outer space leads us earthlings into an overview from
the moment that we are apprised of their perspective. The overview
of the astronauts overarches our commonplace point of view. Since
contemplating Planet Earth and, more so, since plunging into the
galaxies and discovering themselves as part of that maelstrom has
had the consequence of altering the astronauts' thinking, entering
into their thinking has the effect of altering ours.

MICHAEL COLLINS:
"I liked that feeling, being a part of the universe instead of
part of the Solar System. 
(USA, 54 )

JULIAN JANES:
"It is something about understanding the totality of existence,
the essential defining reality of things, the entire universe and
man's place in it. It is a groping among stars for final answers,
a wandering the infinitesimal for the infinitely general, a deeper
and deeper pilgrimage into the unknown." 
(MR. JAMES?), THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE
BICAMERAL MIND.

BRIAN SWIMME:
"We are the first humans to look into the night sky and see the
birth of stars, the birth of galaxies, the birth of the cosmos as
a whole. Our future as a species will be forged within this new
story of the world." 
(QUOTED IN:) SHARON BEGLY, INSIDE THE MIND OF GOD, TEMPLETON
FOUNDATION PRESS LIONHEART BOOKS, 2002, P. 156

Our intelligence sparkles when, plunging with our minds into the
unfathomable depth and outreach of the choreography of the stars,
it resonates with the intelligence motivating the galaxies,
discovering its commonality therewith.This way of thinking opens
the perspective for a further step in our human thinking and in
the future of spirituality. In fact, just as species mutate, the
thinking of humanity advances. 

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"The collective working of many minds as one single idea and the
activity of the whole world are governed by the intelligence of
the Planet. The whole Universe has contributed to the way humanity
thinks today." 
(HIK), SPIRITUAL LIBERTY

KEVIN W. KELLEY:
"It is the golden thread that runs through all these expressions
of individual experience that is the magic of life."

Just as it takes a lot of molecules to produce a brain that can
serve intelligence, so it takes many minds to illuminate our
thinking. And what is more, instead of adding to each other,
paramount thoughts multiply and can upgrade our thinking
exponentially by updating it in infinite regress, like a
logarithm. What are we doing in our life? The whole universe is
inviting us to participate in its evolution by updating our
understanding.

MURCHIE:
"Why should I stir from my accustomed ways for the risks and
trials of space?"

[ Note (sa).  Ed Purcell, who was a Professor of Physics at
Harvard and got a Nobel Prize, I forget for what, said, about the
time of the first man on the moon (or the second, if you count The
Man in the Moon), best's I recollect:  'I don't know why the want
to send the whole man, just send the eyes and hands.  And maybe he
said feet, too.  He meant, simply send instruments, they can do,
and better, whatever humans can. ]


"I have come here with open eyes to see the unseen. I have come
with open mind to listen to the music of the spheres."
(Murchie, I presume)

"You and I have been appointed to a greater consciousness than our
own."
(Murchie, I presume)


"Man has become a cell of the consciousness of the whole time-
space universe. It behooves him to enlarge his view, to accept
life's new dimension when it is offered - to adopt the perspective
of space."
(Murchie, I presume)

 
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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:

(Well, a man can live on peanuts, at least if they're roasted, if
he's got something to do worth doing.(sa))

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CORRECTION:  What Leary said to me, best's I recollect, was:
'There is nothing to be afraid of.'

That was at the Opening of Andy Warwhol's Exploding Plastic
Inevitable, on East Something Street in the Chic Section of the
Lower East Side, just off Cooper U., may their beer barrels never
burst.

I asked Leary, 'Do you know of anyone who's doing Psychedelic
Philosophy'
He answered me, 'I don't know of anyone who isn't.'

So much for that career.  And I even had my Icon designed.  A
superimposed Phi on a Psi.  Might even have had it cast as a lapel
pin.

PVK once said, this was at the lecture in London by Kensington
Park or whatever, just after Bush called off Gulf War I:
'The problem is, there are not enough good jobs to go around.'

Someone once asked Susie Harrison, zl'b, Is it hard to get a job
in Taos.
She said, 'Well, I've been working at Donna Hazli for free for 2
years, and I just got fired.'  Or maybe it was 3 years.  And Da Na
Hazli, whatever that means.  Rudolph Steiner school, if I recall.

She once said to me, 'Woman is half the universe.'  And she said,
'I will teach you to be like water.'

She used to sing, even in the tipi, 'The LORD said to Noah,
there's gonna be a floody_floody ... get those elephants / out of
the muddy_muddy , children of the LORD.  / So rise and shine / and
give G_d your glory_glory ... '

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[ Note (sa).  Ed Purcell, who was a Professor of Physics at
Harvard and got a Nobel Prize, I forget for what, said, about the
time of the first man on the moon (or the second, if you count The
Man in the Moon), best's I recollect:  'I don't know why the want
to send the whole man, just send the eyes and hands.  And maybe he
said feet, too.  He meant, simply send instruments, they can do,
and better, whatever humans can. ]

Speaking of Nobel Laureates, I was once hanging out on Holyoke
Plaza, which is a run_of_the_mill architectural cowplop in Harvard
Square, pardon my mixed metaphor if the cow ain't on the
millwheel, and of course there were panhandlers, and George Wald
remarked to me -- I must have recognized him from a talk he gave -
- 'I don't know why they never ask me, I'd always give them
something.'  He was Jewish, and a Quaker.  The Purcell's were also
Quakers, and played recorders, and lived in a simple house in
Cambridge.

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