=kitc26.txt

[ CAVEAT (sa):  In this KIT, 

(and in KITc's  Curriculum 19, Curriculum 20, and Curriculum 21
(=kitc19.txt , =kitc20.txt, =kitc21.txt), but not in Curriculum
22, nor Curriculum 23, nor Curriculum 24, nor Curriculum 25
(=kitc22.txt, =kit23.txt, =kit24.txt, =kit25.txt)  

quotes are not italicized, nor set off in any other distinguishing
font nor color.  

Now in most 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 (as in those) KITs, (as you knows) 

and henceforth , 
I will not put in quotes anything which has neither notation. ]


UNIVERSEL: A COURSE OF MEDITATION
The teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Presented and paraphrased by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Including parallels with the ancient Sufis

LESSON 26
COMPARING SUFISM AND BUDDHISM:
ADVANCED MEDITATIONS
for
UPGRADING CONSCIOUSNESS
PREAMBLE

We ask once more the question how does:

  your consciousness and that of people;
  matter;
  the thinking of people;
  the emotion of people and your own;
  the programming of the Universe;

appear when consciousness has been carried beyond our personal
consciousness.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:

"Man, with the maturity of his soul, desires to probe the depths
of life. He desires to discover the power latent within him, he
longs to know the source and goal of his life, he yearns to
understand the aim and meaning of life, he wishes to understand
the inner significance of things, and he wants to uncover all that
is covered by form and name: he seeks for insight into cause and
effect, he wants to touch the mystery of Time and Space, and he
wishes to find the missing link between God and man--where man
ends, where God begins ." 
(HIK), THE UNITY OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAL

"Meditation is diving deep within oneself, and soaring upwards
into the higher spheres, expanding wider than the universe."
(HIK),  HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD; MENTAL PURIFICATION

WHAT ARE THE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS?

The Elementary Level:

In our commonplace experience we assume that we are the spectator
experiencing matter which we take for granted is the real word.
Also at this level our consciousness functions as the spectator
that apprehends people's thoughts which are articulated by
language. In this perspective Hazrat Inayat Khan points out that
the consciousness of the universe becomes limited in the personal
consciousness of the individual.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"That consciousness, which is divine or universal consciousness,
has become limited." 
(HIK), HEALING AND THE MIND WORLD; EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

"...the real reason which is within...is suppressed beneath all
the outer reasoning, and man seeks - more than the animal kingdom
does - to get back something that has been lost." 
(HIK), SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS

We never perceive the real world of matter. What we perceive is
impressions of light and sound. These serve as clues that we
interpret as being reality.

KARL PRIBHAM (paraphrased [ by PVK]):
'All that we perceive from the real world is the impressions of
the senses from which we infer the real world.'
 ARTICLE IN SCIENCE ET CONSCIENCE FRANCE-CULTURE / COLLOQUE DE
CORDOUE, STOCK 1980 P. 393 ESPRIT, CERVEAU ET CONSCIENCE.

The Sufis describe this elementary level of consciousness based on
a saying in the QUR'AN (paraphrased [ ny PVK]):

'God makes Himself known by clues, ayat , in the physical world
and in your psyche.'
(Quoran, paraphrased by PVK )

PRACTICE:

This first stage could be illustrated by sitting looking in the
mountains, looking into a wonderful panorama, or going into a
church and listening to the organ playing, or going to a wonderful
service where candles are lit on the altar, or looking into the
eyes of a baby, or witnessing a beautiful act of love or
generosity. You can expand your consciousness. If God is making
Himself known to you through the ayat , the signs that the
physical universe is made of, it is like learning something about
the bear through its pug marks, its signs. ( Aug. 11, 1995 )

[ Note (sa).  I do not know the force of that reference to 'Aug.
11, 1995'.  It is maybe a KIT, or maybe one of PVK's lectures 11
Aug 1995 at the Mureeds' Retreat at the Abode.  Those have been
input, see =pvin511L.txt for precise filename (=pvin9598*.txt) and
filepage.]

IBN 'ARABI:
"He is known through the things." 
(IBN 'ARABI), FUT. LL, 507, 30.

"He does not know of God except he infers God's being through his
being." 
(IBN 'ARABI, I PRESUME), 1975, P.13.

All that we know of Him is through ourselves...Thou seest thy
attributes to be His attributes. Since we know Him by ourselves,
we attribute to Him all that we attribute to ourselves. 1975, p.
16.

At this level, to find the reality inferred by the clue, one needs
to follow the clue - ta'wil.

IBN 'ARABI:
"The signs alert us to what they manifest, what they reveal. The
hidden treasure transpires through that which appears."

"It is by the contemplation of the ephemeral that God communicates
to us the knowledge of Himself." 
(IBN 'ARABI), 1975, P. 15.

"On the other hand the ephemeral is not conceivable as such except
in its relation to a principle from which it derives its own
possibility."
(Ibn 'ARABI),  1975, p. 15.

"According to a Hadith which is founded on the basis of unveiling,
but not by way of transmission, God said something like this: "I
was a treasure but was not known, so I loved to be known and I
created the creatures and made Myself known to them. Then they
came to know Me, so He knew Himself through witnessing in the
manifest." " 
(Ibn 'ARABI, I preumse)p. 31, iii 429, 4.

"But He knows that He could be known in respect of His
transcendence (Huwiva) - in respect that He knows Himself in the
principle of His Being. That which is revealed is not the world."
(IBN 'ARABI, I PRESUME),  ONE THE SUPREME KNOWLEDGE, 1982, 4.

"Consequently the knowledge of itself [ourselves] through the
divine perspective, insofar as its form appears to one as a form
in God (Cf. Fus p. 42 ), is by necessity limited by our ability to
grasp it through thyself [ourselves]. The perspective of unity is
lost."
(IBN 'ARABI, I PRESUME), p. 58. 
[ I (sa) assume that the bracket insert, twice, of '[ourselves]'
is by PVK.  In Kaivan it is highlighted in red. ]

More importantly these clues also apply to our understanding of
ourselves and of others.

PRACTICE:

One does project one's psyche into the world. It is particularly
true in the case of one's problems. The first state in Yoga is to
recognize that one doesn't experience the world such as it is, but
such as it appears to one from a personal vantage point. We think
that we are trying to assess our problems. What we are doing is
grappling with our impressions of our problems and not really our
problems.

The first thing is to know that you have to somehow not limit
yourself to your vantage point because that sets a bias upon what
you experience.

You can expand your consciousness by getting into the
consciousness of another person, like someone who is countering
you in a situation. See how things look from the point of view of
that person. Can you see from two different points of view at the
same time?

The Sufis say, "I see through his/her eyes." It is a complementary
perspective to your perspective. It goes even further, "I see
him/her, I see myself, through his or her eyes." Then you
understand why the person is treating you the way they are because
they assume you are what they think you are. Their assessment of
you is not any better than your assessment of yourself. They are
both incorrect, but at least you have an expanded view.

If you were to extend this view more and more, then you would have
this fantastic situation like you find in Khalil Gibran's book,
Jesus the Man, where Jesus is described by people who knew him at
the time. It is all fiction, of course. The views are totally
different, but somehow together they build an image of Jesus.

The consequence is that you are not that impressed by the
standpoint of people because you see it is totally incongruent.
What people think of you is not reliable. You have freed yourself
from the opinions people have of you. ( Aug. 11, 1995 ) 
[ Reference is most likely to PVK lecture 11 Aug 1995, at the
Abode Mureeds' Retreat, input in =pv9598*.txt -- sa]

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"It is the situation we are in that makes us believe we are this
or that."


There is a discrepancy, a disparity between the way our familiar
concepts interpret our everyday experience and the real world. For
example, responding to persons unfamiliar with quantum physics who
need to imagine what an atom is like, some physicists have
contrived to propose a three-dimensional space-time model of an
atom. But reality, particularly at the atomic and sub-atomic
level, cannot possibly fit in a model founded upon familiar
concepts satisfying our common sense.

This is the profound meaning of maya, illusion, delusion.

BASTAMI:
" "Khada! Khada!" Hoax, hoax!"

" "Ya Muakhir!" Deceiver! O deceiver! Oh leader astray! When God
reveals Himself to the sages, in an initial stage, he shows them a
market in which only effigies of men and women are on sale; and
those who venture in this market will never visit God. Oh God
beguiles thee not only in this market, but also in that of the
next world."
(BASTAMI)

We take those "effigies of men and women that God shows you in the
markets of the world" to be what the persons we meet really are,
but they are only the shadows of the reality that they feature.

IBN 'ARABI:
"God reveals Himself to the potentialities of His being by
projecting His shadow."
(Ibn 'Arabi),  HIKMAT UN NURIYA

*But reality manifests itself in the forms that appear in the
shadow. Shadows only exist where there is light. God then
withdraws the shadow. Fusus al Hikam,*
(IBN 'ARABI, I PRESUME),  CHAPTER ON JOSEPH, TR. BURCKHARDT.
BESHARA 1975.

"You may see the Real behind the veil of things. Unveiling conveys
knowledge of the Real in the things. Things are like curtains over
the Real. When they are lifted, unveiling takes place."
(IB 'ARABI, I presume)

"When your soul has been purified and its mirror has been
polished, do not consider the world to receive in it the picture
of the world, but turn your soul towards the dignity of the
Essence in its purity in the perspective of the cognizance that it
has of itself."
(IBN 'ARABI, I PREUSME),  ETUDES, 1952, MAI-JUNE, P. 129.

Yoga aims at eschewing the constraint in our grasp of
meaningfulness. Constraint results from the way meaningfulness is
diminished as it descends through the passageway in our psyche
intersecting the compass of reality beyond our outreach. The
interpretation of meaningfulness - that we try to fit inadequately
into the simplistic logic of our commonplace thinking by cross-
examining our thinking - is precisely what is meant by maya . Yoga
reverses that process, proceeding from our commonplace
interpretation of reality upwards, as it were, by dint of
enlisting more sophisticated modes of logic.

As OUSPENSKY showed: syllogistic logic is just one case of more
encompassing modes of logic: for example 'and' instead of 'or.' 
( Cf. TERTIUM ORGANUM and  A NEW MODEL FOR THE UNIVERSE)

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"The seekers of this never cast even a glance toward illusionary
existence."
(HIK),  SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS: IILUSION AND REALITY

What does Buddha mean - expanding our consciousness to the vast
compass of the consciousness of the universe? Or does he mean
hoisting our consciousness into the transcendental perspective of
the universe?

If you carry consciousness beyond the point where it is operating
from a personal vantage point, matter, the thinking of people,
their emotional motivations, and the modulations of the setting of
their consciousness are seen in an encompassing perspective rather
than being constrained by our commonplace, middle range view. 

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